Global Detective Fiction

Catalog description

Though often marginalized as unserious or lowly “genre fiction,” the detective plot has interested and influenced literary figures ranging from Jorge Luis Borges and Thomas Pynchon to Tzvetan Todorov and Frederic Jameson. In this course, we examine both the origins and the afterlives of the detective plot in fiction from around the world. We focus especially on the figure of the detective as reader and the commentaries detective fiction offers on reading itself. After beginning with “classics” by Poe, Conan Doyle, Chesterton, Chandler, we move on to examine select novels and stories from Europe, the Middle East, the Americas, and Africa. At the end of the course, students will write a 10 to 15-page research paper on a topic of their choosing OR a detective story (or other creative project developed in consultation with the professor) of their own authorship.