Scribner Seminar Program
Course Description
Detective Fictions, Dark Designs
Instructor(s): John Anzalone, Foreign Languages and Literatures (F05 & F09), Ruth
Copans, College Librarian (F05)
Description: An introduction to the interdisciplinary study of crime fiction. Students
will examine crime fiction's history and evolution, particularly with regard to the
genre's status as popular literature. Simultaneously, we will study its sociological
dimension, which makes of detective fiction the morally ambiguous site for the representation
of criminals and of behavioral taboos. Finally, we will experience its cross-cultural
dimension, with London and Los Angeles serving as geographical counterpoints for comparing
British and American examples of the genre. Beginning with the invention of the armchair
detective in several tales by Edgar Allen Poe, we will study sleuths and gumshoes
in writers such as Arthur Conan Doyle, Josephine Tey, Dorothy Sayers, Raymond Chandler,
and Michael Connelly; and in films such as Chinatown, L.A. Confidential, and The Usual
Suspects.
Course Offered