2024-2025 Undergraduate Catalog [Archived] This is not the most recent catalog version; be sure you are viewing the appropriate catalog year.
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LITR 240 Mysteries, Detective Fiction, and Crime Stories [GEKH]
The course introduces students to mysteries, detective fiction, and crime stories in British and American literature. We begin with the historical roots of the genre in the 19th century, and trace developments, innovations, and experiments in the “whodunit” genre over the course of the 20th and 21st century. Students will learn about the stock formal and thematic features of mysteries and detective fiction, and consider how gender, sexuality, race, empire, disability, and class shape and transform fictional and “true crime” storytelling of the present and recent past. Students will learn to analyze, discuss, and write about these important topics, and reflect on their own participation and responsibility as global citizens of today and tomorrow.
Credit 3 hrs May not be repeated for additional credit
Grade Mode Normal (A-F) Course Rotation Fall (in-person, hybrid, or online), Winter (in-person, hybrid, or online), and Summer (occasionally; in-person, hybrid, or online)
Prerequisites -
Restriction by Major -
Restriction by Class - Undergraduate standing
Rationale for Knowledge of the Disciplines - As a course in the Humanities General Education category, the course will train students to think critically and deeply about timely issues such as racial and gendered violence, laws and social norms, and ways of using and critiquing deductive reasoning. Students will read, analyze, discuss, and write about crime fiction written by a diverse range of authors in a variety of social, historical, critical contexts, and styles. Discussions, lectures, and assignments accompanying the readings will foster aesthetic appreciation of and imaginative, empathetic engagement with the words, ideas, and experiences of others. Students will study the original historical contexts in which crime stories were produced and reflect on the ways detective fiction continues to shape debates and dialogues about crime, criminals, and victims today. Students will learn to identify and unpack simplistic constructions of “good guys” vs. “bad guys” in this popular genre of literature to inquire more deeply into the notions of criminality, justice, innocence, victimization, violence, and deviance that produce and sustain such narratives. Critical, historically-grounded analysis of crime storytelling will orient students to methods and discursive practices particular to the study of the humanities, showing them how to interpret the ideas of others and generate original ideas of their own. Crime fiction is a uniquely powerful genre of literature, both shaping and shaped by social injustices, prejudices, and inequalities. As such, a sustained study of this genre of literature provides an ideal opportunity for teaching students the very essence of humanistic inquiry: how society influences humanistic thought and how the humanities transform society.
Equivalent Course(s) -
Course History -
Approved for GEKH 5/2019, New Course 2/2019, effective Fall 2019
Literature , Knowledge of the Disciplines - Humanities
Winter 2025 Course Sections
Summer 2025 Course Sections
Fall 2025 Course Sections
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