The Simple Art of Murder

Catalog description

This course surveys the history of criminal enterprise in twentieth-century American culture. Drawing from a broad range of sources ("literary" novels and pulp fiction, B-movies and auteurist features), we will assess the role of crime as object of aesthetic attention and attend to the questions that can arise about the idea of the criminal when one takes it up outside of its usual home in courts. Authors: Poe, Hammett, Fitzgerald, Chandler, Wright, Petry, Hughes, Butler. Directors: Hitchcock, Wilder, Huston, Truffaut, Pakula, Lupino. Limited to 19 first-year students.