On a Monday morning, sunlight fills Professor Karen Halttunen's south-facing campus office. The dark subject of murder somehow seems out of place. Yet, murder studies are what have consumed Halttunen for the past 12 years as she researched and wrote her recent book, Murder Most Foul: The Killer and the American Gothic Imagination. Published by Harvard University Press, Halttunen's book traces the cultural evolution of American attitudes toward murder--from the late 1600s through the 1800s--concluding with observations about films such as Dead Man Walking. She focuses primarily on original, non-fiction accounts of murder from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. She earned her Ph.D. at Yale University, arriving at cultural history after working with religious historian Sydney Ahlstrom. Those studies, she says, left a strong religious emphasis still evident in her work. At UC Davis since 1991, Halttunen taught at Northwestern University for more than a decade. Her field of cultural history is relatively new, emerging in the 1970s and 1980s. "Thirty years ago, I probably wouldn't have found myself in American history, but in an American studies department," Halttunen says. "As a cultural historian, I am fascinated by the power of stories." Here, Halttunen talks about the stories told of murder, starting with New England's colonialists. Klionsky: How and why did you come up with this rather grim way to look at the cultural history of the U.S.? Halttunen: I began with the question: What happened to American understanding of human evil after the Enlightenment [of the 18th century]? How on Earth did people come to understand truly evil transgressions? Then I decided that attitudes toward murder would be an excellent window on the matter. Beginning with New England execution sermons, and then using trial reports and later popular press narratives, I looked at anything that was a nonfictional response to an actual murder. Not only would these accounts illuminate aspects of evil, but would shed light on many other aspects of American culture, such as family, sexuality and religion. The search begins as a form of religious history, but the religious concern so dominant in the earlier narratives becomes quieter and quieter as the language of sinfulness is replaced by the language of 19th century gothic horror. LK: How did you conduct your research for Murder Most Foul ? KH: I discovered one of the finest libraries for American history before 1879, the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, Mass. They have the collection of the leading bibliographer of American murder literature before 1900. I would go there and spend a week to three months at a time, reading these. The librarians would bring the books to me in my carrel and from time to time, one of them would say, "Doesn't this ever get to you?" And yes, after a while it did! LK: Why did you select nonfiction accounts instead of fictional portrayals of murder? KH: When I first started the project, looking for changes in attitudes toward human evil, I did start with fiction. I looked at classic gothic fiction in the late 18th century and early 19th century. But I realized, historically, I wasn't getting at what I wanted. Gothic fiction arises so quickly and suddenly from nowhere. I needed a body of literature that started before gothic fiction, which started in the 1760s. I turned to nonfiction; it wasn't quite so formulaic as the fiction, and therefore it offered more of a range of the discussion of evil. LK: When did mystery become part of murder? KH: Today, we can barely conceive of a murder without the idea of mystery. But this wasn't always so. The answer to the change is theological. In the early 18th century, in a world where God sees all and knows all, there was less mystery to murder. The execution sermons expressed no doubt. In those days, trials seldom even hit the popular press. But as God seemed to recede from the universe, humans were left with the problem of uncovering all, and judicial knowledge is faultier than theological certainty. It becomes hard always to know who committed a crime. Our own doubt in the judicial process and the mystery of that process plays with the uncertainty: Do we ever really know? LK: Why are Americans today so fascinated by murder mysteries? KH: If we were 17th-century New Englanders, we'd be pretty convinced there's no particular mystery about evil. It's innate in all of us, it's universal. That understanding doesn't generate the same kind of curiosity in people that we have today. Today, we have so many ways of denying human evil, that the curiosity doesn't go away, we can't let it go. We have no satisfying explanation for human evil. Our quickest explanation is that it's environmental, and usually we end up with an abuse explanation. The source of evil just keeps receding from our minds and so we can't let it go. Murder mysteries are very reassuring, precisely because this is a serious topic and it taps into our deepest fears, and with certain authors, you're pulled into the drawing room for an explanation and closure, and so you wrap it up and go to sleep! Some writers take on the fear for us in a playful way and resolve it for us, so we can have our anxieties about violence and human evil alleviated. LK: So, murder mysteries are like our therapy? KH: Yes, we call it therapy, but in the 17th century they would have called it theology! It really is about transcendent issues: How does the world work? Before I started this book, I was fairly judgmental about people who watched "Geraldo" and read true crime, and sometimes even people who read murder mysteries. I thought it was voyeuristic of pain and suffering. I take it much more seriously now, whatever level people are working on--those who read the best of contemporary mystery writers or wallow in "Geraldo." But really, it's about people still asking the same question about good and evil: How can people do such terrible things? LK: What did you learn that surprised you in researching Murder Most Foul? KH: I learned that the fascination with violent deaths that we tend to think of as a contemporary phenomenon goes way back to the late 18th century, but I also learned it's not universal to human experience. It dates back only to the 18th century and doesn't really appear before then. Earlier, people didn't dwell on the crime, the violence, the corpse. And, I learned just how compassionate the execution sermons were toward the convicted killer.... The language of compassion is quite extraordinary. Back to the future After 12 years of her life focused on murder accounts, Halttunen says she's moving on to something lighter. She's been awarded a Mellon Fellowship. She'll spend a year in Massachusetts studying the history and memory of the pilgrims who arrived at Plymouth Rock in 1620. "It's a story that changes over time. Now it's much more a story of Native Americans ... it once was a story of heroic men of faith." As a college student, Halttunen spent summers working at Plimoth Plantation--one year as a costumed guide, and two years working on archeology sites. For her project, Halttunen will use both fiction and nonfiction accounts of the events associated with the rock, including such items as tourist souvenirs and monuments. "I'll even hang out at Plymouth Rock to hear what people today say." "I love what I do," Halttunen says. Even when the subject is murder.