Ever since the 1990s school shootings have shocked the public in their brutality their
suddenness and their inexplicability. While film and literature have played a role in the
heated debates about so-called copycat crimes the growing body of fictionalizations of school
shootings has been neglected thus far. However in a discourse in which the boundaries between
fiction and reality are increasingly blurred this book shows how fiction shapes and structures
challenges and disrupts cultural processes of meaning-making. Hence for a better understanding
of the school shooting phenomenon the relevance of fiction on all levels of discourse
construction requires thorough analysis. This book therefore develops a new approach to the
role of fiction for contemporary forms of excessive violence. By combining narrative theory
with insights from sociology and other disciplines it provides the means for apprehending and
describing the relevance of fiction for contemporary discourses. Furthermore it provides
exemplary analyses of more specific functions of literary and filmic fictionalizations of
school shootings between 2000 and 2016.
