Description
This module will examine an array of the rich seam of crime fictions from across Latin America: that is, works of narrative fiction, film, and photography that have thematized imagined misdemeanours and/or responded to documented crimes in the region in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In doing so, the module will ask a number of conceptual, generic, and historical questions relating to wrongdoing and culture in Latin America: for example, what constitutes crime and criminality in these works?; what is the relationship between law-breaking and the production of literature, cinema, and visual culture?; how have conventions of major (but often also considered ‘second-rate’) literary or cinematic genres – such as the ‘hard-boiled’ or ‘mystery’ forms or the ‘heist movie’ – been indigenised or hybridised in selected works from across the region? Throughout the module, a number of diverse perspectives on crimes, both public and private, will be considered, as will their different protagonists (detective, perpetrator, and victim); questions of ethics, gender, and reader/spectatorship will also be discussed. In addition to the 2 pieces of summative assessment, students will each be required to give a 10-minute class presentation during the course.
Module deliveries for 2024/25 academic year
Last updated
This module description was last updated on 19th August 2024.
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