Contact teaching will be a mix of lecture, workshop and small-group discussion. Students will be expected to work both independently (on research and preparation for both classes and assessments) and as part of a team (on some class exercises and presentation work). Additional group workshops will be offered for students at 30 credits in weeks 11 and 12.

Key Information Set data:
7% Scheduled Learning and Teaching Activity
93% Guided Indepependent Study

OHP, Video/DVD, Library, Internet.
The Blackboard virtual learning environment will be available (where relevant) to support this module. Details will be supplied in the module handbook.

Class Presentation and accompanying critical analysis of 1500 words (25%) [Learning Outcomes 1, 3, 5]

Coursework (Essay of 3000 words) (75%) [Learning Outcomes 1, 2, 3, 4]
The text discussed in the presentation may not be written about in the essay.

Key Information Set data:
25% Practical Exam
75% Coursework

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)
Tim Engles, "'Who Are You, Literally?' Fantasies of the White Self in White Noise," Modern Fiction Studies 45.3 (1999): 755-87.
James Phelan, "Sethe's Choice: Beloved and the Ethics of Reading," Style 32.2 (1998): 318-33.

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 published on the module.