This course studies American women writers’ contributions to detective fiction from their (Gothic) beginnings in the nineteenth century to Mary Roberts Rinehart's and Avery Howood's popular play "The Bat," which premiered on stage in 1920. Although the American authors that we will study are recognized in literary histories of the detective genre and crime fiction, many of their works have not been given as much scholarly attention as they deserve and await further in-depth interpretations and analyses, recovery work that students can undertake in their term paper projects. The course will focus on – but is not limited to – the ways in which American women writers narrate, represent, and comment on issues of gender, power, class, domesticity, vision, literature, and genre.

We will study the following primary materials:
• Detective fiction by Harriet Prescott Spofford: “In a Cellar” (1859); “Mr. Furbush” (1865); “In the Maguerriwock” (1868) [see Stud.IP]
• Anna Katharine Green, The Leavenworth Case (1878). Please purchase the Penguin Classic edition, with an introduction by Michael Sims, 2010.
• Mary Roberts Rinehart and Avery Hopwood, The Bat (1945). The play is in the public domain and can be downloaded here: https://web.archive.org/web/20170412143959/http://digital.library.pitt.edu/u/ulsmanuscripts/pdf/31735037970435.pdf.