Library holdings; VCR/DVD; OHP

The Blackboard virtual learning environment will be available (where relevant) to support this module. Details will be supplied in the module handbook.

Delivery is by a mixture of lectures, independent study groups, tutor-led seminars and student-led seminars. Lectures provide contextual information, summarize critical debates and suggest alternatives for interpretation; tutor-led seminars involve close-reading of texts and discussion of interpretive issues. Students will work in small groups to make a seminar presentation combining critical views with textual and contextual analysis. They will then each write a reflective commentary evaluating the strategies involved in preparing and giving the presentation.

Key Information Set Data:
16% scheduled learning and teaching activities
84% guided independent learning

Carla J. McDonough, Staging Masculinity: Male Identity in Contemporary American Drama (McFarlane & Co., 1997)
Christopher Beech, The Cambridge Introduction to Twentieth-Century American Poetry (C.U.P., 2003)
Ashraf H. A. Rushdy, Remembering Generations: Race and Family in Contemporary African American Fiction (U of North Carolina P, 2001)

This module introduces students to representative nineteenth and twentieth-century American texts drawn from the genres of narrative prose, essay and poetry. It examines how each text engages with the issue of American identity and enquires into its historical context. Themes covered include founding principles, the new Republic and its national literature, race, gender, immigration, class, urbanisation, capitalism and the American Dream, and region. Students are encouraged to consider how these forms of experience are given distinctively American literary expression through narrative, developing forms, and poetic voice.

1 X 2000 word Essay [LO 1-3]
1 x Class Presentation [LO 4]

Key Information Set Data:
75% coursework
25% practical exam