Elementary My Dear…The Modern International Detective Tale

Malcolm Compitello
Summer 2018
FRIDAYS |  
9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.
July 13, 20, 27, August 3, 10
Course Format: Hybrid
Location: Main Campus
Tuition: $145

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Professor Compitello brings his popular summer 2014 course to Oro Valley!

The detective tale, born of the work of Edgar Alan Poe and altered by Dashiell Hammett, evolved over time in the hands of international masters such as Jorge Luis Borges, Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, Andrea Camilleri, and Donna Leon. Our examination helps identify the qualities that provide this genre with its enduring allure, and explores how modern practitioners play with the form and adapt it to the writer’s needs in ways that continue to fuel reader interest. Through the reading of the required primary text and important recommended secondary texts and through the seminar’s investigation of the genre we will come to a new appreciation of how the most representative of formulaic fiction broke out of its mold and garnered wide critical appreciation and the loyalty of millions of readers worldwide.

Required Reading
  • Vazquez Montalban, Manuel. Southern Seas. Trans. Patrick Camiller. Melville International Crime, 2012. ISBN-10: 1612191177.
  • Camilleri, Andrea. The Terra-Cotta Dog. Trans. Stephen Sartarelli. Penguin Books, 2005. ISBN-10: 0142004723.
  • Leon, Donna. Death at La Fenice. Harper Perennial, 2004. ISBN-10: 006074068X.

Other readings will be posted at Box@UA. Registered students will receive the link to that site to download the readings closer to the beginning of the course.

Meet Your Instructor

Professor Emeritus

Malcolm Alan Compitello is Emeritus Professor of Spanish and former Program Director for the Humanities Seminars Program. He regularly taught classes in modern and contemporary Spanish culture and literature including the work of García Lorca. Professor Compitello is the Founding Editor of the Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies one of the premier scholarly journals in that field. He has published widely in venues in Europe and the United States and is currently engaged in several projects dealing with the interconnections between cities, cultural and capital as they play out in Spain since the 1960s.

Location

POETRY CENTER
Dorothy Rubel Room
1508 E Helen
Tucson, AZ 85721
United States

Located on the SE corner of Helen Street and Vine Avenue, one block north of Speedway and three blocks west of Campbell Ave.

Street map image of Poetry Center

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