Dr. Lauren Henley, WashU History alum and historian at the University of Richmond, explores race, gender, and crime in the rural South in her forthcoming book with LSU Press.
Dr. Lauren Henley (tenure-track at the University of Richmond), has a book coming out through Louisiana State University Press based on research she began as an undergraduate.
Dr. Lauren Henley is a historian whose research examines youthfulness, race, gender, religion, and crime in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In general, she considers how Black women and girls became both the victims of and perpetrators of violent crimes in the rural industrial South.
Her current work explores two sides of a specific historical serial killer: the making of said identity and the local communities that were affected. By asking whether or not serial killers can be leaders, Henley seeks to understand how power and influence shape broader historical narratives about perceived criminality.
“Lauren Nicole Henley has produced an absolute page-turner highlighting the female serial killer armed with an ax. Following the trail of blood that alarmed America in the early twentieth century, this book is a way-shower on true crime, fusing together multiple deaths with a hungry media, protective communities, religion, gender, and the making of a criminal in a powerful way.”
~Sowande’ M. Mustakeem, author of Slavery at Sea: Terror, Sex, and Sickness in the Middle Passage
