All students have to acquire and read Patricia Highsmith's novel The Talented Mr Ripley.

This course will be offered in personal presence. The first session takes place on 22nd April.

Should you need a place in this course for very good reasons, but did not automatically receive one,
please email Prof. Brusberg asap.

10 more places will be made available after the automatical distribution of places.

Students are expected to participate regularly and actively, to prepare a presentation, and to write a term paper.

This seminar is dedicated to the writer Patricia Highsmith (1921-1995) and will especially focus on the first of her five novels featuring her world-famous character Tom Ripley. Her five Tom Ripley novels -- written between 1955 and 1991 -- are also called her Ripliad: The Talented Mr. Ripley (1955), Ripley under Ground (1970), Ripley’s Game (1974), The Boy Who Followed Ripley (1980), and Ripley under Water (1991).

A variety of highly successful film versions are based on the first three novels of her Ripliad as well as on some of her other novels. Highsmith's novel Deep Water (1957), for instance, was filmed three times: as the cinematic production Eaux Profondes (1981) with Jean-Louis Trintignant and Isabelle Huppert, as the TV mini series Tiefe Wasser (1983) with Peter Bongartz and Constanze Engelbrecht, and this year under the novel's title as a Hulu production with Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas.

The course will especially focus on questions concerning the creation, function, and resilience of suspense.

All students have to acquire and read Patricia Highsmith's novel The Talented Mr Ripley.