JACK THE RIPPER

Jack the ripper

Jack the ripper

Introduction

Active learning has been lauded as being a viable education methodology that enables students to become more engaged in the learning process and has recently received considerable attention and attracted strong Advocates among faculty, educational administrators and educational researchers (Prince, 2004). Defined As any educational method of instruction that engages students in the learning process by requiring them to engage In meaningful and curriculum related activities, active learning also makes student think about what they are Learning (Bonwell & Eison, 1991). Conversely, it has been contrasted to traditional learning as a better methodology of teaching and learning because students are no longer just passive receptors of information (Prince, 2004).

The present paper discusses and examines an active learning project that students were required to Participate in while enrolled in a criminal investigations class. The project involved students actively involved in Investigating the infamous Jack the Ripper murders that occurred in London during 1888. The case of Jack the Ripper has long captivated amateur true-crime enthusiasts. Now scholars too have become enthralled by him, but why?

Under the slayer's sway ourselves, Fred J. Abbate, a philosopher, a literary critic, wanted to find out. We took popular interest in Jack the Ripper to be a given. Buffs are everywhere, populating groups like the White chapel Society and Internet sites like the JTR Forums and Casebook: Jack the Ripper. Yet work on the case had long been dominated by these so-called Ripperologists, with academic involvement lagging behind. Despite some scholarly work going back 25 years, only in the past 10 (with two dissertations listed in the MLA Bibliography in the past three) has an academic literature begun to accumulate as the cultural turn in the humanities intersected with a widespread interest in true crime. Jack the Ripper is arguably the first publicly recognized "serial killer" (though the term was not coined until the 1970s), and the White chapel murders--as the Ripper case is decorously known--may be the first modern true-crime narrative.

Description of the case

A brief description of the case should make clear why it tantalizes not just true-crime addicts but sociology, cultural-studies, political, economic, and literary experts too, enough so that Abate and I have planned a scholarly conference, "Jack the Ripper Through a Wider Lens," to be held at Drexel University in Philadelphia on October 28 and 29.

Between August and November of 1888, five women, all allegedly prostitutes, were murdered in the impoverished White chapel district of East London. The victims--Polly Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes, and Mary Kelly--all had their throats cut, and, following their death, were all (with the exception of Elizabeth Stride, where the murder is postulated to have been interrupted) eviscerated with a brutality that became more extreme with each victim. The five murders displayed a similarity in technique and came to be referred to as the "canonical" Ripper murders--though there have been plenty of no canonical ones, committed before and after, that might be the work of the same ...