Academics

Maryville’s Dy­namic Duo in De­tec­tive Fic­tion

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When you think of a tra­di­tional col­lege course, a few stereo­types may come to mind: life­less lec­tures, bor­ing pa­pers and im­pos­si­ble fi­nals. But what if we told you that the Maryville Bas­com Hon­ors Pro­gram is chal­leng­ing that sta­tus quo?

Geri­ann Brandt and Ger­maine Mur­ray, Crim­i­nol­ogy and Eng­lish pro­fes­sors re­spec­tively, paired up this se­mes­ter to pro­vide their stu­dents with a highly cap­ti­vat­ing Hon­ors course called “De­tec­tive Fic­tion and the Aes­thetic of Crime”. 

Uti­liz­ing Mur­ray’s vast knowl­edge of lit­er­a­ture and Brandt’s 13 years of ex­pe­ri­ence as a St. Louis County po­lice of­fi­cer, the class al­lows two fields of ed­u­ca­tion to unite.

We asked both pro­fes­sors how the class con­cept was cre­ated and they told us it was a nat­ural process due to the friend­ship be­tween them. Mur­ray had pre­vi­ously taught this class but asked Brandt if she would be will­ing to join in this time. (To which she gave an em­phatic “yes”!) 

Brandt be­lieves in the value of col­lab­o­ra­tion, say­ing, “As ed­u­ca­tors, we never stop learn­ing. That’s the best way to learn: from each other.” Their shared love for the de­tec­tive fic­tion genré and evil as a whole al­lows an in­spir­ing learn­ing space for stu­dents. 

As Mur­ray put it, “You can only un­der­stand the psy­che of Ted Bundy to a cer­tain ex­tent… You can’t ever un­der­stand evil.” Brandt added in, “When you look at crime it­self, it’s so dark and con­vo­luted. What could be more in­ter­est­ing than talk­ing about evil and mo­ti­va­tion?”

Geriann Brandt, Criminal Justice Professor at Maryville. Photo courtesy of Maryville University

Brandt’s per­sonal en­thrall­ment with crime is backed by over a decade serv­ing and pro­tect­ing the St. Louis Area in the mid-to-late 1980’s as a fresh-faced crim­i­nol­ogy grad­u­ate. She told us that the St. Louis Area was first be­com­ing in­fil­trated with gangs at the time and her in­ves­ti­ga­tion of crime scenes sparked an in­ter­est in be­hav­ior and mo­tive.

Mur­ray, too, shares this pas­sion for in­ves­ti­gat­ing and ex­pound­ing on the sci­ence of crime as a whole. “The evil pe­riod is highly sci­en­tized but at the bot­tom, evil is in­ex­plic­a­ble,” Mur­ray told us. “I be­lieve Eng­lish pro­fes­sors have to know much more than just lit­er­a­ture. We must be fa­mil­iar with con­tex­tu­al­iza­tion, psy­chol­ogy, and re­la­tional sci­ence.”

Germaine Murray, Ph.D. Photo courtesy of the Maryville University Staff Directory.

Through­out their course, stu­dents are re­quired to read var­i­ous de­tec­tive sto­ries. Some in­clude var­i­ous Semi­gnon and Sher­lock Holmes sto­ries, while oth­ers like “Girl with the Dragon Tat­too” is a more mod­ern ver­sion of noir. (Read an ex­cerpt of the “Dragon Tat­too” book here!) When asked how these sto­ries were cho­sen, Mur­ray ex­plained that many stu­dents have only read pieces of Sher­lock, who is so foun­da­tional to­day. “De­tec­tive sto­ries are an art form,” Mur­ray told us. 

This at­ti­tude has shaped the course re­quire­ments, and par­tic­u­larly that each stu­dent is re­quired to write a short de­tec­tive story as part of the class.

As Mur­ray said, “Col­lege stu­dents don’t get to write cre­atively and of­ten don’t think they can.” Both were quick to point out the value in acad­e­mia writ­ing, as it is a vi­tal skill for stu­dents of all dif­fer­ent ca­reer fields (es­pe­cially those in the sci­en­tific field!) But by al­low­ing each stu­dent to de­velop their own plot and sto­ry­line, they are nat­u­rally prompted to “flex their mus­cles” and rec­og­nize the craft and artistry that any good story re­quires of its writer. 

Mur­ray told us that stu­dents who have taken this class be­fore of­ten come back and tell her that they ac­tu­ally en­joyed this pro­ject, de­spite orig­i­nally feel­ing out of their el­e­ment.

Af­ter con­duct­ing this in­ter­view and sit­ting in dur­ing class, one thing is clear — this dy­namic duo is un­stop­pable. The blend of knowl­edge each teacher’s com­bined field and ed­u­ca­tion ex­pe­ri­ence pro­vides con­tributes to the unique­ness of a class­room ex­pe­ri­ence like this. We can only hope to see this class back on the reg­is­tra­tion list for many se­mes­ters ahead!

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