{"id":74770,"date":"2024-11-06T23:07:00","date_gmt":"2024-11-07T04:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/world.edu\/?p=74770"},"modified":"2024-11-06T23:07:00","modified_gmt":"2024-11-07T04:07:00","slug":"this-course-uses-crime-novels-to-teach-critical-thinking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/world.edu\/this-course-uses-crime-novels-to-teach-critical-thinking\/","title":{"rendered":"This course uses crime novels to teach critical thinking"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

Title of course:<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Whodunit?: Detective Stories<\/p>\n

What prompted the idea for the course?<\/strong><\/h4>\n

I had just finished reading one of Dorothy Sayers\u2019 novels \u2013 \u201cGaudy Night<\/a>,\u201d which in my opinion is one of the best of her detective novels featuring Harriet Vane and Lord Peter Wimsey. A colleague and I were discussing Harriet\u2019s ability to delve into the secrets of a women\u2019s college at Oxford, when it occurred to me that I would have loved a detective fiction class as an undergraduate.<\/p>\n

Although professors throughout my studies enjoyed talking about detective stories, I had never heard of any class devoted exclusively to studying them. So when the English department where I teach asked for proposals for new courses, I submitted one. It also seemed like a good way to connect with students. They could become literary detectives \u2013 reading closely, finding clues, forming theories. It also gave me the chance to research and teach stories I\u2019ve enjoyed for years.<\/p>\n

What does the course explore?<\/strong><\/h4>\n

By focusing on the development of different types of detectives \u2013 the police, the private, and the female \u2013 we look at the historical development of the characters and the forms of justice over time: divine, social, moral, legal and even poetic.<\/p>\n

We read stories in which the \u201cmysterious hand of God\u201d or another mysterious source deals justice, such as in stories by\u00a0Melville Davisson Post<\/a>,\u00a0G.K. Chesterton<\/a>, and\u00a0J.B. Priestly<\/a>. Or in which private detectives choose the means of justice, as is the case in stories by\u00a0Sir Arthur Conan Doyle<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Sue Grafton<\/a>. Or in which justice is never served, as in works by\u00a0Clark Howard<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Ian Rankin<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Why is this course relevant now?<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Not only does the course offer, for many, an unexpected approach to academic reading, but it also offers a way to make sense of some of the craziness of the world. Students have fun searching the text for clues and thinking critically about language and how sociopolitical contexts shape our current thoughts about crime and justice.<\/p>\n

Also, at the end of many detective stories, we not only see how the events fit together to solve the crime, we also get to see which events fit and which are red herrings. The detective narrative makes sense of seemingly unrelated events in, perhaps, a more obvious way than other fiction.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s a critical lesson from the course?<\/strong><\/h4>\n

I think there are two critical lessons from the course: the importance of reading critically and the importance of historical and social context. Most authors we read use fair play, the clues are there for the readers, so reading critically is important for figuring out whodunit on a basic plot level.<\/p>\n

This kind of close reading leads to questions about how authors convey ideas and how to read critically to discover them. Part of this critical reading involves understanding the historical and social context in which they are written, such as how an American story written during WWII with Germans as villains can be used as propaganda.<\/p>\n

What materials does the course feature?<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Because the course covers the development of different types of detectives, we start with what\u2019s widely considered one of the first police detective novels in English, \u201cThe Moonstone<\/a>\u201d by Wilkie Collins, which was first published serially in one of Dickens\u2019 magazines in 1868. From there we work our way to late 20th- and early 21st-century police stories.<\/p>\n

For the private detective, we read stories by\u00a0Edgar Allan Poe<\/a>,\u00a0Sir Arthur Conan Doyle<\/a>, and\u00a0Agatha Christie<\/a>, as well as American hard-boiled private investigator \u2013 or PI, or private eye \u2013 fiction by writers such as\u00a0Dashiell Hammett<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Raymond Chandler<\/a>.<\/p>\n

We also cover the female detective from the Victorian period up to later 20th-century detectives in P.D. James\u2019 \u201cAn Unsuitable Job for a Woman<\/a>\u201d and\u00a0Sue Grafton\u2019s<\/a>\u00a0Kinsey Millhone stories.<\/p>\n

What will the course prepare students to do?<\/strong><\/h4>\n

At the end of the course, students will, I hope, take joy in reading closely and thinking critically about what they read. My goals are that they\u2019ll understand how the genre developed in relation to history and have a sense of the complexities of historical notions of crime and justice \u2013 oh, and that they\u2019ll be wary of narrators, look for red herrings, consider motives and avoid forming theories without facts.<\/p>\n

Author Bio:<\/strong> Sally C. Harris is Distinguished Lecturer in English at the University of Tennessee<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Title of course: Whodunit?: Detective Stories What prompted the idea for the course? I had just finished reading one of Dorothy Sayers\u2019 novels \u2013 \u201cGaudy Night,\u201d which in my opinion is one of the best of her detective novels featuring Harriet Vane and Lord Peter Wimsey. A colleague and I were discussing Harriet\u2019s ability to […]\n… learn more→<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[435147],"coauthors":[11733],"class_list":["post-74770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-higher-education","tag-reading-critically"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThis course uses crime novels to teach critical thinking - World leading higher education information and services<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/world.edu\/this-course-uses-crime-novels-to-teach-critical-thinking\/\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"This course uses crime novels to teach critical thinking - World leading higher education information and services\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Title of course: Whodunit?: Detective Stories What prompted the idea for the course? I had just finished reading one of Dorothy Sayers\u2019 novels \u2013 \u201cGaudy Night,\u201d which in my opinion is one of the best of her detective novels featuring Harriet Vane and Lord Peter Wimsey. 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