Education
Ph.D, Brown University (1999, English)
A.B., Princeton University (1990, English)
Bio
A native of Cincinnati, Reitz received her M.A. and Ph.D. from Brown University and taught at Queens College, the University of Cincinnati, and Saint Louis University before joining John Jay in 2006. She has served as director or co-director of the John Jay - Vera Fellows Program since 2008.
JJC Affiliations
Courses Taught
LIT 400: Senior Seminar in Literature
LIT 374: Special Topics in 19th Century Literature
LIT 316: Gender and Literature
LIT 300: Text and Context
LIT 260: Introduction to Literature
ISP 100: Justice: Who's in and Who's Out
ISP 140: True Crime
ISP 390/391: Vera Fellows Seminar
ENG 133: Language and Justice
ENGL 78100: Bad Sisters (at CUNY Graduate Center)
ENGL 78100: Mad Women (at CUNY Graduate Center)
Professional Memberships
Modern Language Association
North American Victorian Studies Association
International Crime Fiction Association
Dickens Studies Annual
Scholarly Work
Female Anger in Crime Fiction (Cambridge UP, 2024)
Editor, The Sign of the Four (Oxford World's Classics, 2023)
"Rire et pleurer : le ton fuyant du noir” (“Laughing and Crying: Noir’s Fugitive Tone). Critique 937-938 (June-July 2025): 474-485.
“Nancy Drew, Dragon Tattoo: Female Detective Fiction and the Ethics of Care.” Textus 27 (Fall 2014): 19-46.
Detecting the Nation: Fictions of Detection and the Imperial Venture (Ohio State, 2004)
Executive Editor, Clues: A Journal of Detection
Honors and Awards
John Jay Scholarly Excellence Award (2026)
John Jay Distinguished Service to Students (2025)
International Crime Fiction Association Book Award (2024)
Research Summary
Caroline Reitz is a literary critic and editor who studies crime fiction from the 19th through the 21st centuries, and teaches classes from the first year to the graduate level. She specializes in the intersections between crime, gender, race, affect, and national identity as represented in popular fiction. Her recent work centers on the representation of female anger in crime fiction, as well as the problems and possibilities of female solidarity in crime fiction. She also has expertise in Periodical Studies and British genre fiction of the 19th century. She is the executive editor of Clues: A Journal of Detection. Reitz earned a PhD in literature from Brown University.