Seminar: American Detective Stories - Vertiefungsmodul - Details

Seminar: American Detective Stories - Vertiefungsmodul - Details

Allgemeine Informationen

Veranstaltungsname Seminar: American Detective Stories - Vertiefungsmodul
Veranstaltungsnummer ANG.04629.02; ANG.04630.02
Semester SoSe 2026
Aktuelle Anzahl der Teilnehmenden 35
maximale Teilnehmendenzahl 30
Wartelisteneinträge 2
Heimateinrichtung Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik
Veranstaltungstyp Seminar in der Kategorie Offizielle Lehrveranstaltungen
Erster Termin Donnerstag, 09.04.26, 12:00 - 14:00 Uhr Seminarraum 3 [AKStr.35] (Angl.)
Lehrsprache(n) Deutsch

Modulzuordnungen

Kommentar/Beschreibung

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 The Big Sleep) 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., Making of a Murderer, Netflix 2018), feminist crime fiction (e.g., Sara Paretsky’s “V.I. Warshawski”-series), African American detective stories (e.g., Chester Himes, Walter Mosely; focus on the graphic novel series Bitter Root 2019-), and postmodern crime narratives (e.g., Paul Auster’s “City of Glass” and comic adaption). We will cover many aspects, including genre and typology (Cawelti, Todorov), comic analysis, adaptation theory, race and gender, and much more. 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 perturbing questions about the world around us.

This course is “staatsexamensrelevant.”

Required texts:
Course material will be made available on the ILIAS platform.

Studienleistung: 5-minute presentation („Thesis-paper“)
Prüfungsleistung: Written term paper.

Anmelderegeln

Diese Veranstaltung gehört zum Anmeldeset "Beschränkte Teilnehmendenanzahl: American Detective Stories - Vertiefungsmodul".
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  • Die Anmeldung ist möglich von 23.03.2026, 00:00 bis 26.04.2026, 23:59.