Hardboiled Identities:

Detecting Race, Class, and Gender

in the Film Noir and Hardboiled Fiction

Prof. David M. Earle

Lit4991 and Lit5108

Summer Session B

T TH 12:30 — 3:50

BLDG 51/152

5/11: Detective and Hardboiled Fiction: Definitions and Aesthetics

Reading: 

Poe, “Purloined Letter” .pdf

“Murders in the Rue Morgue”.pdf

Doyle, “Man with the Twisted Lip” online text

J.S. Fletcher: “The Lenton Croft Robberies”.pdf

Harford Powell, Jr. “The High Jackers” .pdf

Critical Article: Aisenberg, “Myth Fairy Tale, and the Crime Novel” .pdf

 

5/13: Film Noir: Definitions and aesthetics;

Texts: Hemingway, “The Killers” 

Articles: “Towards a Definition of Film Noir” .pdf

“’No Way Out’: Some Existential Motifs in Film Noir” .pdf

“The Noir Style in Hollywood,” Saada, in FNR4, 174-189

Film (to be watched in class): “The Killers.”

 

 

5/18: Black Mask, Slave Narrative online (Lewis Clarke), Poe’s “Murder in the Rue Morgue,” “Hop Frog,” “Tarr and Feather”

Article: Sean McCann: “Constructing Race Williams,” American Quarterly, Volume 49, Number 4, December 1997, pp. 677-716 (Article)

 

5/20: Film: Panic in the Streets; Article: Foucault, “Panopticism”

 

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5/25: Dashiell Hammett, Red Harvest; Article, Erin Smith, “How the Other Half Read,” Book History, Volume 3, 2000, pp. 204-230 (Article)

5/27: Film: Sunset Boulevard

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6/1: Farewell My Lovely (homework: Lady in the Lake [recommended for thursday] and Blue Dahlia (avi. or  streaming video here )

 

6/3: Film: D.O.A.; Article: Carter, “The War of the Sexes,” FNR4 87-94

Undergrad, Paper two due; Grad bibliography Due

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6/8: Read: Keeler, I, Chameleon. Article: Armstrong, “Interruption and Suture.”

 

6/10: Film: Memento. Articles: “Through the Past Darkly: Noir Remakes of the 1980,” FNR4 307—319; “Kill Me Again: Movement Becomes Genre”; “Son of Noir”; Article: Hillis, “Film Noir and the American Dream,” The Velvet Light Trap, Number 55, Spring 2005, pp. 3-18 (Article)

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6/15: James M. Cain’s Serenade (.pdf).

 

6/17: Film: “Double Indemnity”; Article: Paris, “Murder can sometimes smell like honeysuckle,” FNR4, 108-117

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6/22: Watch “Kiss Me Deadly” online (or download avi here); read: I, the Jury; Robert Leslie Bellem. Article: Grost, “Kiss me Deadly: Composition and Meaning,” FNR4 108-117 [optional: watch “The Postman Always Rings Twice.”part 1 and Part TWO  (.avi download; right click, “save as…”)]

Final Papers Due