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Women and Detective Fiction Course  
 
 
Session 1

Introduction to women and detective fiction. Course overview, objectives, requirements.
Reading Literature: Jayne Anne Philips - "Cheers"
Reading detective fiction: Carolyn Wheat - "Crime Scene"
 

 
Session 2

Paternity Tests: It's Not the Poe You Know.
Short stories: Edgar Allan Poe - "The Murders in the Rue Morgue"* and "The Purloined Letter"; Arthur Conan Doyle - "The Adventure of the Dancing Men"; Susan Glaspell - "A Jury of Her Peers."
Background: "Historical and Literary Contexts" ("Jury"); "Analyzing Literature," "Critical Strategies for Reading,""Feminism"(French), "Introduction" (Spender), Literary Feminism selections (Robbins).

   
Session 3 The Female Detective: Victorian Age to the 1920s.
Victorian short stories from Crime on Her Mind: Louisa Pirkis - “The Murder at Troyte’s Hill”; L.T. Meade & R. Eustace - "Mr. Bovey’s Unexpected Will”; Baroness Orczy - “The Fordwych Castle Mystery”; Anna Katharine Green - “The Golden Slipper.” Fetterley essay "Reading about Reading.”
   
Session 4 The Golden Age of Detective Fiction.
Agatha Christie - The Body in the Library
   
Session 5 Feminism and the Detective Novel.
Dorothy L. Sayers - Gaudy Night
   
Session 6

"Partners in Crime": 1935-1960.
Jane Langton - Dark Nantucket Noon.

   
Session 7 Contemporary women detectives.
P.D. James - An Unsuitable Job For A Woman.
   
Session 8 Hard-boiled/soft-boiled and alternative detectives.
Sara Paretsky - Bitter Medicine.
   
Sesson 9 Lesbian detectives and Police Procedurals.
Katherine V. Forrest - Murder by Tradition.
   
Session 10 Detectives of color and malice domestic.
BarbaraNeely - Blanche on the Lam; Jean Fiedler - “Snake Plant”
 

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