MLU
Seminar: Modern Detective Stories in American Literature and Culture - Vertiefungsmodul - Details
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General information

Course name Seminar: Modern Detective Stories in American Literature and Culture - Vertiefungsmodul
Course number siehe "Details"
Semester SS 2019
Current number of participants 11
maximum number of participants 20
Entries on waiting list 1
Home institute Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik
Courses type Seminar in category Offizielle Lehrveranstaltungen
First date Tuesday, 02.04.2019 14:00 - 16:00, Room: Seminarraum 3 [AKStr.35] (Angl.)
Studiengänge (für) ANG.03210.01 für LAG, LAS (2007)
ANG.04630.02 für LAG, LAS, LAF (2012, 2015) / MA Engl. Sprache und Literatur 45/75 LP / MA Angloam. Literatur, Sprache und Kultur 120 LP
SWS 2

Module assignments

Comment/Description

We are surrounded by a wealth of modern day detective stories in all kinds of media – newspapers, magazines, comics, novels, movies, TV series, and computer games; everyone wants to know “whodunnit.” But although the solving of a mystery is still at the heart of each detective story, the genre has undergone tremendous changes since its beginnings in early nineteenth-century America. In this course, we will first trace the development of the genre from the crime narratives written by Edgar Allan Poe to those in the so-called “Golden Age” of detective fiction (e.g., Raymond Chandler’s novels) before we turn to the investigation of its contemporary “diversity”: for instance, film noir / neo noir (from Double Indemnity, 1944, to today’s neo noir mode), true crime stories (e.g., Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes, Netflix 2019), feminist crime fiction (e.g., Sara Paretsky’s “V.I. Warshawski”-series), African American detective novels (e.g., Walter Mosely’s Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins-series), and postmodern crime narratives (e.g., HBO’s True Detective TV series). The overall aim of this course is to demonstrate that modern detective stories not only entertain us with intriguing mysteries and spellbinding processes of unravelling clues, but also challenge the way we perceive and think about our culture – and, in this case, the American culture – by asking unsettling questions about the world around us.

Required texts:
Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep (Penguin, 2011)
Walter Mosely, Devil in the Blue Dress (Profile, 2017)
Sara Paretsky, Indemnity Only (Dell, 1991)

Since we are covering a lot of ground, I ask you to read these page-turners before the course begins in April. Additional material will be made available on Stud.IP.

Studienleistung: Wiki-blog entries, Impulsreferat.
Prüfungsleistung: Written exam.

Admission settings

The course is part of admission "Beschränkte Teilnehmendenanzahl: Modern Detective Stories in American Literature and Culture - Vertiefungsmodul".
The following rules apply for the admission:
  • A defined number of seats will be assigned to these courses.
    The seats will be assigned in order of enrolment.