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Jan 15, 2025
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2023-2024 Graduate Catalog [ARCHIVED CATALOG]
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EN 639 The Detective in Fiction
(3 credits)
In this seminar we will focus on the figure of the detective in novels from a variety of writers of suspenseful fiction. We will read classic mysteries, hardboiled novels, and police procedurals. We will explore the genre of suspense fiction and the ways the figure of the detective reflects and helps shape changing cultural attitudes toward and expressions about crime, law, justice, honor, gender, ethnicity, and personal responsibility. While there are mysteries at the hearts of these texts, these are only superficially about “who done it;” rather the central mysteries revolve around how these characters, and through them how we, maintain the precarious balance between law and justice, honor and revenge, and freedom and responsibility in a complex, nuanced, and dangerous world.
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