Dr. Max Dosser and Dr. Isaac West Facilitate Discussions about Fandom, True Crime
Communication Studies faculty Max Dosser and Isaac West recently facilitated public discussions with two noteworthy artists.
Professor Dosser interviewed actor Gavin Casalegno, who stars as Jeremiah Fisher in the television series The Summer I Turned Pretty. As reported by the Vanderbilt Hustler, Dosser asked Casalegno about everything from his career to his creative process. Professor Dosser’s scholarship focuses on speculative fiction and fandom, which made his research especially relevant to the topic. The program focuses on a teenager named Belly, who befriends two brothers, Jeremiah and Conrad, and a love triangle ensues. Fans of the series often place themselves on “Team Jeremiah” or “Team Conrad” and these parasocial relationships have received extended attention in the press. The university also sponsored a trivia challenge about the program. The event was sponsored by the Vanderbilt Programming Board.
Professor West interviewed author and journalist Joshua Sharpe about his book The Man No One Believed: The Untold Story of the Georgia Church Murders at the Southern Festival of Books. Sharpe is a journalist who chronicled the 1985 murders of Harold and Thelma Swain, a Black deacon and his wife killed in their Georgia church. A local carpenter named Dennis Perry was convicted of the double homicide and received two life sentences. Sharpe recounts how Perry was jailed using dubious evidence and was eventually exonerated after serving 20 years in prison. In 2021, Sharpe won numerous awards, including a national Murrow Award and a Southeast Emmy, for a documentary about the killings. Professor West’s current research project focuses on true crime and its influence in American culture.