Discovering European Crime Fiction with the MOOC on “Euro-Noir” created by DETECt

DETECt has now officially launched its MOOC on “Euro-Noir: Cultural Identities in European Popular Crime Narratives”. Based on the DETECt research finding and resulting from the collaboration between five of the DETECt European universities partners (KU Leuven, University of Limoges, University of Bucharest, University of Debrecen, University of Aalborg, and University of Bologna), the newly released MOOC invites students to discover European crime fiction and its multifaceted characters through a virtual journey across multiple European countries.  This MOOC is meant for students, crime fiction enthusiasts, and every individual with a profound interest in European Crime Fiction. Bringing together the project’s main results and making them accessible to a wide public, this MOOC aims not only to disseminate the latest knowledge related to the mechanism of circulation, production, and dissemination of crime narratives but also to explore their impact on the depiction of a European cultural identity.

In this MOOC you will learn:

• To reflect on the multiple ways in which crime narratives represent social and historical realities.
• To think of the crime genre as a form of social criticism.
• To understand how crime narratives are used by different European communities to express their local, national or regional cultural identity.
• To recognize how crime narratives contribute to represent transcultural identities that cut across national and linguistic boundaries.
• To analyse the evolution and transformation of European transcultural identities through the circulation of popular narratives across different countries and media.
• To interpret how historical and political events influenced the representation of European society in crime narratives.

The course is composed of seven different modules that students can freely navigate at their own pace depending on their preferences. The first three modules will help students to build a solid background knowledge on crime fiction. In addition, they will provide the right analytical and critical skills to proceed in the following modules, which investigate specific crime fiction subgenres. Students will have the chance to choose whether to discover the chapters dedicated to Nordic Noir, Mediterranean Noir, or to learn about the peculiarities of crime fiction productions in the Eastern European countries or in Belgium. Each module is enriched with top-quality material in the form of case studies, screencasts, video interviews, articles, and excerpts that will allow the learners to deep dive into the many complexities and peculiarities of European Crime Fiction.

The MOOC on “Euro-Noir: Cultural Identities in European Popular Crime Narratives” is entirely free and can be accessed at any moment through registration on the official edX page.