DVD
Library

The Blackboard virtual learning environment will be available (where relevant) to support this module. Details will be supplied in the module handbook.

2 hour seminar with tutor-led group discussion. Students will be expected to prepare for classes by reading of both the primary and set secondary reading.

Key Information Set Data:
16% scheduled learning and teaching activities
84% guided independent learning

This module will trace the development of crime and detective fiction in the US from the seminal work of Poe in the nineteenth century up to the present day. The novels and film are arranged chronologically and classes will focus on socio-historical contexts, the treatment and 'policing' of social anxieties, the maintenance of established political and economic orders, the representations of the detective and the criminal, literary movements and styles and the application of key critical contexts such as class, gender and sexuality, and race.

Edgar Allan Poe, 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue' (1841)
Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep (1939)
Truman Capote, In Cold Blood (1966)
Paul Auster, The New York Trilogy (1987)
Walter Mosley, Devil in a Blue Dress (1990)
Julie Anne Robinson (dir), One for the Money (2012) - adapted from the novel by Janet Evanovich (1994)

Portfolio to include:
1000 word Critical Analysis weighted at 25% (LO 5) and
2500 word Essay weighted at 75% (LOs 1-4)

Jarvis B. (2004): Cruel and Unusual. London: Pluto
Knight S.(2004): Crime Fiction, 1800-2000: Detection, Death, Diversity. Basingstoke : Palgrave Macmillan
Porter D. (1981): The Pursuit of Crime. New Haven:Yale
Priestman M (1998): Crime Fiction: From Poe to the Present. Plymouth: Northcote House
Symons J. (1972): Bloody Murder. London: Faber and Faber