Everybody knows their names: Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, Jack the Ripper, Hannibal Lecter, Patrick Bateman. Their crimes have become the matter of legend, their lives the subject of countless novels, podcasts and documentaries. But what about the people who lose their lives, and those who will miss them? What about the detectives who have to make sense of the seemingly senseless and sort through the wreckage in the wake of multiple murder?
This seminar will provide an introduction to the ethical and critical engagement with crime narratives via the serial killer subgenre, and offer a critical perspective on a public phenomenon that turns killers into superstars. The foundation will be an understanding of violence and its representations as being shaped by the socio-political values and systems containing it. The course will introduce crime fiction studies as a serious academic endeavour and trace the development of the prolific genre of the serial killer narrative and its conventions. We will read seminal texts and discuss the ethics of representing multiple murder for a large and eager audience. Using the basic premises of feminist and gender studies, and critical race theory we will analyse and question the representations of the three primary character types found in serial killer novels, the killer, the detective, and the victim, as well as the violence at the heart of the narrative. Because in crime fiction the meaning is often tied closely to the plot we will be reading two novels in full: Thomas Harris’s The Silence of the Lambs (1988) and Alaina Urquhart’s The Butcher and the Wren (2022). Please make sure you obtain a copy.
TW: Please be aware that due to its subject matter the contents of this seminar will include graphics descriptions and depictions of physical violence.
- Kursleiter*in: Charlotte Adenau