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This course will explore how the category of pulp fiction continues to be defined and redefined across cultures by analyzing works of international pulp in various media. Featuring a diverse cast of hardboiled detectives, femmes fatales, compulsive gamblers, masters of disguise, cold-blooded murderers, drug addicts, corrupt policemen, kung fu fighters, international spies, cunning thieves, sociopathic stunt drivers, rogue samurai, and gangsters galore, these highly entertaining and accessible narratives use fiction as a powerful vehicle for social criticism. For our purposes, these often gritty and unsentimental representations of crime and social transgression will be analyzed using theoretical frameworks drawn from diverse fields within the liberal arts. The narratives studied in this course include Chester Himes' African-American hardboiled police procedural, The Heat's On; Megan Abbott's exploration of the femme fatale in Queenpin; Robert Clouse's kung fu cinema classic, Enter the Dragon, starring the iconic Bruce Lee; a collection of Japanese graphic narratives from Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima's Lone Wolf and Cub manga series; Ibne Safi's Urdu spy novel, The Poisoned Arrow; and Quentin Tarantino's postmodern grindhouse film, Death Proof.