BA Art History and English Literature

 This course critically examines the relationship between crime and various forms of contemporary cultural production: fiction (both ‘literary’ and ‘genre’), memoir, true crime, film, television drama, documentary, podcast and critical theory. It focuses on the cultural, historical, sexual and political stories articulated, constructed and contested through narratives of crime, including: the anxieties about futurity, memory and history focalised through the figure of the abused, missing or murdered child; the ethical, aesthetic and political questions that are generated by exploring ‘true’ crimes; the ways in which social structures of race, class and whiteness are effaced and/or critiqued by contemporary narratives of crime and policing; the figuring of history as a crime to be uncovered and investigated; and the problematics of ‘closure’ and ‘resolution’. 

The aims of this course are:

- to introduce students to key texts and critical issues from late twentieth and early twenty-first-century cultural production

- to introduce students to the analysis of a range of different media and cultural forms: fiction (both ‘literary’ and ‘genre’), memoir, true crime, film, television drama, documentary, podcast and critical theory.

- to consider the formal and thematic innovations made by writers and broadcasters in the contemporary period, and to analyse the ways in which these innovations represent and respond to other contemporary texts.

- to analyse the ways in which contemporary texts interact with their cultural and historical contexts in their figurations of crime and violence: for instance, the emergence of neoliberalism, the legacies of postmodernist experimentation, the rise of digital technology and contemporary attention to child sexual abuse.

- to consider intersectional issues like gender, sexuality, and race as they affect the cultural construction of crime and the construction of cultural responses to crime and violence.

- to engage with selected theoretical and critical engagements with feminism, crime, futurity, the ethics of fiction and social deprivation.

- to develop skills of critical thought, speech, and writing in relation to the analysis of crime and cultural production.

 This class will have a 1 hour lecture, a 2 hour seminar (scheduled as 1 x 3 hour block), and 2x 2 hour screenings over 11 teaching weeks.

Materials including preparatory readings, exercises, lecture slides and handouts will be posted on Canvas each week. Seminar participants will be encouraged to use Canvas message boards and email.

By the end of this course, students should be able to:

- demonstrate a thorough familiarity with a range of contemporary Anglophone fictions and their contexts;

- demonstrate a critical understanding of how concepts of crime are constructed and contested in contemporary texts;

- apply critical theory to contemporary texts;

- demonstrate an understanding of contemporary discourses around crime in relation to late twentieth and early twenty-first-century history and politics.

By the end of this course, students should be able to:

- think critically and make critical judgments about crime and contemporary cultural production

- analyse course texts in an effective and incisive manner;

- identify and outline key problems and issues in the narration and figuration of crime and violence.

- evaluate critical arguments advanced by other writers, artists and critical theorists.

By the end of this course, students should be able to:

- plan and execute independent research on crime and cultural production in the contemporary period;

- make good use of library, electronic, and online resources pertaining to the course;

- speak and write clearly about the complex issues surrounding crime and cultural production.

By the end of this course, students should be able to:

- retrieve, sift, organise, synthesise and critically evaluate material from a range of different sources, including library, electronic, and online resources;

- produce written work using appropriate language for an academic audience;

- produce written work that collects and integrates evidence to formulate/test a critical argument;

- make good use of word processing software;

- demonstrate the ability to improve one’s own learning through team-work, critical reflection and evaluation and 1:1 meetings with instructor. 
 

Critical portfolio: 25%

Essay: 75%

Primary Reading/Viewing (an asterisk indicates you should buy this text):

Week 1:               Crime, Politics and Pleasure

Reading: excerpts from Stuart Hall, Lisa Downing, Michel Foucault and Alan Sinfield

Week 2:               Abusive History

Reading: Rupert Thomson, Death of a Murderer (2007)*

Week 3:               Cycles of abuse: nature and nurture

Viewing: Happy Valley series one (BBC, 2014)

Week 4:               Who watches the watchers?

Viewing: Line of Duty series three (BBC, 2016)

Week 5:               Adultification and Trump’s America

Viewing: When They See Us (Netflix, 2019)

Week 6.               Feminist Forms –Autofiction

Reading: Maggie Nelson, The Red Parts (2015)*

Week 7:               Feminist Forms – Genre Fiction  

Reading: Denise Mina, The Less Dead (2021)*

Week 8:               The Case for the Defence

Reading:  Nicola Williams, Until Proven Innocent (2023)*

Week 9:               Liberal trauma

Reading: Édouard Louis, History of Violence (2018)*

Week 10: Policing the Crisis

Viewing: Small Axe ‘Red, White and Blue’ and ‘Alex Wheatle’ (dir. Steve McQueen, 2020)

Week 11: Essay guidance