The purpose of this study was to take a piece of popular culture, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and use it as a pedagogical tool in a graduate criminal theory course to serve as a pilot study. Evaluation data showed that using the Sorcerer's Stone is an effective way to teach students how to apply criminological theory hypothetical examples of behavior.

In an intersectional feminist analysis of Dexter in both the novels by Jeff Lindsay as well as the Showtime television series, this dissertation will explore the challenging but compelling nature of the serial killer as a pop culture icon, and address themes of gender and sexuality as well as class, ethnicity and regions as they are portrayed in the series. Dexter Morgan, on the Showtime series and in the novels, both exposes popular culture’s problematic identification with the serial killer and solidifies it by being a socially palatable anti-hero. / Includes bibliography. / Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2019. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

This thesis discusses contemporary Scottish crime fiction in light of its transatlantic contexts. It argues that, despite participating in a globalized popular genre, examples of Scottish crime fiction nevertheless meaningfully intervene in notions of Scottishness. The first chapter examines Scottish appropriations of the hard-boiled mode in the work of William McIlvanney, Ian Rankin, and Irvine Welsh, using their representation of traditional masculinity as an index for wider concerns about community, class, and violence. The second chapter examines examples of Scottish crime fiction that exploit the baroque aesthetics of gothic and noir fiction as a means of dealing with the same socio-political contexts. It argues that the work of Iain Banks and Louise Welsh draws upon a tradition of distinctively Scottish gothic in order to articulate concerns about the re-incursion of barbarism within contemporary civilized societies. The third chapter examines the parodic, carnivalesque aspects of contemporary Scottish crime fiction in the work of Christopher Brookmyre and Allan Guthrie. It argues that the structure of parody replicates the structure of genre, meaning that the parodic examples dramatize the textual processes at work in more central examples of Scottish crime fiction. The fourth chapter focuses on examples of Scottish crime fiction that participate in the culturally English golden-age and soft-boiled traditions. Unpacking the darker, more ambivalent aspects of these apparently cosy and genteel traditions, this final chapter argues that the novels of M. C. Beaton and Kate Atkinson obliquely refract the particularly Scottish concerns about modernity that the more central examples more openly express.