Module: EN7011-30 International Crime and Gothic

Level: 7

Credit Value: 30

Module Tutor: Fiona Peters

Module Tutor Contact Details: f.peters@bathspa.ac.uk

1.Brief description and aims of module

This module will introduce students to the contemporary and the international in terms of both writing and criticism.

‘Noir’ – a loose, umbrella term most commonly utilised to describe the Crime Fiction of Scotland and Scandinavia, will be closely examined within this module beyond those traditional borders. The module will explore the roots of Crime Fiction in various geographical locations, in order to demonstrate their disparate elements alongside their similarities and their joint preoccupations space and place. It will begin with the roots’ of Swedish Crime Fiction, the 1960s politically engaged Martin Beck novels of Sjöwall and Wahlöö, and trace the influences on tartan noir (a term coined by James Ellroy) back to James Hogg and Robert Louis Stevenson. After establishing its various histories, the first section of the module will focus on contemporary Scottish and European Crime Fiction, most notably through the work of authors including Ian Rankin, Val McDermid, Fred Vargas, Henning Mankell, and consider the publishing phenomenon of recent regional and national ‘noirs’ with their emphasis on political corruption This section of the module will conclude with considerations of the importance of forensics in crime fiction and also how the ‘noir’ of authors such as Leonardo Padjura and Luis Manuel Vázquez Montalbán express the politics and culture of post-dictatorship Latin America.

The Gothic component will encourage students to both reflect upon the international endurance of Gothic, and to consider also how its stylistics have changed in response to gender politics, ecological issues, the rise of new technologies, crises in health and human wellbeing, and the culture of neoliberalism. This part of the module will consider a range of twentieth- and twenty-first century Anglophone and translated works, with an emphasis – as in Crime and the Gothic: Pasts and Presents – upon innovative but less-studied texts. The conventional Anglo-American bias of contemporary Gothic will be tempered through access to Latino and Latin-American Gothic and an Australian inflection of US Southern Gothic. British regional Gothic will be properly acknowledged by way of both Scottish Gothic and the less-explored Welsh tradition.

Among the theoretical issues to be interrogated are EcoGothic and cultural apocalypse, post-Christian and New-Age spiritualities, and the way in which sexual, youth and cultural identities may challenge and redefine the conventional boundaries of national identity. The module will also examine the rise of inhuman and post-human horror through a consideration of the implications of contemporary vampire, werewolf and zombie fiction.

2.Outline syllabus

Following an orientation seminar coordinated by both tutors, the module will be taught in two complementary units.

Crime Unit (FP)

• National and Internal Crime
• Noir
• Crime Fiction from traumatised nations
• Psycho-geography: place and space in Crime Fiction
• Crime Fiction and the Political
• The commerce of Crime Fiction

Gothic Unit (WH)

• Nation, infranation and internation: challenging GlobalGothic
• Regional Gothic – Wales
• Post-religious Gothic – a state of mind
• Post-apocalyptic Gothic – a state of chaos
• Post-human Gothic – a state of being
• Latino-America: Psychogeography and the Gothic#

3.Teaching and learning activities

Students will participate in a variety of intense, postgraduate-level tasks during contact time, and will carry out digital as well as library-based research under their own direction. Representative activities in the seminar room will include

• tutor and student led seminars
• plenary and small-group discussion
• individual and group presentations
• analysis of texts in digital form
• practical analysis using online digital resources
• field trips and study visits in the Bath/Bristol area and further afield
• independent study
• Minerva and other web resources.

Assessment Item 1:

• Assessment Type: Course Work
• Description: Essay 3500 words
• % Weighting: 50%

Assessment Item 2:

• Assessment Type: Course Work
• Description: Essay 3500 words
• % Weighting: 50%