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Critical Insights: The American Thriller

Contributors

Abby Bentham is a PhD candidate at the University of Salford. Her research interests range from literary studies to film and television, and she has published on subjects as diverse as Dickens and Dexter. Abby is particularly interested in representations of the psychopath, and her thesis charts the literary trajectory of this figure from the late nineteenth century to the present day. Her latest project, which looks at spectatorship and surveillance in the Saw films, will be published in an edited collection on the franchise in 2014.

Elizabeth Blakesley holds an MLS degree and an MA in comparative literature from Indiana University. Her BA is in English and Spanish from the University of Dayton. Blakesley currently serves as the associate dean of libraries at Washington State University. Blakesley is also adjunct associate professor at the University of Maryland University College, where she has taught information literacy courses online since 2001. In addition to a number of articles on instruction, assessment, and leadership topics, Blakesley is the author of Great Women Mystery Writers, 2nd ed. (Greenwood 2006); co-author of Literary Research and American Modernism, 1915–1949 (Scarecrow 2008); and co-editor of Information Literacy Instruction Handbook (ACRL, 2008). She reviews mystery and suspense novels for Library Journal and is an active member of the Mystery/Detective Fiction Area of the Popular Culture Association.

John A. Dowell's work and thought have appeared on Detroit's WXYZ-TV, in Grue magazine, in the Encyclopedia of American Popular Beliefs and Superstition, in Salon, and in the Journal of Popular Film and Television. In addition to playing bass for a variety of musical venues, Dowell has sold a number of scripts, screenplays, and video treatments for cold, hard cash. He has also chaired the Midwest Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association panels for the Humor Area and the Horror/Science Fiction/Fantasy Area for over a decade. Dowell is currently the technology literacy specialist for the Undergraduate University Division's Learning Resources Center at Michigan State University. When he isn't helping students discover effective gizmo/software tech, he likes to work on their brainpan wetware by lecturing and work-shopping various rhetorical techniques for presenting their innovative ideas with convincing authority. With backgrounds in anthropology, sociology, and folk studies from Western Kentucky University, and American popular culture studies from Bowling Green State University, he is currently co-editing a book on his dissertation topic, sLaughter (the nexus of simultaneous humor and horror), titled Sidesplitting: sLaughter in Popular Cinema. It promises to tear you a new one.

Kristopher Mecholsky is a member of the faculty at Louisiana State University and a scholar of American literature and culture, crime narratives, adaptation, film, and science and literature. He earned his bachelor's degree in physics and English from the Catholic University of America (2004), his master's in literature and language at Marymount University (2008), and his doctorate in English at LSU (2012). His book on James M. Cain (co-authored with David Madden) was published in 2011 through Scarecrow Press. He has written on Douglas Sirk and has articles forthcoming on Sherlock Holmes (through the Victorian journal The OScholars) and on Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island (for an edited collection published by McFarland). He is also a contributing columnist for the University of Texas at Austin's online television journal, Flow.

Ayoola Onatade is a freelance crime fiction critic and blogger. She received her bachelor of arts in social science from the University of Westminster and a masters degree in reading modernity (specifically, postcolonial and postmodern English literature) from London South Bank University in 2001. She has written a number of articles on different aspects of crime fiction and has also given papers on the subject, mainly at the annual St Hilda's Crime and Mystery Conference, Oxford. She blogs at Shotsmag Confidential (wwwshotsmagcouk.blogspot.com) and writes articles and interviews at Shotsmag (www.shotsmag.co.uk), an online crime fiction e-zine. She has been a regular contributor to Crimespree Magazine since 2007 and is an occasional contributor to Mystery Journal International. She was a contributor to British Crime Writing: An Encyclopaedia (2008), edited by Barry Forshaw. She has also moderated and taken part in panels at Crimefest and Bouchercon. A member of the Crime Writers Association of Great Britain (CWA) and Sisters in Crime (SinC), she currently chairs the CWA Short Story Dagger Judging Panel and also helps judge the Historical Writers Association (HWA)/Goldsboro Crown Award for debut historical fiction. Her research interests include historical and crime fiction.

Chris Richardson's research explores representations of crime in contemporary popular culture. His PhD in Media Studies (Western University, 2012) built on his bachelor of journalism degree (Ryerson University, 2007) and his master of arts degree in interdisciplinary studies of popular culture (Brock University, 2008) to explore how media professionals can improve the impact and accuracy of crime coverage by reassessing how they choose sources, establish metaphorical language, and reproduce popular crime narratives. Richardson is an executive member of the Popular Culture Association of Canada; a Faculty Advisor for Lambda Pi Eta, The National Communication Association's undergraduate honors society; and the founder and supervisor of the Young Harris College Media Studies Research Collective. His research has appeared in Popular Music and Society, The Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice, and The British Journal of Canadian Studies. In 2012, he published Habitus of the Hood with Hans Skott-Myhre, interrogating intersections of street culture and popular media. Their next project is on social theory and drug dealing.

Garyn G. Roberts, PhD, is a college and university professor. He holds multiple literary and teaching awards. Roberts was born in northern Wisconsin, one hundred miles north of Plainfield, about a year after Ed Gein's atrocities were discovered. (When Gein's activities were discovered in November 1957, it was deer season in Wisconsin and Roberts' father was hunting. To this day, Roberts' mother recounts how frightened she was at home alone in the woods, a twenty-three-year-old newlywed, when the news from Plainfield broke.) Though he never met Robert Bloch in person, Roberts maintained a prolific, ongoing correspondence with Bloch (his dear friend) until Bloch's passing in 1994. Writing this essay, Roberts rediscovered how much original writing Bloch had done for him that has yet to be published. Someday…

Philip L. Simpson received his bachelor's and master's degrees in English from Eastern Illinois University in 1986 and 1989, respectively, and his doctorate in American literature from Southern Illinois University in 1996. He serves as Provost of the Titusville Campus of Eastern Florida State College. Before that, he was a tenured professor of Communications and Humanities, as well as Department Chair of Liberal Arts, at the Palm Bay campus of Brevard Community College. He also served as President of the Popular Culture Association and Area Chair of Horror for the Association. He received the Association's Felicia Campbell Area Chair Award in 2006. He currently serves as Area Co-Chair of the Stephen King Area and the Association's Vampire in Literature, Culture, and Film Area, and he sits on the editorial board of the Journal of Popular Culture. His first book, Psycho Paths: Tracking the Serial Killer through Contemporary American Film and Fiction, was published in 2000 by Southern Illinois University Press; his second book, Making Murder: The Fiction of Thomas Harris, was published in 2010 by Praeger Press. He is the author of numerous other published essays on film, literature, popular culture, and horror.

Susan J. Tyburski practiced “street law” for twenty years before retiring to become a part-time hearings officer for the Colorado Department of Corrections. She teaches law and literature at the University of Denver, as well as literature and writing at Red Rocks Community College. She is currently working on a study of Polish crime fiction. Her research interests include the intersections of law, literature, and society.

Kate Watson completed a PhD on gender and crime fiction at Cardiff University in 2010 and is a lecturer in English at Cardiff Metropolitan University, UK. She has published several articles on crime fiction. Recent outputs include Women Writing Crime Fiction, 1860–1880: Fourteen American, British and Australian Authors (McFarland 2012); “Engendering Violence: Textual and Sexual Torture in Val McDermid's The Mermaids Singing” in Constructing Crime: Discourse and Cultural Representations of Crime and ‘Deviance’ (Palgrave Macmillan 2012); and an entry on Ngaio Marsh in 100 British Crime Writers, ed. Esme Miskimmin (Palgrave Macmillan 2013). Her article “The Imprint in Print: Tattoos, Women, and Crime Narratives” has been accepted for Mystery, Magnified: An Investigation into Contemporary and Classic Detective Fiction, ed. Casey Cothran and Mercy Cannon (to be published in 2014). Her second book is A Reader's Guide to Essential Criticism: Crime and Detective Fiction (Palgrave Macmillan), scheduled for publication in 2015.

Citation Types

Type
Format
MLA 9th
"Contributors." Critical Insights: The American Thriller, edited by Gary Hoppenstand, Salem Press, 2014. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=CIThriller_0019.
APA 7th
Contributors. Critical Insights: The American Thriller, In G. Hoppenstand (Ed.), Salem Press, 2014. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=CIThriller_0019.
CMOS 17th
"Contributors." Critical Insights: The American Thriller, Edited by Gary Hoppenstand. Salem Press, 2014. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=CIThriller_0019.