English 149,163 - Spring, 2017

STUDY ABROAD - LONDON

Class Information

Instructor: Miller, Elizabeth

Description

For more information, please visit:
https://studyabroad.ucdavis.edu/programs/quarterabroad/uk_london.html

London Crime Stories

This study abroad class will take place in London and focus on crime fiction and crime film that takes place in London. We will be interested not only in how London functions as a setting, but more broadly in the ways that London itself functions as a text to be interpreted, detected, or decoded. As one of the world’s first megacities, London has long conveyed a sense of almost unknowable immensity. It was the largest city in the world from the early nineteenth century until World War I, which was the century during which crime fiction formed as a genre, and its famous fogs in the era before the London Clean Air Act made it a particularly atmospheric setting to narrate problems of epistemology and interpretation. In this class, the historical scope of our readings will move from the late nineteenth century to the present, and the fiction and films have been selected to correspond with our London field
trips and excursions.

Grading

Papers, presentations, responses, attendance and participation.

Texts

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson
The Sign of the Four, Arthur Conan Doyle
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes , Arthur Conan Doyle
The Tiger in the Smoke , Margery Allingham
The Cuckoo’s Calling , Robert Galbraith (aka J. K. Rowling)
The Long Good Friday (film)
Dirty Pretty Things (film)
Imitation Game (film)