FMST 083. Crime Drama

(Cross-listed as GMST 083, LITR 083)
This course looks at the history and format of the crime drama in film and on television. More than other genres, crime dramas have reflected on societies’ historical blind spots, taboos, and peripheries along with its reigning hierarchies of power, and they have debated foundational ethical parameters amidst ongoing struggles to deal with change, particularly in relation to childhood, gender, race, class, and sexuality. At the same time, the genre has continuously placed its aesthetic expression in dialogue with new forensic and media-specific technologies. In this class, students will investigate - individually and in group projects - what has made the crime drama such a success in different media and mediascapes, how the genre’s familiar stock characters, plotlines, settings, and recognizable styles have adapted and what accounts for its ability to speak to audiences across different cultural backgrounds while emanating from and representing cultural, national, and regional specificities, and how the genre has responded to social activism and debates over police brutality and the prison-industrial complex.
HU.
1 credit.
Fall 2026. Simon.
Spring 2028 Simon.
Catalog chapter: Film and Media Studies
Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/film-media-studies

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