Kim Davies asks her students two questions when they show up to her class on the sociology of murder for the first time.
Why they think people are so fascinated with the subject? Why they are in her class?
“I get a diverse population, especially in terms of majors,” said Davies, the dean of Augusta University’s Pamplin College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences. She has written two textbooks on murder and teaches the class which is catalogued as SOCI 3187.
In most upper-level sociology classes, she sees criminal justice, psychology and sociology majors, but she gets all majors in her murder class. Biology, communications and physics majors also make an appearance.
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And she’s able to use their strengths in discussions. A physics’ major can provide a different angle as to what ballistics mean.
Sometimes, the students say they are taking her class because it’s required, but it’s not. It’s an elective.
Many of the students have their own fascination with murder, she said. They watch any of the myriad television shows; they listen to podcasts on the subject. That’s a reason they take the class.
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Davies believes that the fascination isn’t in the gruesome details of what happened to the person who was killed, but she thinks people have this innate curiosity and have a simple reason. It’s all about the whodunit.
“Let’s figure out who did it,” she said.
When it comes to her preferred form of entertainment, Davies said she opts for the British take on the subject, which often follows a more Agatha Christie mystery approach rather than delving into the forensics with its brutal details.
Davies’ first textbook was published in 2007.
“It grew out of my teaching,” she said.
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As she taught on the sociology of murder, she found a lot of information on serial killers and mass murders, but an area that was missing was what she termed “everyday murders,” or those murders that are crimes of passion or involve a fight in a parking lot that escalated until someone pulled a gun, leaving one person dead.
Because there wasn’t a comprehensive textbook on the subject, she wrote one.
The first was published by Prentice-Hall.
In the ensuing years, other murders including mass shootings such as Sandy Hook and Virginia Tech occurred. People asked if she was going to write a second book providing updated information. She was also influenced by other topics such as the Black Lives Matter and Stand Your Ground.
Published by Oxford University Press, “The Murder Book: Understanding Homicide Today” was recently released.
Not only does she focus on murders in the United States, she highlights the crimes committed in other English-speaking countries including Great Britain, Australia and Canada.
Davies continues her murder research. She’s currently studying murder rates during the pandemic and focusing on how stay-at-home orders affected murder rates.
She plans to offer her sociology of murder class in fall 2022.
Charmain Z. Brackett is the Features Editor for The Augusta Press. Reach her at charmain@theaugustapress.com
