230222 'Murder, My Sweet:' Crime and Crime Fiction in the United States (S) (SoSe 2018)

Crimes and criminals, secrets, riddles, and their investigation have played a key role in understand­ing reality since the mid-19th century in Europe and the United States. This was prominently articulated in numerous works of crime fiction and film. Informed by gothic fiction and the society novel as well as related to the espionage thriller, this body of texts has become one of the most popular forms of literary and feature film production to this day. Against the backdrop of relevant genre theories, the seminar looks at the historical development of crime fiction and film in the United States from Edgar Allan Poe’s “tales of ratiocination” in the mid-19th century to graphic and postmodern crime fiction. Further variations of the genre to be addressed in the course include police procedural fiction and forensic thrillers, film noir and neo-noir as well as works of ethnic minority and feminist crime fiction.