T Th 3:30-4:45
DeBartolo
143
Susan
Cannon Harris
220 Decio Hall
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, IN 46556
Email: sharris2@nd.edu
Office
phone: (574) 631-5088
Website:
http://www.nd.edu/~sharris2/
Web
address for this syllabus: http://www.nd.edu/~sharris2/13186.htm
Office Hours: Tuesday & Thursday, 10:00-11:30 a.m. and by
appointment.
In this
course we will look at the development of crime fiction as a genre from its
origins in Victorian sensationalist fiction. We focus on the development of the
two figures around which crime fiction revolves: the criminal and the
detective. Discussions and written assignments will investigate questions about
what these figures do for the cultures that create them. Why does Victorian
Britain love Sherlock Holmes? What explains the explosion of interest in serial
killers in American popular culture at the end of the twentieth century? How
are ideas about crime and criminality linked to beliefs about death, the
supernatural, justice, and morality—as well as issues involving gender, race,
sexuality, and class? How do all of those concerns affect the way crime fiction
evolves as a literary form? Where do we find elements of this form in
contemporary literary fiction? Authors will include but are not necessarily
limited to Wilkie Collins, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha
Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Raymond Chandler, P.D. James, Patricia Cornwell,
and Sara Paretsky.
Books
The Moonstone. Wilkie Collins. Oxford
World’s Classics.
The Complete Sherlock Holmes. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Bantam Books.
Whose Body? Dorothy L. Sayers.
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. Agatha Christie.
The Big Sleep. Raymond Chandler. Vintage Crime.
Shroud for a Nightingale. P.D. James. Warner Books.
Postmortem. Patricia Cornwell. Pocket Books.
Body Work. Sara Paretsky. Penguin, Signet Select.
Films:
Jonathan Demme, Silence
of the Lambs. Jodie
Foster, Anthony Hopkins.
Howard
Hawks, The Big Sleep. Humprhey Bogart,
Lauren Bacall.
Guy
Ritchie, Sherlock Holmes. Robert
Downey Jr., Jude Law.
Handouts
containing supplemental readings
You are
responsible for reading everything mentioned on the syllabus unless I
specifically tell you otherwise. Because most of class time will be spent discussing
the reading in small groups, failure to do the reading will hurt you, your
group, and the class in general. It will also lower your in-class work grade. I
reserve the right to administer surprise reading quizzes if I come to suspect
that you are shirking this responsibility. Films for the course will be placed
on reserve in the undergraduate library; you are responsible for watching this
material on your own time before we are scheduled to discuss it in class.
Your
presence and participation are crucial to the well-being of the class as a
whole. Attendance is mandatory. If you miss ten minutes or more of a class,
either at the beginning or at the end, that counts as an unexcused absence.
The only
excuses for absence that I accept are religious holidays, physical or mental
illness (verified by the appropriate health care professional), or serious
emotional trauma. I will allow one unexcused absence for the semester free of
charge; after that, your in-class work grade drops 20 points with each
unexcused absence. If you have four unexcused absences (including your
freebie) you will fail the course. As required by university policy, I will
warn you in advance if you are in danger of failing the course for attendance.
You will
write three papers:
All
papers will be turned in at the beginning of class on the days that the syllabus says they are due,
unless I inform you that the due dates have been changed. If you are absent on
the day a paper is due, even if your absence is excused, it is your
responsibility to make sure it gets to me at or before class time that day. If
you know that you will be absent on the day a paper is due, you may email your
paper to me ahead of time. If you are turning in a paper late, you may email it
to me. Otherwise, do not turn your assignments in electronically. Print them out on paper and bring them to
class and hand them to me the old-fashioned way.
Papers
turned in after the class period on the day they are due will be considered
half a day late and docked half a letter grade—an A will go down to a B+, etc.
Starting at dawn on the day after the paper is due, the paper will be docked a
full letter grade for every day it is late. For instance, if a paper is due
Tuesday, and you turn it in at 8:00 am Wednesday, it is a day late and will be
docked a full letter grade (an A becomes a B, and so on). When the sun rises
Thursday morning, that A paper is a C; a C paper is an
F. If you submit your paper electronically I will consider it turned in at the
time the email was sent. Otherwise, your work is considered turned in when I
find it.
For the
first and second paper you will have the opportunity to revise and resubmit.
That is, if you are unhappy with your performance, you have one week to work on
the paper and turn it in again. The higher of the two grades will be recorded
as your permanent one. Late penalties will still apply.
For the
final paper, you will not have the opportunity to revise. For that paper,
you will
write a topic proposal ahead of time. Your topic proposal will not be graded
individually; however, if you do not turn in a satisfactory topic
proposal, your final grade for the third paper will drop half a letter grade. You will also be required to have one
conference with me in which we discuss your paper.
(Failure to attend that conference will be charged as an unexcused absence.) I
will give you the option of turning in a complete draft of the paper
ahead of time so that you can get my feedback on it before turning in the final
paper.
You will
also keep a reading journal, which you will turn in once a week. (Half of you
will turn it in on Tuesdays; half of you will turn it in on Thursdays.) The
reading journal has three purposes: 1) to encourage you to engage with the
reading assignments before coming to class to discuss them, 2) to provide you
with a place to work out your ideas about the papers before sitting down to
write them, and 3) to give me a sense of how you are responding to the reading.
The reading journal requirements are as follows:
Reading
journal entries must be turned in on time or they will not be accepted.
Individual entries are given a credit/no credit mark and written feedback. You
will not receive credit for entries that do not meet the basic requirements
(i.e., do not deal with that day’s reading, do not show that you are caught up
on the reading, do not engage in a thoughtful manner with the text, are less
than a full page long, or are late). If
you do not turn in a journal entry on time, or it does not receive credit, you
will get a zero for that week. The amount of effort you put into your
reading journal will be factored into your final course participation grade, as
will the number of zeros you rack up. Save your journal entries when you get
them back, because you will be asked to resubmit them along with your final
paper.
Due dates
for the journal are not listed on the syllabus. On days when a major paper is
due, everyone will turn in their journal on the other class day in that week.
(If the paper is due on Tuesday, everyone turns in a journal on Thurdsay, and vice versa.)
All
written work, INCLUDING THE READING JOURNAL, must be typed on a word processor. Papers must be double-spaced throughout (except for block
quotations and footnotes). Include page numbers and use an easily readable
12-point font. Always include a title, the name/number of the assignment, your
name, my name, and the date.
You will
be divided into working groups of 4 or 5 people. For our final novel, Body
Work, each group will be responsible for a 15 minute oral presentation
after which you will lead the discussion of the text for that day. This counts
for 10% of your course grade. Every member of your group will receive the same
grade. We will discuss the details at a later date.
This
class is a seminar, and will consist almost entirely of group discussion. Your
attendance, preparation, and participation are therefore vital to the success
of the course as a whole. Class participation will count for 15% of your final
grade. Your class participation will be evaluated on the basis of these things:
Because
this course is a seminar, it will conclude with a research paper rather than a
final exam.
Unless I
tell you otherwise, I will always be available in my office during my office
hours for conferences. If you can't make those hours you can always set up an
appointment with me for another time.
Plagiarism--attempting
to pass off someone else's writing as your own--is a serious offense and will
not be tolerated. This goes for drafts, short assignments, presentation, and
reading journals as well as the major papers. If I find evidence that you
have plagiarized any part of any assignment, I will prosecute you
to the fullest extent possible under the Academic Code of the university. If at
any point you are uncertain about whether you may have plagiarized from a
source you used, please ask me about it before turning in the paper.
Your final
grade for the course breaks down as follows:
Paper 1:
20%
Paper 2: 20%
Paper 3: 35%
Class Participation/Reading Journal: 15%
Presentation: 10%
August 23
Introduction
August 25
Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone, pages 1-94
(Prologue and first eleven chapters of the First Period)
Handout:
Extremely Sketchy Overview
of Indian Culture & Religion, Moonstone chronology, map, “The British East
India Company,” “Oriental Despotisms and Political Economies,” “Descriptions of
Tipoo,” “Treaties of Peace, and Review of the
Consequences of War”
August 30
Moonstone 94-288
(To the end of the Second Narrative of the Second Period)
September 1
Moonstone 288-392
(To the end of the Third Narrative of the Second Period)
September 6
Moonstone 392-466
(Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth Narratives plus the
Epilogue)
Handout:
“Opium”
September 8
Sir
Arthur Conan Doyle, Complete Sherlock Holmes, Volume I: The Sign of Four (pages 121-236)
Handout:
“The Indian Rebellion of
1857-8”
September 13
Complete
Sherlock Holmes, Vol. I, from Adventures
of Sherlock Holmes: 237-286, 331-422, 492-518
“A Scandal in Bohemia,” “The Red-Headed League,” “The Five Orange
Pips,” “The Man with the Twisted Lip,” “The Blue Carbuncle,” “The Speckled
Band,” “The Copper Beeches”
September 15
Complete
Sherlock Holmes, Vol. I, from Memoirs
of Sherlock Holmes: 518-564, 644-661, 682-700, 736-756
“Silver Blaze,” “The Yellow Face,” “The Crooked Man,” “The Greek
Interpreter,” “The Final Problem”
Week
Five: Creating the Criminal
September 20
Handout:
Excerpts from Havelock Ellis's The
Criminal
September 22
Complete Sherlock
Holmes, Vol I, from Return of Sherlock Holmes:
757-780, 832-852, 906-924, 1009-1033
“Empty House,” “Solitary Cyclist,” “Charles Augustus Milverton,” “Abbey Grange”
Complete Sherlock Holmes, Vol II,
from His Last Bow: 428-443, 465-490
“Dying Detective,” “Devil’s
Foot”
September 27
Dorothy
Sayers, Whose Body? 1-141
Chapters 1-8
September 29
Whose Body? 142-end
Chapters 9-13
October 4
PAPER #1
DUE. (No
reading journal due.)
Agatha
Christie, Murder of Roger Ackroyd 1-210
Chapters 1-18
October 6
All reading journals for this week are due.
Murder of
Roger Ackroyd 211-286
Chapters 19-27
October 11
Raymond
Chandler, The Big Sleep 3-76
Chapters 1-14
October 13
The Big Sleep 76-134
Chapters 14-21
October 16-23: Fall break. No class.
October 25
The Big
Sleep 135-231
Chapters 22-end.
October 27
Film. The Big Sleep (1946). Dir. Howard Hawks. Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall.
November 1
P.D.
James, Shroud for a Nightingale chapters 1-6
Handout:
Keats, “Ode to a Nightingale;” Florence Nightingale timeline; T.
S. Eliot, “Sweeney Among the Nightingales”
November 3
Shroud
for a Nightingale chapters 7-end
Online:
http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/online/deadlymedicine/
November 8
PAPER #2 DUE. (No journals due.)
Patricia
Cornwell, Postmortem chapters
1-6
Handout:
Glassner, “Why Americans Fear The Wrong Things”
and “Crime in the news”
November 10
All journals for this week due.
Postmortem chapters 7-12
November 15
Postmortem chapters 13-16
November 17
Film: Silence of the Lambs (1991). Dir. Jonathan Demme.
November 22
GROUP PRESENTATION #1:
Andrew Baglini, Sierra, Jocelyn, Tom,
Annie
Sara Paretsky, Body Work 1-149
Chapters 1-16
November 24
Thanksgiving. No class.
November 29
TOPIC PROPOSAL FOR PAPER #3 DUE.
GROUP PRESENTATION #2:
Andrew Borchart, Ted, Meggie, Maggie
Body Work 150-261
chapters 16-28
December 1
GROUP PRESENTATION #3:
Cara, James, Bryan, Cassie
Body Work 262-366
chapters 29-40
OPTIONAL DRAFT OF PAPER #3 DUE.
GROUP PRESENTATION #4:
Arthur, Jill, Bret, Laure, Jackie
Body Work 367-517
chapter 41-end
December 8
LAST CLASS DAY. Drafts returned.
Film. Sherlock Holmes (2009). Dir. Guy
Ritchie. Robert Downey Jr., Jude Law.
Friday, December 16
PAPER #3 DUE by 5:00 p.m. in Decio 220