American Representations of Crime and Violence

In this course we will study American portrayals of crime and violence through a variety of media and in a number of historical contexts. We will assess cultural artifacts (fictional and non-fictional texts, music, movies, magazines, art, television shows, video games, and material objects) that provide us with a larger sense of how these representations function in the formation of categories of gender and sexuality, race and ethnicity, ethics and religion, as well as socio-economic class. Texts and films will range from detective fiction to Pulp Fiction and from the street photography of Weegee to pictures of prisoners at Abu Ghraib.