CRIM3306 Encountering Crime

2020

4.5

1 x 1-hour lecture weekly
1 x 1-hour workshop weekly

1 22.5 Units of CRIM topics
2 9 Units of CRIM topics
3 9 Units of LEGL topics
Must Satisfy: ((1) or (2 and 3))

Assignment(s), Project, Workshop presentation

This topic draws on popular culture and the meditated nature of our contemporary digital world to explore how we encounter crime. The topic engages with a vast array of phenomenon (e.g. crime fiction, feature and documentary films, Social Media, museum exhibits and memorial spaces) to explore the ways that crime is packaged, represented and consumed. We also encounter crime (or remnants of crime) in the pages of magazines, when on holiday (e.g. dark tourism) and in our leisure time (e.g. when playing computer games that are organised around the theme of crime). This topic prompts students to appreciate that sensory exposure to crime permeates our lives. It seeks to empower students to appreciate the complexities and contradictions at play when they encounter crime when engaging with the world they live in.

On completion of this topic students will be expected to be able to:

1. Identify the different ways that people encounter crime and be able to comment on the nuanced ways that such an encounter occurs

2. Identify the key social debates and/or controversies attached to the particular ways that people encounter crime.

3. Conduct some independent research into one of the themes of the topic using quality academic resources to elucidate an appreciation of the complexities of that chosen area of study

4. Critique the mode(s) through which people encounter crime (e.g. film, Social Media, museum space, dark tourism site, video games) to elucidate how that mode shapes or influences perceptions of crime. [This may entail exploring how the mode provokes an emotional; ethical or cognitive response in individuals].