This course will address two cross-pollinated products of literary and visual culture – the hardboiled detective novel and film noir – that have been proven both remarkably durable, spanning as they do the better part of the 20th century, and remarkably hard to specify: not exactly a genre, certainly not a form, hardboiled and noir seem rather, and more elusively, to describe a look, an attitude, a feel – a style. Rather than pursue the problem of definition, however, our aim in this course is to take up the question of what these (related) styles of fiction and film do – What kinds of readers and spectators do they array? What kinds of investments and aspirations do they sustain or suspend? Notably, both hardboiled and noir have been aligned with critical perspectives on capitalism and commodity culture, as well as with expressly misogynist views of women and a vexed racial and sexual politics. Course materials will revisit this conversation on hardboiled/noir, alongside some of the fiction and film on which it turns. We well focus, too, on (re)appropriations of hardboiled and noir by feminist, lesbian, Asian, and African-American writers/filmmakers. Along the way, we will keep our eye on the paired questions: How do we read for the politics of style? What is the place of style in the politics of culture?

The syllabus remains under construction, but primary course materials will likely include work by Dashiell Hammet, Gertrude Stein, Raymond Chandler, Chester Himes, Sara Paretsky, William Gibson, Walter Mosley, and Nicola Griffith. Films may include Double Indemnity, Gilda, The Big Sleep, Touch of Evil, Chinatown, Boyz in the Hood, Strange Days, Pulp Fiction, and Hard Target.