Possible topics for seminar papers include the following, though proposals on related topics are welcome and encouraged.
Mystery and epistemology, or how the detective comes to know
whodunit?
• Mystery and moral or political philosophy: the author or detective’s
assumptions about justice, the natural law, or the lack thereof.
• Mystery and Christianity from Fr. Brown to the Name of the Rose: how
might religious faith impede or accelerate the solving of crimes?
• Mystery and the mystery of being: do mystery stories eventually lead
to nihilism or to optimism? Or are there no metaphysical implications
to mystery?
• Mysteries and faith: do the faith commitments of mystery writers
affect the types of mysteries they write and do any such effects show
up on the screen?
• Science and mystery, or the CSI factor: the role of forensics and
technology
• Drawing the line, or how to separate Sherlock Holmes from James
Bond: what makes a mystery different from action adventure? From
horror?
• The use and abuse of history for mystery: the character and purpose
of period mystery films
• Signs of the times: portrayals of religion in mystery films
• Pulp and projector: why do so many mystery novels make their way to
the big screen, and what is lost or gained in the process?
• Juvenile mystery (Nancy Drew, etc.)
• The changing faces of mystery from the Golden Age of Hollywood to
the present
• Dames and mystery, from femmes fatales to Miss Marple
• Open versus closed mysteries: the art and philosophy behind telling
the audience who the culprit is
earlier in the film (open) or waiting until the end
(closed)
• Famous detectives vis-à-vis any of the topics mentioned above
• Directors, producers, or screenwriters vis-à-vis any of the topics
mentioned above
Ideally, most of the films discussed in the seminar should be less
than thirty years old; if an author wishes to discuss a wider span of
film history (e.g., the changing depictions of Sherlock Holmes from
the 1930s on), weight should be given to the more recent or at least
to relatively well-known examples. Obscure films, which one would not
reasonably expect the seminar audience to have seen, should be
generally avoided.
No comments:
Post a Comment