This talk investigates the psychological, economic, and theoretical implications of Lee’s mid-twentieth-century composite crime scene models. By studying the dioramas as true crime texts, I hope to contribute to the burgeoning field of “the scholarship of things” and object-oriented ontology , as well as advance the critical recuperation of the sometimes maligned genre of true crime. Investigating the materiality of the Nutshells reveals a rich subversion of gendered expectations. I argue that Lee weaponizes her class privilege in order to combat the misogynist institutional practices that kept women out of the criminal justice system in the 1940s and 50s (the vestiges of which are still implemented today). Female creators like Lee can bring attention to female victims, but the paucity of true crime texts by women of color or marginalized communities indicates that there is still room for growth in the true crime genre.
About the presenterTracy L. Bealer
Tracy Bealer is an Associate Professor of English at Borough of Manhattan Community College. She specializes in twentieth- and twenty-first-century American pop culture and genre fiction, and has published and lectured on the intersection of gender and politics in film, television, and comics. Bealer co-edited Neil Gaiman and Philosophy and is currently working on a book-length study of Megan Abbott. She writes about true crime and crime fiction in her Substack newsletter, True Crime Fiction.