Critical Languages Center (CRIT)

The detective novel remains the most popular of literary forms since its American origins in Edgar Allan Poe. The form has spread to virtually every part of the world, taking on different perspectives in the different societies where it has prospered. Our course analyzes the global travels of this prolific literary genre, paying particular attention to the manner in which its formula of crime-detection-resolution has evolved from its classic phase in the Sherlock Holmes mysteries, to its hard-boiled phase in the 1940's US, to the transformation of the private detective working outside the formal apparatus of the law into the police detective working within the law in places as different as Sweden, Holland, Nigeria, and India. We will read bestselling detective novels by figures such as Emile Gaboriau, Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle, Wilkie Collins, Agatha Christie, Raymond Chandler, Jorge Borges (Argentina), Vikram Chandra (India), Henning Mankell (Sweden), Janwillem van de Wetering (Holland), Kole Omotosho (Nigeria), and Soji Shimada (Japan). We will pay special attention to the conventions of the form and analyze its evolution as it travels the world. In exploring its global travels, we will attend to a number of issues, including: the changing definition of crime; the evolving representation of the criminal; the changing methods for "solving" the crime; the ideology of justice; the conflicts between community and individuality; and the varying social and national anxieties that the form reveals. DUPLICATE CREDIT WARNING: Students who have received credit for English 0857 will not receive additional credits for this course.

Topics vary each semester. See advisor for more information.