(Blatant self-promotion rears its ugly head again.)
You are registered for English 480 (online) Detective in
Literature course for the second summer session.
The course begins four (4) weeks from today.
Your first course requirement: Hang onto to this and all
other emails from me. Archive them in a safe place where you
can get at them when I am not available.
A copy of this message has been attached to this email
because Microsoft and Blackboard are sometimes incompatible.
Glitches and gremlins happen.
In twenty-eight days you will receive emails with more
specific details about the course. Once the course website
opens, I suggest you check out Course Information first and
foremost.
The Course Information folder inside the course website
contains all the information you expect from a Course
Syllabus. Blackboard (our operating system) just calls it
Course Information.
The course website will be open 24/7 until the final day of
our class, which is Friday, August 8th.
You will have a handful of quizzes, one per novel, to
complete and one (1) essay to write.
The essay assignment will be due Monday, August 4th.
First things first: To take this course, you are not expected
to be living in Bowling Green. (That is one reason it is
called a Distance Course.)
Starting that Monday, the first day of class, you can
tour and browse and prowl the ENGLISH 480 website any time at
your leisure, almost like a theme park.
All of it -- except for the quizzes -- will be always open to
you until 4:30 pm on the last day of the semester.
Starting that Monday, June 30th, the course website will be
open. Not before.
This site is however under construction, which means I will
be still tinkering with chapters before they pop up on the
schedule. Not all materials will be up yet. Some materials
might not appear until their deadlines.
Glitches and gremlins may also pop up. We will deal with them
as they pop up.
I will be monitoring the progress of this course. Adjustments
will be made in quizzes and other assignments as the class
progresses.
Students should try not to fall behind in their readings or
in their assignments. Time management is very important
during a six week summer session and its distractions.
Also, online courses do not meet at specific times or at
specific places.
Class meetings are arranged by you according to your
schedule. That is, you log in and do the assignment according
to your schedule, and not at some pre-arranged class time.
When you have completed that one, you may immediately move
onto the next one, or (more likely) return at another
assignment at a more convenient time. So, for instance, if
you want to log-in from Sidney, Australia, after midnight,
the course material is there.
The tests are taken online, while your essay will be attached
at the course website. More about that later. This email is
already too long.
I will be monitoring, an email away from everybody. If you
email me with a question, I will pass the answer onto every
student in the course. Your privacy will be maintained, of
course.
"What greater prestige can a man like me (not too gifted, but
very understanding) have than to have taken a cheap, shoddy
and utterly lost kind of writing, and have made of it
something that intellectuals claw each other about?" ~
Raymond Chandler
This course will focus on detective stories, novels and films
in nineteenth- and twentieth-century America. This course
will also consider how particular literary and intellectual
movements (e.g. romanticism, modernism, postmodernism) shape
the detective story form.
So we will read work by masters of the genre, past and
present, locate the genre in literary (and human) history,
trace its development, and understand its relationship to
culture. We will also examine how detective fiction has been
appropriated by postmodern styles and concerns.
Like many other literature courses, Detective Literature is
not meant to be exhaustive nor definitive. That only comes
with a lifetime of reading, much more than we can cover in 6
weeks.
The texts all have a curiously subversive if not downright
unsavory pedigree, yet all are now considered de rigueur for
a course in Detective Fiction.
These novels should be available almost anywhere. In fact,
none of these has ever been out of print.
They also read fast. They are page-turners, by definition.
They were built for the beach.
The book list for the course also includes Edgar Allan Poe's
"Murders in the Rue Morgue," but that is available online
from a variety of websites.
We do Murders in the Rue Morgue first. You might want to
download a copy.
The French poet Charles Baudelaire pops in, too, in the first
few days, with his mean streets of Paris. Baudelaire is the
bridge between Poe and Conan Doyle. His materials will be
available on the website.
Required Texts, in the order we will encounter them.
Doyle, Arthur Conan. The Hound of the Baskervilles. This
novel is also available on the internet. You do not have to
buy it. You can download it. Your choice, of course.
Christie, Agatha. 4:50 from Paddington.
Hammett, Dashiell. The Maltese Falcon.
Chandler, Raymond. The Big Sleep.
Macdonald, Ross. The Underground Man.
Mosley, Walter. Little Scarlet: An Easy Rawlins. Mystery
Warner Vision; Reprint edition (April 1, 2005)
0446612715
Pynchon, Thomas. The Crying of Lot 49. Harper Perennial
Modern Classics
(April 1, 1999) 0060931671
Chabon, Michael. The Final Solution: A Story of Detection.
Harper Perennial; Reprint edition (November 1, 2005)
0060777109
Any edition of the above books is fine, including public
library editions.
Some detective movies are required, while the others are
great background.
Murder on the Orient Express (1974) is required
aka "Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express"
and is required.
The Maltese Falcon (1941) is required.
The Big Sleep (1946) is required.
Chinatown (1974) is required.
The following are NOT required, but truly belong. Go get a 2
liter Pepsi and some popcorn and enjoy. Each of these has
deeper meanings, too.
Blade Runner (1982)
Devil in a Blue Dress (1995)
Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)
Topics to be discussed will include the nature and the role
of the detective hero, the principles governing the
presentation of information concerning the crime, the social
attitudes manifested by the style of the presentation, and
understanding of style, ethnicity, gender, violence, and
finally whether the genre is "art."
The Usual Suspects will be interrogated, and they will most
likely include film noir, the femme fatale, social class in
Victorian and Edwardian England, the California Dream, the
changing sexual politics of crime writing, justice and
detection, the shifting nature of the hero, "formula
fiction," the relationship between the detective and the
reader, and the modern detective novel's preoccupation with
location.
Look for these books at the University Bookstore (on-campus
or on-line) or through Amazon.com or BarnesandNoble.com.
Check Grounds for Thought, if you live here in Bowling
Green.
They may be available at other outlets, too. Check out
Half-price Books in Dayton, Columbus, Cleveland, etc. They
may also be available as a used-book at BookFinder.com and at
Half.com. Free shipping may also be available online.
You will need these books to complete the quizzes.
Completing the quizzes is your responsibility. Not having a
copy of the book does not alter that responsibility.
PLEASE DO NOT HESITATE ORDERING THE BOOKS.
The books can be ordered from any source. Go for the cheapest
edition.
To take this course, you are not expected to be living in
Bowling Green.
(That is another reason it is called a Distance Course. Your
books take forever to get to you.)
I recommend you shop around for somebody who will ship it
quickly. We do not have the luxury of waiting until the last
Monday of the class.
If there is an obstacle like this in your path, go around the
obstacle.
There are quizzes and one essay assignment. But today seems a
bit premature to be giving out all those details. A course
calendar will evolve. Do not email me now asking what they
are because you would like to get an early start on
them.
This course is like Disney World. You cannot get on a ride
until the park opens.
On the other hand, relax now by reading one or more of them.
People relax in the summer by reading detective novels. Trust
me. Few will suspect you are actually studying for a
class.
This course website will be open 24/7 until the final day of
the session.
As I wrote above, the course opens on Monday, June 30th,
twenty-eight (28) days from now. On that day you will receive
emails with more specific details about the course.
Check out the Course Information folder first and
foremost.
When you first visit the course website, you might feel
overwhelmed by how much material you will be expected to get
through.
That is an optical illusion.
The material at the course website will be dealt with bit by
bit. Just like the material in your chemistry or philosophy
books get dealt with bit by bit.
We will have a couple quizzes available every five or six
days. Yes, two at a time, for your convenience and for
flexibility.
Once a quiz is posted, it will stay open until the last day
of the course.
Let me repeat that:
We will have a couple quizzes every five or six days.
Once a quiz is posted, it will stay open until the last day
of the course.
Once the class begins, click on the Assignments folder for
the most current course assignments and scheduled
quizzes.
The hardest, most difficult part of being out in the real
world is finding time to sit down and read. Once you graduate
-- you should sit down and read. As often as you can. Read
whatever it is that pops up in front of you. Look how far
reading has gotten you already. Think how far reading will
get you in the future.
So read a detective novel. That is what most people do for
fun in the summer time.
This summer you will get academic credit for it.
To get you ruminating about these books in advance, how about
if I tell you beforehand who the killer is or are in each
book?
Oh, have I ruined the book for you? Or would you read the
book differently if you know the ending?
If you know the ending, when you do read it for the first
time, would you be able to see how the author designed and
constructed it? That way you can see the author's mind at
work, right?
Suppose when you buy your books, the clerk at the register
tells you in each case Who did it?
How would you feel? Why is that so bad?
How many texts have you read in your coursework fit the above
conundrum? What does this suggest about the arena we will be
entering?
The word itself, arena, comes from the Latin. It means blood
and sand. At its earliest, it meant the gladiatorial battles
in the Roman coliseum. Now it means Spanish
bullfighting.
The detective as bullfighter? Could be.
Starting on the first day of class, you can tour and browse
and prowl the ENGLISH 480 website any time at your leisure,
almost like a theme park.
All of it will be always open to you 24 / 7 until the last
day of the session.
Email your questions and I will answer as soon as
feasible.
To repeat, I will send you more information on the first day
of class, the day that the course website opens.
I hope you have a pleasant summer.
Frederick Zackel, Ph.D.
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