ENG 361 - Crime and Punishment

3 credits
This course examines the development of crime, criminality, and punishment in Anglo-American culture during three distinct periods: seventeenth century England, Victorian England, and Depression-era America, with a brief (but vital) detour into Dostoevsky’s nineteenth-century Russia. We shall interrogate how crime and criminality came to be defined over time, along with how notions of justice and punishment (or the lack thereof ) found representation in literature. We will examine plays, novels, coney-catching pamphlets, and penny-dreadfuls, as well as some literary theory concerning the development of the criminal within the modern capitalist system. Texts to include: Richard Wright’s Native Son, John Marston’s The Dutch Courtesan, Dickens’ Oliver Twist, and, of course, Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. Students are required to participate in Blackboard online discussion forums.
Prerequisite(s): ENG 151 or its equivalent