Among the oddities in true-crime TV and in podcasts is the popularity of narratives about the often gruesome murders of white women. But when a pair of Westminster College professors used that as the jumping-off point for a course they titled Dead White Women, they got hate mail and — ironically — death threats.
And that’s just as ridiculous and alarming as it sounds.
Not all true-crime shows are about the murders of women. And not all of those about the murders of women feature white victims. But it is undeniably a major trend — just check the listings for broadcast network news magazines, Lifetime TV movies, umpteen shows on Oxygen and a big chunk of the programming on Investigation Discovery, aka ID.
It’s become so common we hardly even note the existence of the phenomenon. But at Westminster, Stephanie Stroud, an assistant professor of theater, and Eileen Chanza Torres, an associate professor and chair of the gender studies program, did take note. And why and how this is happening became part of their Dead White Women class.
The name of the course caught the attention of outlets like Fox News and the Daily Caller, which published snarky stories without understanding what it was really about. And that turned a college course that is not political into some kind of right-versus-left debate, prompting the hate mail and threats.
“At first it’s shocking,” Stroud said, “because it seemed so polarizing. I think it was a knee-jerk reaction to the title.”
In reality, the course investigates why the murders of white women are so often fodder for true-crime shows and podcasts.
“The disappearances of Indigenous women, or the disappearances of black women, Asian women, don’t have the same pull as the disappearance of a beautiful white woman,” Torres said. “The course is called Dead White Women because we start with this obsession with the missing white woman syndrome. … It’s because it makes for good TV or podcasts.
“And so while this may seem like a silly topic — it’s true crime, something you listen to while you’re doing the dishes, or while you’re walking the dog — the course has a lot more implications.”
(AP file photo) This 1979 file photo shows Ted Bundy, convicted murderer, in a Miami courtroom. Bundy — who confessed to killing 30 teenage girls and young women and may have killed many more — has been the subject of dozens of theatrical and TV movies, documentaries and TV reports.
Teaching life skills
Students taking Dead White Women watch true-crime shows and listen to true-crime podcasts and analyze not just what is said but how it’s said. They compare the way the same case is covered by a variety of outlets, studying the content and becoming “cognizant of what they are responding to,” Stroud said.
The class both teaches students to analyze true-crime podcasts and teaches them to create their own — a couple of shorter programs to begin with, and, eventually, a 20- to 40-minute podcast about a murder that happened in Utah.
“The ideal is that they’re able to take their phone and go off and edit and create a podcast on their own,” Stroud said.
The professors are neither lawyers nor journalists, but they direct students to read legal opinions and study journalism. “What are the rules about what you can and cannot say?” Torres said. And there’s an emphasis on citing sources when stating things as fact, which doesn’t always happen with podcasts and TV shows.
“It does develop a lot of other skills,” Torres said. “And it really is about information literacy. It really is about how you present yourself, and how you’re aware of the world.”
It’s a catchy name
To a large degree, Stroud and Torres are being attacked for doing their job right — for giving the course a name that attracted the attention of students. And, unintentionally, the attention of media outlets with an agenda.
“When I was a student at the University of Washington,” Stroud said, “there were a lot of classes that were given catchy names so that students would be interested in them. So it’s not a new phenomenon.
“If we were to put ‘Narrative Criminology from the 1990s to 2020,’ nobody’s gonna sign up for that.”
Is it a “white” problem?
The professors speculated that what drew the ire of Fox News viewers was that the course title includes “white.”
“My other reaction is: Do people want dead white women?” Torres said. “I mean, I don’t know why you don’t want us to study why that’s a phenomenon.”
And both professors pushed back against the idea that their class is by and for “liberals.”
“If you’re looking politically, the students are all over the spectrum,” Stroud said. “And so we engage in conversation that sometimes has conflict, but it’s always done within a civil way. … And we do have that representation in our class.”
And they are not holding up the Dead White Women phenomenon as something admirable. “It’s actually about the way we romanticize their death. We want to know the gory details,” Torres said.
“And do we learn anything from it? I don’t think we do,” she said, adding that, although some women claim “they want to know what to do when it happens to them, that’s not the reason.”
A waste of money?
There are 12 students in the class, which is about average for an upper-division class at Westminster. It’s a mix of female, male and nonbinary students.
The four-credit course is an elective that can fulfill requirements for graduation, “but no one’s forced to take the class,” Torres said.
And, while students are expected to watch TV shows and listen to podcasts, there’s more to the course than that.
“I know there has been some conversation of ‘what a waste of money this is,’” Stroud said. “But we’re analyzing what you consume on media, right? It is a very beneficial class, because then you’re able to discern what you’re consuming, and whether it’s grounded in evidence, whether it’s grounded in true journalism. So for me, that’s what tethers this class.”
Uninformed criticism
Most of the brickbats being thrown at Westminster, the professors and the course seems to be coming from people who don’t realize that Westminster is not a state-operated university. Tax dollars are not being used to fund the Dead White Women course.
And the course is not being taught to children. All of the students are over the age of 18, and most are in their 20s.
“We’re teaching adults,” Stroud said. “I mean, I learn just as much from them as if they learn from me.
“And we try to stay as objective as possible, and to listen to everybody’s thoughts on it. So I think it’s very shocking that [the criticism] was not researched, and that there were a lot of incorrect assumptions made.”
Student engagement
According to the professors, Dead White Women gives them exactly what teachers hope for — students who are engaged.
“This class gets students going,” Torres said. “They all engage. They all come in prepared with their ideas and their thoughts.”
“And they even go beyond the research that we’ve given them,” Stroud added. “They’ll do their own. They’ll watch more documentaries, or more podcasts, or more on this subject. … They’ll take apart and analyze the way that the information is disseminated.”
And they even go back-and-forth over whether convicted killers like Scott Peterson or Chris Watts really killed their pregnant wives. Although that’s not the point of the class.
“In narrative criminology, you’re not really interested in who’s telling the truth,” Torres said. “You’re actually interested in what story is being told. And, how is it being told? And what does that say about them?”
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