Crime Literature
Starting with the birth of detective fiction, one of the most popular literary genres, and moving to creative nonfiction, we will consider the appeal of stories about grisly murders and trace an arc from a more comfortable belief in the nature of justice to suspicion about police powers. Coinciding with this increased suspicion is a movement away from white detectives and white victims, to crimes targeting people of color, who were legally barred from giving testimony (and thus seeking legal redress) for much of the country’s history. Do stories give us cathartic release when a bad guy is punished? Is there some sort of poetic justice in exposing the inequities of the past even if the murderers have gone free? And what does crime fiction’s popularity suggest about our relationship to our criminal justice system, about our perception of its workings, and about the larger American tenet of equality before the law?
This class will have a particular focus on the skills of reading and creative writing.