NCJ Number
153648
Journal
Journal of Criminal Justice Education Volume: 5 Issue: 2 Dated: (Fall 1994) Pages: 217-228
Date Published
1994
Length
12 pages
Annotation
This paper details the planning, logic, and implementation of a new interdisciplinary graduate course entitled "Crime in American Literature."
Abstract
The course was taught at Texas A & M International University by a criminal justice professor and an English professor. The course encouraged a reciprocal "crossing over" from one discipline to the other, and second, to facilitate students' analysis of the social, political, economic, literary, and philosophical issues present in texts that are not traditionally academic but which have scholarly import and can provide a critical venue for discussion. Because the instructors wished to demonstrate that the academic wall separating disciplines are artificial and contrived, they selected texts that were "popular" and free of the academic jargon favored by academic scholarship. They favored literary texts that represented the fields of criminology and criminal justice in ambiguous ways and that belonged to the students' contemporary world. Consequently, the final syllabus contained texts that blurred the obvious distinctions between the two fields, allowing the students to cross over more readily from one discipline to the other. The criteria for the selection of texts are outlined, and the six texts selected are summarized, along with the content of the class' discussion of each text. Instructional techniques are also explained. 22 references