PLM3501_Writing Crime '06

Tuesday, August 29, 2006

 

Module Outline

2006-7

Semester One



Module Tutor:
Farah Mendlesohn
Email: farah.sf@gmail.com
Repton 9


Introduction

Welcome to the Crime module, PLM 3501. This handbook outlines the module week by week and contains essential information on module requirements - please read through it by Week Two and raise any questions you have with your seminar tutor.

The course is delivered by seminar and students’ independent research. The module schedule dates and times are in this handbook, be sure you’re clear about them.


Aims and Rationale

Writing Crime introduces you to one of the most popular areas of contemporary writing. We cover crime fiction and crime fact from true crime to journalism, and focus specifically on the sub-genres of detective fiction.

On this module you will need to use your skills in critical reading, analysis and research as well as undertaking a range of practical work. In order to complete this module successfully - and work towards its intended learning outcomes - you will need to spend time in relevant independent study in addition to attending seminars, taking notes and actively participating in seminar work. You are expected to complete the reading set.

Sometimes work will be set for you to do in your independent study time but it’s assumed that you will also be reading and researching using the reading list as a starting-point. Seminars will only be useful and stimulating for you if you have completed the necessary tasks and reading. Time is set aside from seminar space for you to develop your independent research and reading, as well as work on your assessment pieces.


Learning Outcomes

By following the programme and through appropriate independent study:

1. You should develop a critical understanding of narrative as it relates to the analysis and production of crime texts

2. You should develop your critical skills in research, in writing, reading and in critically evaluating your own work

3. You should develop your understanding of genre as a way of classifying and analysing texts

4. You should extend your skills in textual analysis and production


Module Structure and Teaching Methods

This course is delivered through seminars - some of which will take a lecture/discussion format – workshops to which you will be intended to bring your own writing, and independent study. Seminars last from 90 to 105 minutes depending on the topic.


Reading, Assessment Feedback and Study Groups

It is essential that you spend time each week engaged in independent study primarily critical reading - some of this will be directed i.e. we will have set reading for you to do, but you will need to undertake additional reading in order to complete the final assessment, you should explore the library and check whether material is relevant by asking your tutor. You are encouraged to form study-groups with other students to discuss reading, exchange notes and so on...

There will be tutorials devoted to feedback on your interim assessment project and an opportunity to discuss work with your tutor later in the semester. Feedback can only be given to students who have given in the assigned work on time.

Learning Resource Centre - Tottenham

As you will need to undertake research you may decide to book a session with the subject librarian to help you identify sources of information. The subject librarian for Publishing and for Journalism is Sarah Hudson based in Tottenham ILRS.


Assessment:

One essay: 2,500 words accompanied by development portfolio.
One short story: 2,500 words accompanied by development portfolio.


Week One:
Lecture: the origins of the crime narrative (ideology, structure and language).
Workshop: the language of crime reporting—newspapers
Workshop: the short crime fiction


Reading Assignments.

Date Reading/Assignment for the date given.

--

Week 2 Read Ian Rankin, “Why Crime Fiction is Good For You”

and

Pauline Byrne, “The First Fictional Detectives” http://hsc.csu.edu.au/english/extension1/genre/crime_fiction/crime/crime_2.html

Inspector Rebus Goes to Jail” an Interview With Ian Rankin: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7-1354140,00.html

John Mullan, “Watching the Detectives” on Fleshmarket C Close. : http://books.guardian.co.uk/bookclub/story/0,,1858239,00.html


"Dark Star of LA Noir" an interview with James Elroy: http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/crime/story/0,6000,1349919,00.html


“Murders in the Rue Morgue” by Edgar Allan Poe: this is attached to this handout.


Assignment for after class: Add a detective to your story. Work out who they are, and why they are interesting, Write at least one hundred words in which you “place” them.

--

Week 3 What is Crime:

K. Haltunen, “The Construction of the Murder Mystery”, in Murder Most Foul (Harvard University Press, 1998).
“Tzvetan Todorov”, in Modern Criticism and Theory, ed. D. Lodge (Longman, 1988).
‘Narrative’ Durant et al in module reader.
M. Priestman, “The Detective Whodunnit from Christie to the Present”, Crime Fiction from Poe to the Present (Northcote House, 1998).

--

Week 4 Assignment: Movie/TV discussion. Please watch one of the following movies or television programmes and come prepared to discuss it in terms of the “genres” of crime: Whodunnits; Howdunnits; Whydunnits:

Lonestar
The Big Sleep
Jonathan Creek
Inspector Morse
Poirot
Cracker

Or other crime programme of your choice (but check with me first)

Read:
“Suspicion”, by Dorothy L. Sayers
“The Mystery of the Taxicab” by Howel Evans

--

Week 5 The Sociology of Crime

“Date Rape and the Law”, Leslie Francis
“The Legal System and Battered Women”, Angela Browne
“Policing a Myth”, Tom Williamson in Behaving Badly…
“The Undeservingness of the Poor”, Herbert Gans n


Discussion of Essays

--

Week 6 Novel analysis. Working in groups, choose one of the novels below. I’ll be asking you to look at these novels again, later in the course, so it is worth reading it properly now.

Apply Haltunen and Todorov’s theories to the novel of your choice. Come to class with a table analysis of what happens where.

Novels to choose from:
Alexander McCall Smith, Morality for Beautiful Girls.
Sara Paretsky, Blacklist.
James Elroy, The Black Dahlia.
PD James, The Murder Room.
Walter Mosely White Butterfly (1992)
Other novels may be chosen but must be negotiated with the tutor first.


Discussion: Sequencing and information feed.

--

Week 7 No Class (read)

--

Week 8 Place:

One aspect to Crime Fiction is that place (or landscape) is almost as important as who, what, and how. For this class there are two assignments.

Return to the novel selected earlier in week 4 (27th October). Your group should read the novel and come prepared to talk about the importance of place in:

What the crime is;
How the crime is presented;
How the criminal is presented;
How it contributes to the aura of the novel.

Read: Contemporary Crime Fiction: “The Personal and the Regional”


Novels to choose from:
Alexander McCall Smith, Morality for Beautiful Girls.
James Elroy, The Black Dahlia.
Walter Mosely White Butterfly (1992)
Kathy Reichs, Deja Dead (1997)
Ian Rankin, Felshmarket Close (2004)

Other novels may be chosen but must be negotiated with the tutor first.

Assignment at the end of this class: add a sense of place to your story.

--


Week 9 Using the same novels, consider the following articles:
Andrew Pepper’s The Contemporary American Crime Novel: “Social Protest and Racial politics”
Sara L. Knox, Murder, a Tale of Modern American Life: True Crime Romance I”
Liam Kennedy, Black Noir: Race and Urban Space in Walter Mosely’s Detective Fiction”
Munt, “A New Woman--A Sheep in Wolves’ Clothing”.

--

Week 10
Subverting the Crime Novel. A discussion of Minette Walters The Sculptress.
Please Read: Minette Walters’ The Sculptress
And
P. L. Simpson, “The Psycho Profilers and the Influence of Thomas Harris”, Psychopaths (Southern Illinois University Press, 2000).
Seltzer, Serial Killers
S. R. Munt, “The New Woman—a sheep in Wolves’ Clothing?” Murder By the Book (Routledge, 1994).

--

Week 11 True crime:
Showing of part of Aileen, Life and Death of a Serial Killer.
Truman Capote, “The Last to See Them Alive”, (extract) In Cold Blood (Penguin, 1967)
G, Burn, Happy Like Murderers: chapter One, (Faber and Faber, 1999).
Brian Cathcart, The Case of Stephen Lawrence (Penguin, 1999).
Ian Rankin, “Why Crime Fiction is Good for You”
Shaun Moores, Interpreting Audiences (Sage, 1993).
And also anything you can find on the Pithcairn Enquiry, the Jamie Bulger murder, the murder of the two children in Soham, or about Fred and Rosemary West.

--

Week 12 No classes. On-line tutorials available.



Assignments : You must complete both assignments in order to pass the module.

Work must be sent by email as well, but cannot be accepted unless a printed copy is also deposited with the student office.


1) An Essay chosen from one of the following titles:
(Television documentaries, crime stories and films count as “texts” for the purpose of these essays).

a) How do newspapers cope with “political” crimes in the language with which they report?
b) Using at least three fiction texts, how new theories of human behaviour have shaped the way fiction writers construct motive and action.
c) Using at least three texts, explain how race, sex or class have been deployed as weapons in the crime writers armoury.
d) Explain how a writer (of fiction or non-fiction) of your choice, or a programme, uses place and the description of place to shape the story of the crime.



2,500 words 50%

Criteria

1. An appropriately structured answer that clearly engages with the question selected
2. Evidence of relevant independent reading and research appropriately employed in the essay and appropriate to the module framework.
3. Evidence of material having been carefully edited, together with full bibliographic and research references.
4. Evidence of an informed engagement with the essay as a form, for example appropriacy of register, structure and the development of a logical and relevant arguments.


2. Short Story
Using the initial drabble that you worked on in the first groups as your base outline, write an original crime text (ie one written as an individual, not as part of a group) in the form of a short story constructed in relation to an identifiable contemporary sub-genre of crime e.g. true crime, detective story. This may draw on a range of sources including factual.


To contextualise and examine the processes and decisions which framed your approach to the story you must include with your final piece your work in progress – including drafts, interim assessment, draft structure/plot, character outlines and a bibliography of relevant reading and research undertaken to produce the final piece.

2,500 words, 50%


Short Story
1. Appropriateness of language and structure to the narrative and chosen subgenre
2. Evidence of an understanding of the narrative, thematic, and stylistic conventions of the crime form and the chosen subgenre
3. Clear evidence of the conventions of your text being framed in a manner appropriate to the short story as a form
4. Work should be clearly presented and structured with evidence of careful editing e.g. spelling, grammar, coherence. The following must be included full bibliographic and research references, drafts and presentation materials including interim assessment work – these will not impact on the word count


Assessment Submission - Requirements and Regulations

Please ensure that you have read the sections concerning assessment in the 2006/2007 Middlesex University Guide and Regulations.

Submit work to Tottenham Student Office on or before the required deadlines

Staple pages together and fully label your work - see above

Keep copies of all work submitted until you receive feedback for the interim piece and the grade for the final piece

Ensure that your work has been stamped and dated on receipt at the student office and that you have a separate receipt for each module, if work goes astray we can only accept receipts clearly marked and dated for each assessment period of PLM 3501

Aim to word-process work - hand-written work is not encouraged and only accepted if it is well-presented and legible

Work must be sent by email as well, but cannot be accepted unless a printed copy is also deposited with the student office.

Note: tutors cannot give extensions to the final deadline, any problems in meeting the deadline must be raised in advance with the student office. You are strongly advised to read the sections of the 2002/2003 Middlesex University Guide and Regulations concerning assessment, this is part of your responsibility as a student

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