Library holdings; OHP; VCR; DVD

The module is based on a series of lectures and seminars. Each student will prepare a 5 minute position paper for presentation to the seminar, outlining his or her response to the issues raised in lectures and interpreting one or two key passages from the text (25%). Students will complete a 2000 word essay on ONE text from the module, the title from a set list of questions (75%).

This module examines some key texts and issues in American writing and culture since the 1960s. It explores the way in which literary texts respond to Counter-cultural protest against 1950s conformity; how writers begin to develop the features of what we now recognise as postmodernism; how writers critique the consumer culture and commodity fetishism of late captitalism; and how African-American women writers bring the issues of multiculturalism and sexuality into the canon of American literature. It also looks at how a literary-historical period is constructed through a canon of 'classic' American texts by paying attention to the critical and popular reception of the novels studied.

1 x Seminar presentation (5 minutes) [Learning Outcomes 1]
1 x 2000 word essay [Learning Outcomes 2, 3,4]

Kenneth Millard, Contemporary American Fiction: An Introduction to American Fiction Since 1970 (Oxford UP, 2000)
Mark Currie, Postmodern Narrative Theory (Macmillan, 1998)
Frank Lentricchia, ed. New Essays on Don DeLillo's "White Noise" (Cambridge UP, 1991)
Maria Lauret, Alice Walker (Macmillan 2000)