1) Development of a serious, term-length research paper;
2) Reading and on-going discussion of detective fiction as
a. models for investigation; and
b. models for semiotic and
lexical practice;
3) Culmination of your English BA career, including program assessment
exercises to help us improve the program.
DO NOT TAKE THIS COURSE IF YOU ARE NOT
PLANNING TO GRADUATE THIS TERM!
Required Texts:
The following texts may be purchased
at Kiva Books (or elsewhere, most should be readily available)
Anson, et al., eds., The Longman
Concise Companion (MLA style sheet by reference)
You should have this already; Kiva ought
to have a few copies if not.
Chandler, Raymond, The Big Sleep (Vintage Crime),
ISBN: 394758285
Cooley, Martha. The Archivist
(Little, Brown), ISBN: 316158461
Franklin, Ariana. Mistress of
the Art of Death (Putnam), ISBN: 399154140
Hammett, Dashiell, The Maltese
Falcon, The Thin Man, Red Harvest (Everyman’s Library), ISBN:
375411259
Kostova, Elizabeth. The Historian
(Little, Brown), ISBN: 316067946
Krauss, Nicole. The History of
Love (Norton), ISBN: 393328627
Rubenfeld, Jed. The
Interpretation of Murder (Picador), ISBN: 312427050
The following texts may be found
online (see below for more information)
Doyle, Arthur Conan, A Study in Scarlet
---. "A Scandal in Bohemia" (Adventures
of Sherlock Holmes)
---. "The Red-headed League" (Adventures
of Sherlock Holmes)
--- "A Case of Identity" (Adventures
of Sherlock Holmes)
---. "The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter" (Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes)
---. "The Adventure of the Dancing Men" (Return of Sherlock Holmes)
Poe, Edgar Allan. "The Murders in the Rue Morgue"
---. "The Mystery of Marie Roget"
---. "The Purloined Letter" Texts by Poe and Doyle are available in a number of on-line text
archives (and various hard-copy sources, if you want the
collection). Please note that while these texts are short, they
must be read early in the term (see Schedule
for more details). In searching for electronic text archives,
keep in mind that different sites archive in different ways. Some
appear on your screen in less-readable form than others. Your first
stop might be Google™.
Poe: since there is an established text of the collected tales and
poems of Poe, contents tend to be listed by story title. Crossroads
Project has a good interface.
Doyle: Doyle texts tend to be archived by volume, so if you’re looking
for an
individual story, you may need to go to the collection in which it
originally appeared. These titles appear above in parentheses. The Gutenburg Project has a clean
copy, but you’ll have to do some scrolling to find the text you want. Find A Study in Scarlet (and other
texts) HERE
Also, Kevin Burton Smith has an amazing online archive on Private Eye
and Noir thriller texts, films, and ephemera.
See thrillingdetective.com
for more.