Analyzing the Books
Here is where I'll share some of my analyses of the texts. In the bulleted list below, underlined titles act as hyperlinks to the item. Click the titles to access each and learn more about the research I've done around the archive so far.
Publications
- "Mad Violence, White Victims, and Other Gun Violence Fictions: The Gap between School Shootings and Systemic Gun Violence" — An analysis of how documentary texts about historical school shootings
prioritize a fear of madness in predominantly white suburbs, thus obscuring a holistic analysis of
gun violence and the real racial and socioeconomic diversity of its victim. Published in Research on Diversity in Youth Literature, 27 April 2021. [Link takes you to the website for Research on Diversity in Youth Literature]
Presentations
- "Madness & Empathy in School Shooting Fiction & Activism," June 2019 ChLA Presentation — A presentation at the Children's Literature Association Conference with some early research of the texts. Particular attention on Marieke Nijkamp's This Is Where It Ends and speeches from the 2018 March for Our Lives. Created in summer 2019. [Link opens a window to a new page on the SSF Archive.]
- "Curating an Archive of School Shooting Fiction," May 2019 ALA Presentation — Presentation at the 2019 American Literature Association (ALA) on the early processes of gathering data on school shooting fiction books. Created in early spring 2019. [Link opens a window to a new page on the SSF Archive.]
Data Visualizations
- "Classifying School Shooting Fiction" — coming soon, winter 2021!
- "School Shooting Fiction via Word Embedding Models" — coming soon, winter 2021!
- "The Where & When of School Shooting Fiction" — Early analyses & data visualizations (using Tableau) of the proximity of highly-mediated school shootings to publications of school shooting fiction books. Created in late 2018, early 2019. [Link opens a window to a new page on the SSF Archive.]
- "Initial Observations about the Authors" — Early visualizations (using Tableau) of author demographics with attention to race and gender. Created in early 2019. [Link opens a window to a new page on the SSF Archive.]
- "Ableist Language in Neil Smith's Boo" — Brief analysis of each of how school shooting fiction employs ableist language aligning madness with violence with a focus on Neil Smith's 2015 novel Boo. [Link opens a window to a new page on the SSF Archive.]