Camp, Cynthia
TR 9:35 AM
Park Hall 0139
Southern Gothic, Southern Noir
Southern writers gravitate toward gritty brutality, local wrongs, and the buried truths that continue to haunt us -- just the stuff that makes for good crime fiction. In this class, we'll read contemporary southern writers of crime fiction through the lens of southern gothic (asking, in part, if there is such a thing) and the hard-boiled noir genre. We'll ask how the common tropes of southern gothic play out in crime fiction; where those villainized by such tropes can find a voice in this genre; and how noir, typically written within an urban setting, translates to the largely rural south. We'll attend to issues of genre as well as of class, race, place, and regional identity; interrogate these novels' relationship to incarceration, the military, and policing practices; and, of course, ask whodunnit. (Spoiler alert: in these novels, not the butler!)
Expect to read widely across southern writers from William Faulkner to Ace Atkins, writers well known and just coming onto the scene. This is crime fiction, so also expect the content to be difficult at times. You'll be writing regularly about the crime fiction we will read; your final project will be a public-facing book review of a novel not on the syllabus, so also expect to learn how to write a good, spoiler-free book review.
Book List
Feel free to get these used if you can. I have listed the ISBN of the paperback; that is the edition that I will be using, and to which the syllabus page numbers will track. Alternate editions of all the novels EXCEPT the Faulkner are ok (it'll be a little harder to keep up with the page range for each day's reading is all). Same for Kindle/ebooks: I'm not opposed, except for the whole page range problem. You are welcome to listen to these on audiobook, so long as you also have a written copy (paper or ebook) to consult in class discussions and to cite from in your essays.
REQUIRED
Atkins, Ace. The Broken Places. 2019. ISBN: 978-0525542278
Cosby, S.A. My Darkest Prayer. 2018, reprinted with a new author introduction 2022. ISBN: 978-1250867636
Faulkner, William. Light in August: A Norton Critical Edition, ed. Melanie Taylor. 2023 (original publication 1932) ISBN: 978-0393422603. You must get this edition
Locke, Attica. The Cutting Season. 2013. ISBN: 978-0061802065
MacDonald, John A. The Deep Blue Goodbye. 1964. 2013 edition with the Lee Child introduction. ISBN: 978-0812983920
Maren, Mesha. Sugar Run: A Novel. 2019. ISBN: 978-1616209810
We will also be reading a lot of short stories online, and you will be expected to pick TWO additional southern crime novels, not on the syllabus, to read for the course (details to follow, and using library books for this assignment is fine.)
OPTIONAL
Ruppersburg, Hugh. Reading Faulkner: Light in August. 1994. ISBN: 978-0878057320 (you may have to get it used). If you've never read Faulkner before, I recommend this book as a crib for explaining the action and characters of the novel, and relating them to Falkner's other novels.