Reading Gender, Class and Ethnicity in Detective Fiction, 5 cr

During this course we will trace the development of detective fiction from the end of the 19th century to the present. We will specifically examine how detective fiction and its subgenres represent and construct gender, class and ethnicity. For example, we will analyse how Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle’s iconic detective figure, protects the empire against foreign influence, and how African American writers (e.g. Pauline E. Hopkins, Barbara Neely, Walter Mosley) discuss race and crime in their fictions. Further, we will examine how the feminist movement has influenced the field of crime writing – how it introduced new themes into the genre, such as child abuse, sexism and racism.