Profs and Pints Online presents: “Investigating Sherlock Holmes,” with Kris Mecholsky, English instructor, crime narrative scholar, and associate director of research advancement at Louisiana State University.

[This talk will remain available in recorded form at the link given here for tickets and access.]

Sherlock Holmes is the most adapted figure in film and television history, testifying to the weight of his lasting legacy. But as original as the Great Detective is, he did not spring fully formed from the head of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The mystique surrounding such writers' genius often shrouds the complicated cultural and biographical forces that led them to produce great works.

Come join crime fiction expert Kris Mecholsky to trace Conan Doyle's steps and examine where the great writer lifted ideas and what writers, in turn, pilfered from him.

We'll knock on the doors of some of the many characters that Sherlock Holmes was modelled upon, including the French criminal-turned-detective Eugène François Vidocq and Edgar Allan Poe’s Dupin. Mecholsky will connect the dots to show the pervasive influence that Conan Doyle and his creation have had on literature, television and film, and forensics.

You’ll learn whom to credit for the contribution of footprint forensics to both Holmes and real-life detection; which real-life person performed Holmes’s “parlor trick” of guessing a person’s history based on small personal details; and how Jean Valjean and Holmes are connected. You'll also find out how patterns of Sherlock have surfaced in every narrative medium since his appearance, even in characters—Byomkesh Bakshi, Nero Wolfe, Spock, House—that you may not have known or guessed about.

By the time Dr. Mecholsky sums up where the clues on Holmes lead, your past knowledge of the famous fictional detective will seem quite elementary.

Profs & Pints Online: Investigating Sherlock Holmes