Dr. Kurt Hild Gets to the Bottom of Detective Fiction

This semester, TMU offered a course titled “Genre Literature: Detective Fiction.” Every Tuesday and Thursday, a group of students gathered with English professor Dr. Kurt Hild to enjoy cornerstone classics of detective fiction and explore the genre’s development over time.

So, why teach a course on detective fiction? 

If you ask Dr. Hild, it’s because the genre is widely influential and provides significant insight into human nature.

“We see from current media that the motif of detectives, police, and crime-solving is very popular,” Hild says. “And it indicates that there is a human yearning for safety and protection. We want somebody to step into the breach, solve the issue, and deal with the bad guy.”

Hild argues that this longing ultimately points back to Christ.

Students examined these realities by reading through and discussing tentpole works in the genre, including Edgar Allan Poe’s detective short stories, Arthur Conan Doyle’s “A Study in Scarlet,” and Agatha Christie’s “Murder on the Orient Express.”

Other courses in the English department this fall included “History of the English Language” and “Literary Criticism,” among others.