Touch of Evil: Hardboiled Fiction and the Noir Genre
In this course, we explore the related genres of American hard-boiled fiction and film noir. Both represent the dark side of the city through the figure of the morally ambivalent detective, operating with rare freedom in the shadowy world of gangsters and corrupt cops in post-prohibition America. The hard-boiled detective’s heroic missions are often compromised by an all-encompassing social evil, embodied most palpably in the figure of the femme fatale. We will thus think through questions of gender and misogyny. Since our ‘heroes’ include a white male misogynist, a hapless child, trigger-happy African American cops, and a Jewish female private investigator, we will have a chance to think broadly about the social value judgments linked to a diverse array of racially (and otherwise) othered characters.
Primary Readings:
- Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep (1939)
- Charles Laughton, The Night of the Hunter (1955)
- Chester Himes, The Real Cool Killers (1959)
- Sara Paretsky, Tunnel Vision (1994)
Student Learning Objectives:
- Students will develop their writing skills and reflect on their writing process, while learning to appreciate stylistic and thematic motifs of the noir genre.
- Students will work toward a comprehensive understanding of the noir genre through a selective study of the American hard-boiled detective novel with its genre-defying metaphysical concerns.
- Students will modestly attempt to work suspense into their own writing, to work at keeping the reader going from page to page The question of when to withhold information and when to be generous with it is perhaps the most critical component of both the suspense novel and the research paper.
- Students will work at learning the art of the paragraph, and the connecting sentence between paragraphs, through a process of intensive workshopping in the classroom—both providing to and receiving feedback from each other.
- Students will learn to make use of the draft proposal as a navigational tool for writing a structured and analytical research paper.
Mode of Evaluation (Word Count Per Assignment and Percentage of Grade Attributed to Each Assignment):
A short analytical essay (1000 words) (10%); a one-page proposal abstract in two parts (rough draft and final) for the long paper (400 words) (15%); a long research essay (2200 words) (35%) with the final abstract attached to it. The rest of the writing work will be carried out through guided and peer-reviewed classroom sessions (20%). Attendance is mandatory. Final exam is take-home (20%).