CRIM3306 Encountering Crime - Flinders University

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Overview

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.

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Aims

This topic aims to:

Introduce students to the different ways that crime pervades our lives (on the news, in books, on Social Media and on the screen as entertainment etc.)
Provide a conceptual overview of the complex ways that we consume crime in society (and how this has evolved in the past 100 odd years)
To prompt students to explore why - despite being fearful of/disturbed by crime - we find it alluring and crave vicarious exposure to it

Learning outcomes

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

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

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

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

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]

Assessments

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Requisites information

Pre-requisites:

Handbook

Encountering Crime

CRIM3306