Course Number

ENG 504

Course Title

Cross-Cultural Literature: Spies & Detection

Credits

3

talk by the phone. Email me to set this up, or come to a Google Hangout.

Email address: ehoran@asu.edu I return most emails within 24 hours. Usually sooner!

Office hours: I will post the Hangout time and send invitations after conducting a survey of what time or times work best for the greatest number.

In addition to regularly scheduled office hours, each student will have the option of an individual conference with the instructor in about mid-

semester for feedback on your work in the class, and planning for your next theme essay or project. For these individual conferences, we will meet

by Skype, Hangouts, Zoom, Facetime or (gasp!) telephone - whatever works best for you. You will be able sign up for a specific time slot via

"Hallway Conversations," and indicate your preferred mode.

Catalog Description: Theoretical and analytical issues for comparative research across distinct cultural regions and traditions.

What this means for this course: we will analyze the cultural contexts and cross-cultural aspects of some key English, Argentine, US and

move beyond the work of those they admire; the problem of chance;

Learning Objective I: Students will become familiar with recurring aspects of spy/detective fiction such as setting; ambivalence towards the role

of the police; the liminal loner spy/detective hero, or the outsider; urban/suburban or country v. city conflicts; the spy or detective's relation to

ethnic, racial or gendered "others;" psychology versus forensics, and so forth; aspects of plot such as the red herring; and spy relationships such

as the "control," the "agent; the use of codes, the locked room or labyrinth; the metafictional aspects of spy stories; the internationalism of the spy

story.

the rest of the semester). Our introduction to crime fiction of the 1930s begins with romance, as we read the English writer Dorothy Sayers, with

the feminist heroine Harriet Vane and her remarkable detective admirer, Lord Peter Wimsey, in the British "Golden Age" tradition. Then, in the

Age" and "Noir," students will develop a 1500-word essay that considers two or more recurring elements or hallmarks of narratives of detection,

and that include references to three peer-reviewed critical essays related to the topic:

choose one:

1) Students will write about innovative methods of detection (clues, evidence, ratiocination, forensics, psychology) in Poe, Borges, and at least one

writer from week two (Sayers, or Hammett, or Chandler), drawing from three critical essays. How, in each case, is the method reflective of the

story’s social contexts?

OR

OR

3) Students will write about comedy, irony and the role of the reader in Poe, in Borges, and in at least one writer from week two (Sayers,

or Hammett, or Chandler), drawing from three critical essays. What are the literary antecedents for these stories?

watch selected clips from the global “James Bond” franchise and will watch two James Bond films (“Skyfall” and one other). Here, we explore the

paradoxes of the spy as a figure hidden in plain sight; an expat, traveler, interloper, globetrotting agent of Empire who is engaged in morally

ambiguous behavior. Intertextuality continues as “Bond” and “Mrs. Pollifax” show, as do the representations of gender, race, and sexuality, which

change from one decade to the next. Especially important in these two weeks will be the spectrum between fantasy (represented in James Bond)

and realism (in the very real, historical and political basis of LeCarré, and much of Greene).

Learning objective III. Students will become familiar with two formulaic "serial" spies who became popular in the early 1960s, with a focus on the

"formulaic" or serial spy. Students will read a short novel. From reading, filmwatching and discussion, students will be able to identity what 1960s

Cold War spy heroes James Bond and Mrs. Pollifax reveal about gender, race, class, colonialism and politics in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Students will emerge with a comparative understanding of the essential plot elements, character development, and social backgrounds

represented in these two different spy figures, and propose future directions for the Bond franchise, which take into account color-blind casting and

non binary gender identification

Learning objective IV: Through watching a film/reading a novel by Graham Greene, and reading a novel by John LeCarré, students will become

able to identify key, recurring elements of the international spy story, including moral elements co-existing with spoof or the absurd, and to

articulate the metafictional or metanarrative aspects that present deeper philosophical problems about loyalty, reality, fact, time, causality, chance,

and more.

Learning objective for Theme Essay 2: by scaffolding their discussion posts based on the spy adventure narratives reviewed in these two

weeks, students will develop a 1500 word essay that includes references to three peer-reviewed critical essays, engaging deeply with the

contrasting views on the individual writer's contributions to spy narrative.

(choose one)

2) Students will write an essay on John Le Carré's spy novel, drawing on three critical essays, and will focus on a closely defined topic/question in

LeCarré’s work, possibly continuing your earlier work, in Theme Essay One.

OR

3) Students will take the option of writing about Chester Himes, in which case the essay is due on the following Monday, and will draw on three

critical essays and focus on a closely-defined topic/question in Himes’ work, linking it to other African American writers.

Kurt Vonnegut (a and we read a fast-paced detective “mayhem” yarn by the pioneering African American writer, Chester Himes. Both are set in

NY in the early 1960s. Vonnegut concludes our primary focus on the literary representations of spies. Himes deepens the capacity of the crime

novel as significant medium for social critique. Both writers will blow your mind!

Learning objective V: Students will read a novella (Mother Night), a novel (Cotton Comes to Harlem), and watch a “blaxsploitation film related to

“Cotton” in order to develop critical judgment on how the spy novel and the detective novel respond to the racial politics of the early 1960s.

Specifically, we see how they represent, in Vonnegut’s case, satirical resistance to white supremacist ideology and in Himes’ case, the strange

mixture of realism and fantasy in his creation of the first African American detective serial.

thriller, to understand how race, politics, gender, and the figures of the “dual hero” determine the direction of this political suspense story and film,

understood a both political and cultural commentary.

addresses two great “unsolved crimes” in Colombia. This novel introduces us to the Latin American tradition of la novela negra (crime fiction,

related to “true crime”) in which the author is a central figure and national context is crucial as the author proposes that these two crimes (and their

unknown perpetrators) explain 20

century Colombian history. Some students will relate Vásquez to other Latin American writers they’re familiar

with.

Learning objective VII: Students will become familiar with the genre of “la novela negra” and how it intersects with stories of detection,

to any one of the previous novels that we’ve read, and engaging one or more especially significant elements or “hallmarks” of the spy/detection

narrative, as developed from our first weeks in the course. Students will draw on reviews and interviews with the author (since there isn’t much

peer-reviewed material out yet).

OR

2) students will write a curriculum proposal for a module on some aspect of spy or detection or true crime fiction/film/graphic narrative relating to

the Literature and History of the Cold War

Cross-cultural conclusions learning objective: in the final essay/creative assignment for the course, students will produce either a term paper

or a curriculum proposal that incorporates what they've learned from completing the reading and assignments this semester. This material will be

submitted in drafts and stages, from proposal, to annotated bibliography, to draft, to a paper OR a list of resources along with activity guidelines

and workplan.

Integration and Reflection: In an online quiz and in a final discussion board post, students will reflect on what they have learned from reading

spy, detection, and conspiracy thrillers and how these might relate to more recent trends in crime fiction, including political conspiracies. What

does the future hold???

Learning Outcomes

At the completion of this course, students will be able to:

timely completion of the readings of the texts and watching films; you are encouraged to refer to the film versions but your grade is based on what

you write about the texts, and your substantial contribution to YellowDig as well as theme papers that leave no doubt that you have immersed

yourself in reading the texts in the course

timely, active participation in on-line discussions by posting to the "Yellowdig" discussion board and responding to other students with peer

reviews, and

completion of supplemental readings or/and activities depending on options chosen for the "theme" assignments, which are available in the ASU

Library Resource Area, organized by week. Some of these materials are also available on our Blackboard site. Look in the Library area first.

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