1 x 1500 word Critical Analysis [Learning Outcomes 1]
1 x 3000 word essay [Learning Outcomes 2, 3,4]

Key Information Set Data:
100% Coursework

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.

Primary texts might include:
Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho (1991)
Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon (1977)
Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses (1992)
Sherman Alexie, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fist Fight in Heaven (1993)
Don DeLillo, Falling Man (2007)

Library holdings; OHP; VCR; DVD

The module is based on a series of lectures, seminars and workshops. Students will be expected to prepare for classes by reading both the set primary text and independently identified secondary reading. This activity will prepare them for the Critical Analysis (25%) and the Essay (75%) assignments.

Key Information Set Data:
7% Scheduled Teaching and Learning Activity
93% Guided Independent Study

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)
Linda Hutcheon, A Poetics of Postmodernism (Routledge, 1988)
Brian McHale, Postmodernist Fiction (Routledge, 1987)
Jill Matus, Toni Morrison (MUP, 1998)
Dix, Jarvis and Jenner, The Contemporary American Novel in Context (Continuum, 2011)