This course will explore how the category of pulp fiction continues to be defined and redefined across cultures by analyzing works of international crime fiction. Featuring a diverse cast of hardboiled detectives, femmes fatales, compulsive gamblers, masters of disguise, cold-blooded murderers, drug addicts, retired professional wrestlers, corrupt policemen, martial arts experts, cunning thieves, sex-trade workers, and gangsters galore, these highly entertaining and accessible narratives use fiction as a powerful vehicle for social criticism. For our purposes, these often gritty and unsentimental representations of crime and social transgression will be analyzed using theoretical frameworks drawn from diverse fields within the liberal arts. The narratives studied in this course include Chester Himes’ African-American hardboiled classic, The Heat’s On; Paco Ignacio Taibo II’s Mexican detective fiction, Some Clouds; Megan Abbott’s exploration of the femme fatale in Queenpin; selected works of horror pulp from The Blaft Anthology of Tamil Pulp Fiction Vol. II. ; and Enter the Dragon, a classic of kung fu cinema starring the iconic Bruce Lee.
