CARDIFF UNIVERSITY ~ Crime Fiction in the Twentieth Century: from Sherlock Holmes to Serial Killers
Course Tutor: Heather Worthington
Course Description: Sherlock Holmes is generally thought of as a nineteenth-century creation, but in fact his stories kept appearing well into the twentieth century. Surprisingly, on examination many of the Holmes adventures are not concerned with murder, but with questions of property and, always, the solving of the mystery is the focus of the narrative and the (male) detective is the hero. Foreigners are firmly located as ‘other’, and are often criminal: women tend to be marginal to the text, less the heroine of the story than either the victim of or the catalyst for crime. The police detective is at best, Holmes’s humble assistant; at worst, an ineffectual fool. Yet by the end of the twentieth century women hold centre stage in much crime fiction; the crime is invariably murder, usually multiple; the characterisation of the detective and her/his criminal opposite is as important as solving the crime, and the detective is no longer a white, Western, macho male but can be female, black, lesbian, gay, police or private, British, American, European, African, Asian, Welsh. This course considers the permutations and developments of the genre over the twentieth century as it responds to the contemporary cultural anxieties and complexities of the society in which it is produced.
The course considers the major subgenres of crime fiction in Britain and America, from Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles (1901) to Malcolm Pryce’s Aberystwyth Mon Amour (2001). It will analyse the formal and thematic characteristics of the texts as well the sociocultural contexts in which they are produced and consumed. Students are expected to read all the set texts and a range of secondary material in order to gain a critical understanding of the genre as it changes over the period.
Programme of Study
1. Introduction: Texts and Contexts
2. The Hero Detective: Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles
3. The Clue-Puzzle: Agatha Christie, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
4. The Private Eye: Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep
5. The Feminist Private Eye: Sara Paretsky, BurnMarks
6. READING WEEK
7. Race Crimes: Walter Mosley, A Little Yellow Dog
8. The Thriller of Violence I: Thomas Harris, The Silence of the Lambs
9. The Thriller of Violence II: Val McDermid, The Mermaids Singing
10. Postmodern Playtime: Malcolm Pryce, Aberystwyth Mon Amour
11. Overview and Discussion of Issues
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LANCASTER UNIVERSITY ~ British and American Crime Stories, 1890-2000
Course tutor: Lee Horsley
Course description: This half-unit course covers both British and American crime writing, and aims to trace the development of crime fiction from the 1890s on – clarifying its basic formulas, looking at the evolution of contrasting narrative structures and considering the historical significance of forms as different as the classic ‘whodunit’ and the hard-boiled thriller. Beginning with the stories of Doyle and his contemporaries, the course will move on to the ‘Golden Age’ of the detective story (Christie, Sayers, etc.), American ‘tough guy’ crime stories (Hammett, Chandler, James M. Cain, Jim Thompson, etc.), the contemporary noir thriller (both British and American), black and feminist crime fiction (e.g. Chester Himes, Gillian Slovo) and the detective story’s postmodernist variants (e.g., Hjortsberg). The reading of novels and stories will be supplemented by a small selection of films directed by Hitchcock, Mike Hodges, Carl Franklin, the Coen brothers and the Wachowski brothers. The course will be scheduled in a flexibly used three hour slot: that is, meetings in some weeks will be only one-and-a-half or two hours long, and will consist of seminar and small group discussion, plus occasional mini-lectures; in other weeks, the full three hours will be used to make room for the showing of films.
Set Texts: The core texts will be The Oxford Book of English Detective Stories, ed. Patricia Craig (Oxford University Press, 1998), and Hard-Boiled: An Anthology of American Crime Stories, ed. Jack Adrian and Bill Pronzini (Oxford University Press, 1995), both available in paperback. These will be supplemented by six novels, all in current paperback editions: Agatha Christie, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926), Jim Thompson, A Hell of a Woman (1954), Chester Himes, Rage in Harlem (1957), Gillian Slovo, Death by Analysis (1986), William Hjortsberg, Falling Angel (1978) and Nicholas Blincoe, Acid Casuals (1995).
Seminar Schedule:
week 1 - Classic detective fiction: Arthur Conan Doyle, R. Austin Freeman, Arthur Morrison and G. K. Chesterton in The Oxford Book of English Detective Stories
week 2 - The queens of crime: Agatha Christie, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd; and Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Margery Allingham, P.D. James and Ruth Rendell in Oxford Book of English Detective Stories
week 3 - American hard-boiled crime fiction: stories of the 1920s-40s: Hammett, W. R. Burnett, Paul Cain, James M. Cain, Chandler and John D. MacDonald, in Hard-Boiled: An Anthology of American Crime Stories
week 4 - The era of American paperback originals, 1950s: David Goodis, Ross Macdonald, Mickey Spillane, Gil Brewer, Leigh Brackett, in Hard-Boiled: An Anthology and Jim Thompson’s A Hell of a Woman
week 5 - British noir, 1970s-90s: Nicholas Blincoe’s Acid Casuals, plus discussion of Mike Hodges, Get Carter!
week 6 - READING WEEK: showing of Hitchcock's Vertigo and questions for individual analysis
week 7 - American noir, 1970s-90s: Andrew Vachss, Faye Kellerman, James Ellroy, Lawrence Block, Ed Gorman, in Hard-Boiled: An Anthology; discussion of Vertigo
week 8 - Black noir: Chester Himes’ Rage in Harlem, plus discussion of Carl Franklin, One False Move
week 9 - Feminist crime stories: Gillian Slovo’s Death by Analysis, plus discussion of Wachowski brothers, Bound
week 10 - Postmodern crime stories: William Hjortsberg’s Falling Angel, plus discussion of Coen brothers, Big Lebowskihttp://www.lancs.ac.uk/depts/english/courses/359/
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The Detective Story from Sophocles to Reichs
ENGL32137 (SEMESTER 2, 2005-06) ~ Course tutor: Dr Francis O’Gorman
Detective fiction is the new revenge tragedy. This module explores the roots and history of the detective story, and its central preoccupations with nemesis, justice, and death. Detective fiction continually borrows motifs from classical literature, and the module begins with a consideration of one of the great plays of ancient Greece that still reverberates in contemporary detective writing. It then offers students the opportunity to consider the genre across two hundred years, from the nineteenth-century Anglo-American axis of Poe-Conan Doyle, through the golden age of Agatha Christie, to examples of international contemporary crime writing and its noir versions. Themes of the module will include fiction and the law, the changing sexual politics of crime writing, justice and detection, the shifting nature of the hero, the relationship between the detective and the reader, and the modern detective novel’s preoccupation with location. The module will also provide students with some theoretical models for the academic approach to popular genre fiction.
TEXTS FOR PURCASE: (any edition) Sophocles, Oedipus the King from The Theban Plays (available on http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/s/s5o/oedipus_king.html) Edgar Allan Poe, ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’ (1841), ‘The Purloined Letter’ (1845), ‘The Mystery of Marie Roget’ (1850) A. Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles (Broadview edn if available) (1901-2) Agatha Christie, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926) John Le Carré, A Murder of Quality (1962) James Elsroy, L.A. Confidential (1992) Sara Paretsky, Hard Time (1999) Ian Rankin, Set in Darkness (2000) Kathy Reichs, Fatal Voyage (2001) Sarah Waters, Fingersmith (2002) Students are reminded that contemporary detective fiction is not widely served by academic criticism and particular emphasis will be on the development of their own critical strategies.
TEACHING : Teaching will be through weekly seminars (10 x 1 hour) plus up to 5 additional hours (content to be determined by the module tutor).
EVALUATION: This module will be assessed by two essays (one of 1700 words and one of 2750 words)
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ALVERNO COLLEGE, Milwaukee, Wisconsin ~ The Art of the Mystery
Course tutor: Carole Barrowman
“You wouldn’t kill me in cold blood, would you?”
“No, I’ll let you warm up a little.”
From White Heat (1949)The mystery is one of the most popular literary genres, even among those of us who consider ourselves to be compassionate and peace loving. In this course, you’ll read and explore the mystery in terms of its aesthetic, historical, and philosophical dimensions. Through your close reading and viewing of a variety of mysteries, you’ll study the roots of the genre’s conventions and characteristics, trace its evolution in form and content, and explore why so many are drawn to a genre that engages the dark side of human nature.
Because this course is part of the EN 360: Genre Studies series, the following questions will significantly shape our inquiry:
1. What is the relationship between the evolution of
the genre and a society’s views on ethnicity, gender, and violence?
2. Does the genre serve a moral purpose?
3. What is the relationship between the mystery genre and the literary canon?
Finally, your studies will not only deepen your understanding of the imaginative power of this popular genre, but you’ll also have the opportunity through your own creative writing to explore, as one critic has stated, the “boundary between the permitted and the forbidden.”
COURSE OUTCOMES:
To complete this course, you must successfully demonstrate the three underlined English Program Outcomes in relation to the course requirements (see below).
1. Reads and interprets diverse cultural expressions in works of literature, film, and other media.
2. Communicates an understanding of literary criticism, questions its assumptions, and uses its frameworks to analyze and evaluate works.
3. Collaborates in aesthetic communities by articulating how literary studies affect professional choices and public life.
4. Writes coherently and creatively, making conscious and sophisticated stylistic choices in language and structure.
5. Engages personally, intellectually, and creatively in the expanding discourse of the discipline of English.
6. Demonstrates understanding of the structure and history of the English language, including major grammatical systems and linguistic development in England and America.COURSE REQUIREMENTS:
1. Students must complete all the course readings by the assigned deadlines.
2. Students must successfully complete the course assessments by the assigned deadlines.
3. Students must actively participate in all classroom and distance based activities.REQUIRED READING (in assigned order):
A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Galton Case by Ross McDonald
Neon Rain by James Lee Burke
A Grave Talent by Laurie R. King
Inner City Blues by Paula L. Woods
White Butterfly by Walter Mosley
People of Darkness by Tony HillermanCRITICAL TEXT (see calendar)
The Mystery of Mysteries: Cultural Differences and Designs by Samuel Coale (Bowling Green State Univ. press, 2000)CALENDAR
The calendar below lists the major readings and the due dates for the creative writing assignments (criteria will be given in class). In addition to this work, each of you will be part of a symposium on the art of the mystery that we’re sponsoring at the college during the month of November. Your work in the symposium includes participation in a “brown bag” discussion, which will be open to the Alverno community at large, and a related written project, which I’ll submit to Crimeculture.com, the website complementing our course. Dates, criteria and requirements for this integrated symposium project will be discussed and reviewed in a separate handout during class. Finally, in order to occasionally assess your close reading of the novels, you’ll write brief responses in class.CLASS 1
The Mystery of Mysteries
HOMEWORK FOR NEXT CLASS: Read A Study in Scarlet; Begin journal assignment on plot
CLASS 2
The European Tradition
HOMEWORK FOR NEXT CLASS: Read Coffman essay on Sherlock Holmes; View Gaudy Night; review topics for symposium.
CLASS 3
The European Tradition: The Golden Age
HOMEWORK FOR NEXT CLASS: Read The Galton Case; Chandler’s “The Simple Art of Murder” from The Art of the Mystery Story edited by Howard Haycraft, and excerpt from Julian Symons’ Bloody Murder; complete journal writing on plot.
CLASS 4
The American Tradition: Hard-Boiled
HOMEWORK FOR NEXT CLASS: Begin Neon Rain; begin journal writing on character
CLASS 5
The American Tradition: Hard-Boiled Transformations
HOMEWORK FOR NEXT CLASS: Coale pp 129-172; Finish Neon RainCLASS 6 ~ The American Tradition: Transformations cont’d
HOMEWORK FOR NEXT CLASS: Complete journal writing on character; Begin A Grave Talent
CLASS 7
The Feminist Tradition: Sisters in Crime
HOMEWORK FOR NEXT CLASS: Read excerpts from Reddy’s Sisters in Crime: Feminism and the Crime Novel; Complete A Grave Talent; Begin journal writing on place.CLASS 8
The Feminist Tradition: Transformations
HOMEWORK FOR NEXT CLASS: Symposium progress report due; Begin White Butterfly
CLASS 9
The African-American Tradition: Beginnings
HOMEWORK FOR NEXT CLASS: Read Coale pp 173-210; Finish White ButterflyCLASS 10
The African-American Tradition: Transformations
HOMEWORK FOR NEXT CLASS: Begin Inner City Blues; complete journal writing on placeCLASS 11
The African-American Tradition: Transformations
HOMEWORK FOR NEXT CLASS: Finish Inner City Blues; draft of written project due; view John Sayles “Lone Star.”
CLASS 12
The African-American Tradition: Transformations
HOMEWORK FOR NEXT CLASS: Begin People of Darkness; Coale pp 35-82
CLASS 13
Cultural Traditions and Transformations
HOMEWORK FOR NEXT CLASS: Finish People of Darkness; complete journal mysteryCLASS 14
Cultural Traditions and Transformations
Final symposium pieces and any revisions due 12/9
*Book images are from www.amazon.com~
UNIVERSITY OF EAST ANGLIA ~ Signs and Clues: Detective Fiction
Course tutor: Eric Homberger
Course plan:
Week 1: Introduction; the course plan; how we read crime fiction
Week 2 :Poe, ‘The Man of the Crowd’, ‘Murder on the Rue Morgue’, ‘Marie Roget’ 'The Purloined Letter', Complete Works of Poe
Week 3: Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet
Week 4: Hammett, Red Harvest and The Glass Key (Hammett, Four Great Novels, Picador)
Week 5: Patricia Cornwell, Postmortem or Body of Evidence (1991)
Sara Paretsky, Indemnity Only (1982) or any other V.I. Warshawski novel
Donna Leon, The Anonymous Venetian (Pan) or any other Leon novel.
Week 6: Thomas Harris, The Silence of the Lambs (1988) and Red Dragon .
Week 7: reading week
Week 8: James Ellroy, LA Confidential (1990, Arrow Press)
Week 9 student choice
Week 10 student choice
Week 11 student choice;
Week 12 student choice; course evaluation; deadline for submission of all written work.
Student choice sessions. The unit will be divided into four groups who will collectively chose a writer or topic. This decision must be made in sufficient time for books to be ordered, so the deadline for choice of topics will be at the session in week 5. Possibilities of texts/writers to be chosen: Mario Puzo, The Godfather; John le Carré, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; Martin Amis, Night Train; Peter Hoeg, Miss Smilla; Perez-Reverte, The Dumas Club; Chandler, The Big Sleep; Iain Pears, An Incident of the Fingerpost. The session will be organized and run by each group, who will decide the topics to be discussed, and related material (say, use of movie clips)..http://www.uea.ac.uk/eas/People/homberger/crse/sign&clues/signs&clues.htm
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UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN ONTARIO ~
The Art of Murder: Detective Fiction from Poe to Paretsky
Course tutor: Professor Manina Jones
Course description: Sue Grafton writes that "A mystery is more than a novel, more than a compelling account of people whose fate engages us. The mystery is a way of examining the dark side of human nature, a means by which we can explore, vicariously, the perplexing questions of crime, guilt and innocence, violence and justice." The figure of the detective has been a source of fascination for readers of mass-market fiction at least since Poe's Dupin strode the "mean streets" of Paris, and detective fiction continues to figure prominently on best-seller lists. This course provides an introduction to the study of popular detective fiction through the reading of a selection of novels, short stories and essays by British, American and Canadian writers. We will consider works in terms of their aesthetic-formal, ideological, historical and theoretical dimensions, and will also discuss popular culture adaptations of the detective narrative in film, television and radio.
Required texts:
The Art of Murder. Course package available at InPrint, UCC.
Burns, R. and M.R. Sullivan, eds. Crime Classics: The Mystery Story from Poe to the Present. Penguin.
Chandler, Raymond. The Big Sleep. Vintage.
Christie, Agatha. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. Berkeley.
Cross, Amanda. Death in a Tenured Position. Ballantine.
Hammett, Dashiell. The Maltese Falcon. Vintage.
Hillerman, Tony. Skinwalkers. Harper Collins.
Mosely, Walter. Devil in a Blue Dress. Pocket.
Paretsky, Sara. Bitter Medicine. Dell.
Sayers, Dorothy L. Gaudy Night. Coronet.
Wilson, Barbara. Gaudy Afternoon. Seal.
SCHEDULE OF READINGS, TOPICS AND ASSIGNMENTS
Tues. May 13 Clues: Reading and/as DetectionThurs. May 15 Early Writers: Introduction ~ Poe, "Murders in the Rue Morgue"
Tues. May 20 Poe, "The Purloined Letter" and Doyle, "The Adventure of the Speckled Band"
Thurs. May 22 Doyle, "A Scandal in Bohemia" and Glaspell, "A Jury of Her Peers" (also see the illustrations for the Holmes stories and read Rex Stout's essay "Watson was a Woman")
Tues. May 27 The Golden Age: Introduction ~ Christie, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (also read Van Dine's "20 Rules for Writing Detective Stories", Sayers' "Detection Club Oath" and Knox's "Ten Commandments of Detective Fiction")
Thurs. May 29 Sayers, Gaudy Night (also read annotations to Gaudy Night)
Tues. June 3 Hard-Boiled Writers: Introduction ~ Hammett, The Maltese FalconThurs. June 5 Chandler, The Big Sleep (also read Chandler's "The Simple Art of Murder")
Tues. June 10 Contemporary Writers: Introduction ~ Paretsky, Bitter Medicine
Thurs. June 12 Hillerman , Skinwalkers (also see a map of Navajoland)
Tues. June 17 Mosley , Devil in a Blue DressThurs. June 19 Wilson, Gaudí Afternoon ~ Conclusions (also see photos of Gaudí 's spectacular architecture , as described in the novel)
http://publish.uwo.ca/%7Emjones/406F.htm
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NOTRE DAME UNIVERSITY ~ Detective Fiction: Crime & Detection in Popular Culture
Course tutor: Chris R. Vanden Bossche
Course description: In this course we will look at the development of crime fiction as a genre, from its origins in Victorian sensationalist fiction to the proliferation of sub-genres in contemporary American film and television. We will be looking specifically at the development of the two figures around which crime fiction revolves: the criminal and the detective. The discussion will focus on asking (and starting to answer) questions about what these figures do for the cultures that create them. Why does Victorian Britain love Sherlock Holmes? Why is contemporary America fascinated by serial killers? How are ideas about crime and criminality linked to beliefs about death, the supernatural, justice, and morality - as well as issues involving gender, race, sexuality, and class? How do all of those concerns affect the way crime fiction evolves as a literary form? Texts will include: Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone; Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes; Agatha Christie, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd; G. K. Chesterton, The Father Brown Omnibus; Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep; P.D.James, A Mind To Murder; Patricia Cornwell, Postmortem; ; Havelock Ellis, The Criminal.
Course listed on Global Popular Fiction site:
http://www.english.unimelb.edu.au/global/universities/
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BUFFALO UNIVERSITY (SUNY at Buffalo) ~ Literary Types: Mysteries
Course tutor: David Schmid
Course description: For decades, mystery novels have been dismissed as "potboilers," not worthy of serious critical attention. Whatever one may think of the literary merits of mysteries, there is no denying the fact that they have proved to be a remarkably resilient and diverse form of popular fiction. The aim of this course is to survey a selection of both the most important examples of mystery writing and recent attempts to "update" the genre. Our focus throughout the semester will be on the narrative techniques used by these writers to create character, structure plot, and maintain suspense. We can tell a lot about a society from the way it discusses crime and punishment. Therefore, we will also study how these novels and short stories provide miniature social histories of the periods in which they were written.
This course is listed on the Global Popular Fiction site:http://www.english.unimelb.edu.au/global/universities/
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UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA ~ Detective Stories
Course tutor: N. Shawcross
Course description: This course will consider the genre of the detective story, beginning with Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) and culminating in the post-modern world of Paul Auster (b. 1947). Along the way we will read American and British authors who are considered the "classics" of the genre, such as Wilkie Collins (1824-1889), Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930), Mary Roberts Rinehart (1876-1958), Raymond Chandler (1888-1959), Agatha Christie (1890-1976), Dorothy Sayers (1893-1957), Dashiell Hammett (1894-1961), Ellery Queen (b. 1905), Ross MacDonald (1915-1983), Mickey Spillane (b. 1918), Dick Francis (b. 1920), among others. Additional reading assignments may include classic essays on the genre by the novelists themselves and other critics. Given the time restraints of the semester, this course will not include spy novels.http://www.english.upenn.edu/Undergrad/Courses/Summer02/275-920.html
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UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII ~ Exploring Stereotypes through Classic Mystery Novels and Films
Course tutor: Chip Hughes
Course description: Where do stereotypes come from? What keeps them going? How to stereotypes of ethnicity, gender, class, and sexual orientation differ in various media? Why do these representations hold power over us -- to anger, to offend, to provoke smiles or uneasy laughter, to reinforce the tendency to generalize about people? These questions are especially relevant here at the University of Hawai'i, since our labor force has one of the country's highest percentages of independent working women. Genre fiction - more so than mainstream fiction - provides fertile fields for the study of such stereotypes. In the mystery, especially, we find a vast array of character types -- often exaggerated to the point of caricature: the "hard boiled," womanizing private eye; the seductive, manipulative female client; ethnic "local color" figures sketched in with racist tags; fragrant, limp-wristed gays; and so on. From encountering these not so subtle stereotypes arises the opportunity for fruitful discussion on the formulation of our own attitudes about race and gender and sexual orientation, as well as on issues of cultural sensitivity and censorship. This seminar will provide students with the opportunity to explore such issues through examining stereotypes in classic mystery novels and films. Our approach will be to pair each mystery novel with its film adaptation (when available), considering the different ways novelists and film makers develop characters and generate stereotypes. At each meeting, we will discuss one such pair. A packet of readings on stereotyping from colleagues in Sociology, Psychology, and Ethnic and Women's Studies) will help us focus our discussions.Listed on Global Popular Fiction site:
http://www.english.unimelb.edu.au/global/universities/~
VICTORIA UNIVERSITY ~ Crime Fiction and Social History
Course Coordinators: Dr Melanie Nolan and Dr John Pratt
Course description: This course traces the changing nature of crime and its detection from the late nineteenth century to the present, as this has been documented in crime fiction over this period. It focuses on how crime and its detection have been represented in fiction and how that representation has changed over time. Crime and its detection are seen as historically relative and the course is intended to contextualise this through analysis of this aspect of popular culture. It will also examine the relationship between these representations and the history of social order and the changing nature of modern society. It is then a social history of crime fiction to be offered on a cross-disciplinary basis.
Topics for discussion:
1. The Victorians: The art of the disguise
2. Masculinity, PI and the mean streets
3. Femininity, criminality and the home: Woman as perp and victim
4. Grande dames and masters of the Golden Age of Mystery in country houses
5. The professionalisation of detectives: Occupational changes in the police
6. Masculinity, Dirty Harry and Hollywood
7. Forensic science revolutionises detection and the serial killer
8. Breakdown of the symbolic hero: Liberal feminist, black PIs etc
9. Fears and the changing underclass
10. Criminality in law enforcers
11. The queers of crime: Lesbian and gay
12. 'Pulp' fiction and postmodern values: The criminal as heroPreliminary reading:
* John Muncie & Eugene Mclaughlin, (eds.), The problem of crime, Sage, London, 1996
* Stephen Knight, Continent of mystery. A thematic history of Australian crime fiction, MUP, Melbourne, 1997
* Peter Messent, (ed.), Criminal proceedings. The contemporary American crime novel, Pluto Press, Chicago, 1992
* Sally R. Munt, Murder by the book? Feminism and the crime novel, Routledge, London and New York, 1992
* J.M. Reilly, (ed.), Twentieth century crime and mystery writing, St James Press, London, 1985Background reading:
* Clive Emsley & Barbara Weinberg, (eds.) Policing Western Europe: Politics, professionalism and public order, 1850-1940, Greenwich, New York, 1992
* David Garland, Punishment and modern society: A study in social theory, Clarendon, Oxford, 1990
* T. R. Gurr, Rogues, rebels and reformers: A political history of urban crime and conflict, Sage, Beverly Hills, 1976
* Eric H. Monkkonen, Police in urban America 1860-1920, Cambridge University Press, NY and Cambridge, 1981
* John Pratt, Governing the dangerous: Dangerousness, law and social change, Federated Press, Sydney, 1997http://www.vuw.ac.nz/history/level2/level3/courses/HIST416.html
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Mystery Genre: Mysteries
Course tutor: William Storm
Course description: Investigations of the mysterious and of how this quality is represented in drama, tale, poem, and novel. Emphasis on methods of observation and diagnosis, analytic strategies, and phenomenological inquiry. Exploration of mystery in psychological, historical, scientific, and metaphysical contexts. Readings to include works by Henry James, John Fowles, Tom Stoppard, Michel Bernanos, Alfred Hitchcock (film), Josephine Tey, Peter Shaffer and Anthony Shaffer, in addition to Arthur Conan Doyle and Edgar Allan Poe.
http://www.ucsb.edu
Course listed on Global Popular Fiction site:
http://www.english.unimelb.edu.au/global/universities/~
Detective Fiction
Course tutor: Christopher Newfield
Course description: Why is detective fiction so popular? Why are good mysteries impossible to put down? How do their plots and characters work? In this course we will check the nineteenth- century roots of the detective novel, sample its mid-twentieth century renaissance, and spend about half the course covering the big mystery boom of the past ten years. Authors covered will be Edgar Allan Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle, Raymond Chandler, Sue Grafton, Carl Hiaasen, Elmore Leonard, Barbara McNeely and Gary Phillips. We will watch the films Chinatown, Pulp Fiction, and The Replacement Killers. Full syllabus and description available.
http://www.ucsb.edu
Course listed on Global Popular Fiction site:
http://www.english.unimelb.edu.au/global/universities/
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