American
Studies 105: Popular Culture and Folk Life:
ÒCrime
Fiction and the Myth of ViolenceÓ
TR 9:45 a.m. - 11:00
a.m.
102 Chambers
Spring 2004
Dr.
Jonathan P. Eburne Office
Hours:
Dept.
of English and American Studies Tues.
11:30-12:30 at MacKinnonÕs cafŽ
Email:
jpe11@psu.edu Wed.
10:00-12:00 at SaintÕs cafŽ
and
by appointment
Course Home
Page: available through ANGEL (http://cms.psu.edu/)
This
course asks us to consider the stakes of generating and ÒsolvingÓ mysteries. To what extent can evidence,
whether fingerprints, crime-scene photographs, or witness testimony, be used to
detect and measure the truth? To
what extent does crime fiction perpetuate or challenge reigning myths about law
and order, as well as the manners and codes of
conduct they presume? This course
will study how the numerous forms of crime fiction and film of the past century
and a half have attempted to understand the role of crime, punishment, and
conduct in modern consciousness.
We will begin by examining the American crime storyÕs origins in the
work of Edgar Allan Poe and Anne Katharine Green. This basis will allow us to analyze the transformations the
genre has undergone throughout its history, and to suggest how crime stories
have engaged with major social and intellectual issues of their times.
Required
Texts:
Edgar Allan
Poe, Selected Tales, Oxford
Anne
Katharine Green, The Leavenworth Case, Indypublishing.com
Charlotte
Perkins Gilman, The Unpunished, The
Feminist Press at CUNY
Dashiell
Hammett, Red Harvest, Vintage
Crime
Novels: American Noir of the 1930s and 40s, Library of America
Patricia
Highsmith, Strangers on a Train, Norton
Michel
Foucault, Discipline and Punish, Vintage
Chester
Himes, Cotton Comes to Harlem, Vintage
Walter
Mosley, Devil in a Blue Dress, Washington
Square Press
Additional
Assigned Readings are on Online Reserve, accessible through the library web
site (www.lias.psu.edu)
Syllabus, Additional Assigned Readings, and additional course information available through ANGEL: http://cms.psu.edu/