16846

WiSe 17/18: Not Only 'Tatort': Detectives in German Literature and Film

Gautam Chakrabarti

Comments

Subject: This course will seek to locate German detective fiction, as represented through novels, short stories, films and other audio-visual media that have excited the popular imagination in the twentieth century, in a locus of literary-cultural involvement with the historiographical singularities of the second half of the twentieth century. It will seek to analyse the post/modern human subject—via and with the detective—as an anomie-ridden, individuated Self (e.g., Kommissar Peter Faber in the Dortmunder “Tatort”-series), which is—but not necessarily so—reduced to an occasionally-dysfunctional and conflict-ridden state in the face of personal circumstances. The course will also seek to engage with this contested selfhood, using the theoretical frameworks of, among others, Daniel Wildmann, Margrit Pernau, Christoph Cornelißen and Robert Stockhammer, and a close critical reading of selected novels and short stories by Bernhard Schlink, Ferdinand von Schirach, Friedrich Dürenmatt and Jacob Benjamin Bothe (“Jakob Arjouni”) and various Tatort-episodes filmed at German, Austrian, Swiss and other Germanophone locales, Italy, Spain and Turkey. In the process, a genre that has been seen, internationally, as a platform for the hyper-talented, if asocial and maverick, amateur who delves into detection as a vocation and, thereafter, achieves widespread recognition will be studied through characters who (more often than not) are located within official frameworks of crime-scene-investigation and can, at best, only temporarily ignore legal procedures. Program: This course seeks to contextualise, within the domains of literary-cultural and intellectual-conceptual history, German detective fiction—both in literature and film—while attempting to ascertain its re/configuration of and position in popular culture. It will seek, through readings and discussions of selected (portions of) texts—both literary and cinematic—to analyse the societal impact and cultural resonance of the figure of the detective in Germany. There will be a few film-screenings and regular group-discussions, throughout the semester, and a possible guest lecture by a scholar of the genre. The instructor will make the individual texts available on Blackboard and requests that students avoid—if possible—printing them, with regard to the Environment. Is this course suitable for you? This course is open to students from all academic disciplines, especially in areas that encourage and require interdisciplinary studies in the humanities and social sciences. The student should be prepared to study a number of academic texts in English from the fields of literary-cultural history, cultural studies and the social sciences. S/he should be interested in reflecting critically on the broad patterns of literary, philosophical, political and cultural discourses relating to crime and punishment in the 20th century and the art/science of detection. Workload and Evaluation: In order to obtain 5 ECTS credits, the student will need to • Attend the course regularly and participate actively in discussions (at least 80 % of the sessions); • Study the weekly course materials (an average of 10-15 pages of English or German texts per week); • Participate in group-projects (background/field research) with a presentation in class (for approx. 10-15 minutes) or, exceptionally, write a short essay (approx. 750-1,000 words); • Pass the written examination (possibly on 15th February, 2018, 90 minutes). close