About
 
Keli Masten is Assistant Professor at Kendall College of Art and Design of Ferris State University and specializes in the study of American and British literatures, particularly the intersections of the gothic, crime fiction, and gender.

 

Her most recent essay “‘This Guy is Queer’: Words of Power in The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep” appears in the Fall 2024 edition of Crime Fiction Studies and discusses how the detectives in each novel leverage societal homophobia to manipulate situations to their advantage, like actors playing a part.

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Her essay, “Violet Strange: Gothic Girl Detective,” explores gender, class, and gothic violence in the adventures of Anna Katharine Green’s young girl detective, and was included in the edited collection Rethinking Gothic Transgressions of Gender and Sexuality with Routledge (2024). 

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The developmental writing textbook and reader, entitled Doing the Thing: Surviving and Thriving in College Writing (2023), was created in collaboration with student illustrator, Erin Mulder, and features graphic illustrations and satirical banter to soothe the savage freshmen. 

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Her article “Cherchez la Femme: A Good Woman’s Place in Hard-Boiled Detective Fiction,” was published in Clues: A Journal of Detection (2018) and focuses on the often sought for dependable woman in hard-boiled worlds.

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She is currently putting the finishing touches on a book about how American detective fiction grows from the gothic tradition, entitled Dark Logic: The American Gothic in Detective Mysteries (Lexington Press).