On December 1, 1946, sophomore Bennington College student Paula Jean Welden vanished. Her disappearance remains an unsolved mystery. Today it feels especially important to say her name.
I'm currently working on a book project that involves the Welden case. I'll post more soon, but for a (very brief!) preview, here's a video of my talk “Missing Students and Their Fictional Afterlives: #TrueCrime, #CrimeFiction, and #DarkAcademia," which I gave earlier this year at the Popular Culture Research Network’s “Guilty Pleasures: Examining #Crime in #PopularCulture” conference.
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/q221yilebjot8zb6yn8a1/Missing-Students-and-Their-Fictional-Afterlives-presentation.mp4?rlkey=ege0jrqbwkfnv268ao6s6t2ze&st=9vi72sbm&dl=0