MA American Studies and Film Studies

Course Code DNT1TW76101
Duration 1 Year
Attendance Full Time
Award Degree of Master of Arts

Overview
Why Choose Us
Requirements
Course Profile
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Overview

Why does the United States of America matter so much to us all?
Wealth, but world-wide credit crisis? Automobiles and highways? War on terror? First black president? International movie industry? The American dream? Patriotism and flag waving?

Whatever the reasons the United States matters to you, studying for one of our MA degrees [American History; American literature; American Studies; or American Studies and Film] will allow you to explore the events and forces that shaped the United States, and gain a deeper understanding of how this powerful nation moulds and influences the cultural, political, and economic lives of its own peoples and the world.

Why Study America at UEA?
The School of American Studies is rated one of the top research departments in the UK (Research Assessment Exercise 2008). It always receives the highest scores for quality of teaching and student satisfaction. Our vibrant research community ensures that faculty and graduate students meet regularly for research seminars and social events. The Arthur Miller Centre organises an annual Literary Festival, bringing major North American writers to the campus every year. All our MA programmes are interdisciplinary and are among the most established and prestigious in Britain.

Course Content and Structure:
MAs offered in the School of American Studies are one year, full time taught courses. Students build on their undergraduate training to develop exceptionally high levels of theoretical understanding and knowledge of American thought, culture, literature, history, politics and film. Faculty members and students in the School of American Studies work within and across traditional disciplinary boundaries. All teaching is in small seminar groups, which provides students with the opportunity to engage fully with their own ideas and those of others.

MA in American Studies and Film Studies
The MA in American Studies and Film Studies enables students to study American films within their historical and cultural context. On this course, all students take “Theories of American Culture” [team-taught by 8 faculty members] then choose one other module taught within the School of American Studies and one taught in the School of Film and Television Studies. The fourth module may be chosen from American Studies or Film and Television Studies modules, or from complementary MA programmes.

Final Dissertation
A dissertation of 12-15,000 words is prepared over the summer for submission at the start of September. Students are encouraged to select topics which have stimulated or grabbed their interest during the course of the year. Each student is allocated a supervisor whose expertise and interests match their chosen dissertation project. All students receive intensive one-on-one supervision and mentoring.

Course Assessment
There is no written examination. Assessment is on the basis of coursework (essays and sometimes class presentations) and the dissertation. The dissertation counts for half the marks of the course.

Research Community
MA students are valued members of the School of American Studies’ research community and the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, and interact intellectually and socially with faculty members and Ph.D students. As part of your training you will attend weekly research seminars, where distinguished scholars from the UK, USA and elsewhere present their research for discussion with the UEA American Studies research community. Postgraduate students are encouraged to present their work in this supportive environment, where they can critically engage in scholarly debates.

Transferable Skills:
Many transferable skills are developed through the MA programmes in American Studies, including: research and writing skills; ITC skills; presentational skills; practice in public speaking and academic debate; team-work; time and project management.

Course Organiser

Dr Jonathan Mitchell

Course Brochure

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Year 1

Year 1

Compulsory Study (120 credits)

Students will select 120 credits from the following module(s).

Name	Code	Credits	Period
American Studies Dissertation Students are required to write a dissertation of a length as specified in their MA Course Guide on a topic approved by the Course Director or other authorised person. more...	AMSAM03X	90	Semester 2
Research and Methodology Training Seminar This module is run over two semesters. The Autumn and Spring semester element of the training requires attendance and active engagement at the School research seminars which are run on a weekly basis. In addition, during the Spring semester students will take a half-module concerned with preparation for writing their dissertations over the Summer. Students will present their dissertation proposal at the last of the School's research seminars in the Spring Semester. Assessment will be based on a reflective report, written at the end of the autumn semester, concerning the research seminars students have attended. The spring semester will be assessed through presentation and submission of the dissertation proposal. more...	AMSAM02Y	10	Year Period
Theories of American Culture This Core Autumn module introduces students to key theories in American Studies. As American Studies is an interdisciplinary field, we require all MA students in our School, whether focusing upon American History, American Literature, Film and American Studies, or American Studies, to familiarize themselves with foundational concepts in the field. The reading list will vary, but will generally have a week of introduction followed by three weeks on literary and textual theory, three weeks on historiography, and three weeks on visual culture and film theory. The aim of the module is to ensure that all students are comfortable with the basic theoretical tools necessary to advanced study in American cultural studies of all varieties. more...	AMSAM009	20	Semester 1

Option A Study (20 credits)

Students will select 20 credits from the following module(s).

Name	Code	Credits	Period
Body Spaces Central to post-war American avant-garde aesthetics and poetics is an investigation of the constructedness of the space we inhabit and of the bodies we occupy. By close and detailed analysis of a range of experimental American texts - painting and especially, poetry - from 1950 to the present day, this module explores the ways in which ideas of the postmodern in America can be seen to 'work' through such politicised constructions of the body as gender, sexuality and subjectivity. Running alongside its reading of poetic and artistic texts, the module will also consider the ways in which theories and theorists of the postmodern reflect the concern of America's experimental arts with an aesthetics of 'process' rather than of 'product'. It thereby questions the extent to which a poetics of the postmodern challenges the cultural space that America has inhabited in the late-twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. more...	AMSAM043	20	Semester 1
Civil Rights and American Politics This module offers an in-depth exploration of the history of the Civil Rights movement in the years after World War II. It delves into the rich and ever growing historiography of the subject to take in, among other things, the southern freedom movement and Martin Luther King, Jr; the life and times of Malcolm X; Black Power politics and culture; the political controversies surrounding Lyndon B. Johnson's attempt to mobilize the federal government behind the cause of black equality; the 'long, hot summers' of urban riots, 1964-1968; and the still contested legacy of this most turbulent period of American history. more...	AMSAM029	20	Semester 1
Good Good Girls and Good Bad Boys? American Fictions of Innocence Oscar Wilde wrote that 'The youth of America is their oldest tradition; it has been going on now for three hundred years'. IIs this true? If so, why? This module will seek to account for the preoccupation with youth in America by focusing particularly on the concept of 'innocence', and by examining how various models of innocence are invoked and questioned in American literary texts. Drawing on a wide array of fictional and theoretical works, we will consider the following questions: What is at stake in America's investment in innocence? Major cultural events - such as the Vietnam War and 9/11, for example - are often described as representing a 'loss of innocence' in American culture. What power interests and ideologies are maintained by repeatedly describing America as 'innocent'? How is this investment in innocence revised in different historical moments? How is it challenged? With particular reference to fictions of growing up in America, how is innocence (and loss of innocence) depicted differently for male and female protagonists? more...	AMSAM022	20	Semester 2
Queering America This is a module that engages with queer theory and its inherent complexities in order to read American Studies `across the grain,' to explore the silences and those silenced in accepted readings of America. The module will both scrutinize and utilize the polyphony of theoretical discourses that constitute queer theory's most often (deliberate) discordant approach so as to open-up the liminal spaces in America ' those cities of night to evoke John Rechy's novel on such liminality. The module is not simply an examination of homosexuality in America, but an examination of alterity in its many different forms, and how this alterity conceptualises America in ways that problematize our immediate understanding of the nation. more...	AMSAM033	20	Semester 1
Reading American Women's Lives: Her-Story in the Long Nineteenth Century The module will be structured around eight biographies of different women spanning the Revolutionary and early National period through to the late nineteenth century. The biographies under discussion will include the revolutionary Jane Adams, midwife Martha Ballard, mill girl Eunice Connolly, true women turned plantation mistress Sarah Hicks Williams, women's right activist and abolitionist Sojourner Truth, the two 'first ladies' of the Civil War era Mary Todd Lincoln and Varina Davis reflecting on their experiences in the historical and cultural context in which they lived. The seminars will reflect on the historical conditions that shaped these women's lives and consider the ways in which they negotiated the dominant ideals of the era. The concepts of race, class, region, and age will be considered alongside gender as primary factors that structured these women's experiences, in addition to considering factors such as spousal relationships, the growing ideal of romantic love, the sentimentalisation of women's roles in domestic fiction and wider society, and the developing structures of familial relationships. Biographical materials will be supplemented by historical scholarship and visual media including portraits, pictures, and film. more...	AMSAM042	20	Semester 2
Slave Life in the Antebellum South While popular representations of New World slavery range from the dehumanized slave body to the romanticisation of enslaved life, scholarly work over the last few decades has sharpened our understanding of what it meant to be an enslaved man, woman and child in the context of Atlantic slavery. This module concerns the lived experiences of the enslaved in the slaveholding south. It is structured around the cultural histories of the lives and will consider how concepts such as race, class, gender, and sexuality interacted and were articulated in this particular historical context. Concepts of power and resistance will also be central to the discussion, as both enslaver and enslaved negotiated the limits of control in their own lives and those of others. The module will employ a variety of source materials including slave narratives, folklore tales, work-songs, and fictional representations of slavery in order to try and fully reveal the complexities of enslaved life. more...	AMSAM011	20	Semester 1
The 20th Century Novel This module emphasizes close reading, and exposure to some of the masterpieces of 20th century American prose fiction, over theoretical paradigms or a great deal of critical reading. Each week we will discuss a significant 20th century American novel (and author) in depth, coming to grips with their primary themes, structures, and techniques. However, many of our books have a solid body of scholarship associated with them with which you should also certainly expect to familiarize yourself, and each week's reading will include a required scholarly essay, which will be selected by your classmates for their presentation. more...	AMSAM017	20	Semester 1
The Black Atlantic This module will consider the flow and proliferation of black culture into and within the Americas, through the medium of the middle passage and the `Black Atlantic'. This module offers a comparative perspective on American culture: the experiences of African slaves and their subsequent freedom, physical and ' for some ' also political, will be traced in the contemporary fiction and poetry of the Caribbean and the United States. Given the overwhelming importance of Africa to contemporary Caribbean and African American writing and culture, this unit will begin and end with a focus on West African perceptions of the slave trade. more...	AMSAM018	20	Semester 2
The Dirty South: Reading Southern Cultures In William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!, Shreve McCannon asks his Harvard roomate, Mississippian Quentin Compson, to "Tell about the South": "What's it like there. What do they do there. Why do they live there. Why do they live at all." In this module, we will explore the contrasting ways that those questions have been answered - and, indeed, still continue to be answered - by Southerners and others. Reading widely in Southern literature, we will witness the emergence of a distinct Southern literary identity in the years before the Civil War; consider the effect of slavery on the development of Southern letters; encounter, through Reconstruction and beyond, the effects of defeat, liberation and memory; meet the flowering of the Southern Renaissance; and trace the development of Southern writing through the Civil Rights Era and beyond, up to the present day. But we will also consider a variety of other Southern cultures - music, particularly, from country to hip-hop, but also film and television - and think about the ongoing representations of the South by outsiders. And throughout, we will question the shifting meaning of "the South", and consider its persistent significance in the twenty-first century. more...	AMSAM038	20	Semester 2
The Imperial Origins of the US and Canada The Imperial Origins of the United States and Canada begins with an examination of the condition of North America in 1492, and proceeds to discuss in the next three sessions to analyse the impact of trade, missionary work, European settlement, warfare, slavery and imperial rivalry in three broad geographic regions: 1) The Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico and southern Atlantic coasts of North America; 2) The St. Lawrence valley, New England and the Canadian Maritime regions; and 3) New Netherland, New Sweden and their successor colonies, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Having laid this foundation, the module continues chronologically, examining the Spanish, French, and British Empires in North America side-by-side, through the period of the American Revolution and on to the War of 1812. Over the long run, the British Empire spawned two huge polities in North America, and the module will close by examining its distinctive legacies on the two sides of the U.S. - Canadian border. more...	AMSAM044	20	Semester 2

Option B Study (20 credits)

Students will select 20 credits from the following module(s).

Name	Code	Credits	Period
Creativity and Development in Film and Television Production This practice-based module is designed to introduce students to key skills in film and television development and business. It will provide an understanding of the processes of creative script and project development, including film and TV business, the activities of the market and dealing with bodies responsible for commissioning films and television programmes, managing creative people, and writing pitches. This module is compulsory for students following the MA in Film, Television and Creative Practice. Priority for further places will be given to students taking the MA in Film Studies and scriptwriters on the MA in Creative Writing. more...	FTVFM058	20	Semester 2
Effects, Audiences and the Media The module is designed to explore the debates over media effects. In the process, it will challenge the effects tradition, which motivates many of the concerns with media censorship and regulation, and suggests alternative ways of understanding the ways in which audiences consume contemporary media. In the process, it will examine a range of approaches to the understanding of media consumption. more...	FTVFM046	20	Semester 2
Film and Television Production The module is designed to introduce students to key skills in film and television and video production. It will provide an understanding of the production process and thereby focuses less on technical training than on encouraging students to think about using audio visual media to produce creative solutions to practical problems. The module also encourages students to consider how to deliver work within the normal constraints of media production, i.e., students will have to think about working to a brief rather than simply imagining themselves as independent artists. This module is compulsory for students following the MA in Film, Television and Creative Practice. Priority for further places will be given to students taking the MA in Film Studies. more...	FTVFM041	20	Semester 1
Film Studies: History, Theory, Criticism This unit aims to provide key terms of reference and research skills in the study of film; to identify key objects, theories and methods in the analysis of film; and to provide a sense of historical development of film. Intended learning outcomes: a) Knowledge and Understanding. By the end of the unit should: have some of the key skills for the study of film at M level; have an awareness of the debates between different approaches to the study of film; be familiar with the key objects, theories and methods in the analysis of film; have some familiarity with the historical development of film. b) Intellectual Skills. By the end of the unit students should be able to: apply the key approaches to the analysis of film; assesses the debates between these different approaches; construct coherent and independent arguments. c) Professional Skills. The unit will develop students' ability to: select, sift and synthesize information from a variety of primary and secondary materials; write accurately and grammatically and present written material suing appropriate conventions. d) Transferable Skills. The unit will also develop students' ability to: manage a large and disparate body of information; use IT to word process assessed work; speak and write cogently about a chosen subject area. more...	FTVFM023	20	Semester 1
Japanese Film: National Cinema and Beyond This module explores the concept of Japanese cinema in relation to national, transnational and global discourses and seeks to reframe discussions of modern and past Japanese filmmaking. We will examine a variety of Japanese films and the ways in which they interact with the history, techniques and culture of Japan. We will also consider the social and commercial nature of Japanese filmmaking, including the ways in which Japanese films circulate the globe. more...	FTVFM032	20	Semester 2
Music, Media, Society This module considers the changing role of music within social and cultural practices, its varied relationships with selfhood, media and technology, bodies, everyday lives and social power. In surveying the ways music is and has been bound up in social and cultural formations, the module engages with a range of theoretical issues about how music `works' as well as exploring some of the ways organised sound can be said to `mean' in differing contexts. The module also introduces students to an eclectic range of writings and questions about music in social life, considering questions about the materiality of sound, musical communities, performance, media and affect, positioning such issues in relation to music's production, circulation and consumption. more...	FTVFM062	20	Semester 2
Studying Media This module is intended to provide an introduction to the key study skills in film, television and media studies for students unfamiliar with the British university system and its expectations of students. Focusing on the key issues and academic debates within media studies, it will provide students with a sense of the educational expectations that they will encounter during their other modules and help them to acclimatise themselves to the culture of British universities. This module is compulsory for students new to the British university system. more...	FTVFM029	20	Semester 1
The Big Picture: Contemporary Hollywood Cinema What are Hollywood's biggest hits in recent decades, and what, if anything, do they have in common? What kinds of film does Hollywood invest in most heavily, and which target audiences are these films aimed at? What are the habits and expectations of cinema audiences, and what meanings and pleasures do hit movies offer to them? Who are the key decision makers in the industry, and which names have the biggest clout at the box office? How does the theatrical release of films in the US relate to their circulation in foreign markets and in other media (television, video, DVD)? These are some of the questions which this module addresses. more...	FTVFM015	20	Semester 1
Women and Film This module intends to explore and critically reflect upon the relationship between women and film whilst focusing on issues such as women's cinema as counter cinema; women's cinema as minor cinema; women filmmakers; international women's film festivals; the representation of women in film; female spectatorship, (fe)male gaze; sexuality; feminism and post-feminism in film; female subjectivity; female desire, feminist filmmaking. The module will focus on analysing contemporary films from a variety of national and transnational cinemas. more...	FTVFM060	20	Semester 2

Option C Study (20 credits)

Students will select 20 credits from the following module(s).

You may pick any of the modules that begin with:

FTVFM

Music, Media, Society This module considers the changing role of music within social and cultural practices, its varied relationships with selfhood, media and technology, bodies, everyday lives and social power. In surveying the ways music is and has been bound up in social and cultural formations, the module engages with a range of theoretical issues about how music `works' as well as exploring some of the ways organised sound can be said to `mean' in differing contexts. The module also introduces students to an eclectic range of writings and questions about music in social life, considering questions about the materiality of sound, musical communities, performance, media and affect, positioning such issues in relation to music's production, circulation and consumption. more...	FTVFM062	20	Semester 2
Japanese Film: National Cinema and Beyond This module explores the concept of Japanese cinema in relation to national, transnational and global discourses and seeks to reframe discussions of modern and past Japanese filmmaking. We will examine a variety of Japanese films and the ways in which they interact with the history, techniques and culture of Japan. We will also consider the social and commercial nature of Japanese filmmaking, including the ways in which Japanese films circulate the globe. more...	FTVFM032	20	Semester 2
Film Studies: History, Theory, Criticism This unit aims to provide key terms of reference and research skills in the study of film; to identify key objects, theories and methods in the analysis of film; and to provide a sense of historical development of film. Intended learning outcomes: a) Knowledge and Understanding. By the end of the unit should: have some of the key skills for the study of film at M level; have an awareness of the debates between different approaches to the study of film; be familiar with the key objects, theories and methods in the analysis of film; have some familiarity with the historical development of film. b) Intellectual Skills. By the end of the unit students should be able to: apply the key approaches to the analysis of film; assesses the debates between these different approaches; construct coherent and independent arguments. c) Professional Skills. The unit will develop students' ability to: select, sift and synthesize information from a variety of primary and secondary materials; write accurately and grammatically and present written material suing appropriate conventions. d) Transferable Skills. The unit will also develop students' ability to: manage a large and disparate body of information; use IT to word process assessed work; speak and write cogently about a chosen subject area. more...	FTVFM023	20	Semester 1
Effects, Audiences and the Media The module is designed to explore the debates over media effects. In the process, it will challenge the effects tradition, which motivates many of the concerns with media censorship and regulation, and suggests alternative ways of understanding the ways in which audiences consume contemporary media. In the process, it will examine a range of approaches to the understanding of media consumption. more...	FTVFM046	20	Semester 2
Gender and Culture Providing a conceptual overview of feminist research approaches, this module examines the role of culture in the construction of contemporary gender relations. Exploring a range of case studies, such as film, television, food and sport, it provides an interdisciplinary perspective on cultural texts, their audiences, markets and regulation. The module explores both theoretical and methodological issues and covers a range of theoretical approaches, including media studies, cultural studies, gender studies history, law and economics. By the end of the module students will have developed understanding of: ' a variety of feminist approaches to the analysis of cultural texts, their audiences, markets and regulation. ' the relationship between cultural texts and their socio-economic and political contexts and the importance of gender in analysing culture. Additionally students will be able to ' critically reflect on the place of gender in media research ' apply feminist research methodologies to the analysis of cultural texts and audiences more...	FTVFM064	20	Semester 2
Women and Film This module intends to explore and critically reflect upon the relationship between women and film whilst focusing on issues such as women's cinema as counter cinema; women's cinema as minor cinema; women filmmakers; international women's film festivals; the representation of women in film; female spectatorship, (fe)male gaze; sexuality; feminism and post-feminism in film; female subjectivity; female desire, feminist filmmaking. The module will focus on analysing contemporary films from a variety of national and transnational cinemas. more...	FTVFM060	20	Semester 2
Film Studies Dissertation This module involves the production of a 12,000-15,000 word piece of work, which focuses upon a suitable topic of your own choosing. You will be assigned a supervisor to advise you on your research and writing of the dissertation. more...	FTVFM60X	60	Semester 2
Studying Media This module is intended to provide an introduction to the key study skills in film, television and media studies for students unfamiliar with the British university system and its expectations of students. Focusing on the key issues and academic debates within media studies, it will provide students with a sense of the educational expectations that they will encounter during their other modules and help them to acclimatise themselves to the culture of British universities. This module is compulsory for students new to the British university system. more...	FTVFM029	20	Semester 1
Creativity and Development in Film and Television Production This practice-based module is designed to introduce students to key skills in film and television development and business. It will provide an understanding of the processes of creative script and project development, including film and TV business, the activities of the market and dealing with bodies responsible for commissioning films and television programmes, managing creative people, and writing pitches. This module is compulsory for students following the MA in Film, Television and Creative Practice. Priority for further places will be given to students taking the MA in Film Studies and scriptwriters on the MA in Creative Writing. more...	FTVFM058	20	Semester 2
Film and Television Production The module is designed to introduce students to key skills in film and television and video production. It will provide an understanding of the production process and thereby focuses less on technical training than on encouraging students to think about using audio visual media to produce creative solutions to practical problems. The module also encourages students to consider how to deliver work within the normal constraints of media production, i.e., students will have to think about working to a brief rather than simply imagining themselves as independent artists. This module is compulsory for students following the MA in Film, Television and Creative Practice. Priority for further places will be given to students taking the MA in Film Studies. more...	FTVFM041	20	Semester 1
Science Fiction: Film and Television Science Fiction films and television series have provided a significant focus for addressing social/cultural and political issues. This module looks at the historical development of the genre, with an emphasis on locating the films/television programs within an historical and cultural context. An array of films and series episodes from both the US and UK will be screened and various clips will also be discussed in seminar. Films/television programs covered in the module will include: Le Voyage dans la Lune (1902), Things to Come (1936), Forbidden Planet (1956), Quatermass 2 (1957), Lost in Space (1965-1968), Doctor Who (1963-1989), Altered States (1980), Threads (1984), Robocop (1987), Independence Day (1996), The Matrix (1999). more...	FTVFM043	20	Semester 1
Celebrity Culture The module will explore the phenomenon of celebrity and fame from its origins to the present day, moving across a range of different media, including film, television, print media and the internet. In the process, it will examine key areas in the study of celebrity, including historical analysis, the reading of celebrity `images', questions of ideology (e.g., gender, class), the political economy of celebrity, audience and celebrity, and the impact of new technologies. It will feature a range of case studies that will include celebrity in the 19th century, Classical Hollywood cinema, the coming of television, the celebrity gossip magazine and questions of gender, the birth of Reality TV, the growth of the celebrity scandal and the relationship between celebrity and the internet more...	FTVFM068	20	Semester 2
The Big Picture: Contemporary Hollywood Cinema What are Hollywood's biggest hits in recent decades, and what, if anything, do they have in common? What kinds of film does Hollywood invest in most heavily, and which target audiences are these films aimed at? What are the habits and expectations of cinema audiences, and what meanings and pleasures do hit movies offer to them? Who are the key decision makers in the industry, and which names have the biggest clout at the box office? How does the theatrical release of films in the US relate to their circulation in foreign markets and in other media (television, video, DVD)? These are some of the questions which this module addresses. more...	FTVFM015	20	Semester 1

AMSAM

The Dirty South: Reading Southern Cultures In William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!, Shreve McCannon asks his Harvard roomate, Mississippian Quentin Compson, to "Tell about the South": "What's it like there. What do they do there. Why do they live there. Why do they live at all." In this module, we will explore the contrasting ways that those questions have been answered - and, indeed, still continue to be answered - by Southerners and others. Reading widely in Southern literature, we will witness the emergence of a distinct Southern literary identity in the years before the Civil War; consider the effect of slavery on the development of Southern letters; encounter, through Reconstruction and beyond, the effects of defeat, liberation and memory; meet the flowering of the Southern Renaissance; and trace the development of Southern writing through the Civil Rights Era and beyond, up to the present day. But we will also consider a variety of other Southern cultures - music, particularly, from country to hip-hop, but also film and television - and think about the ongoing representations of the South by outsiders. And throughout, we will question the shifting meaning of "the South", and consider its persistent significance in the twenty-first century. more...	AMSAM038	20	Semester 2
The 20th Century Novel This module emphasizes close reading, and exposure to some of the masterpieces of 20th century American prose fiction, over theoretical paradigms or a great deal of critical reading. Each week we will discuss a significant 20th century American novel (and author) in depth, coming to grips with their primary themes, structures, and techniques. However, many of our books have a solid body of scholarship associated with them with which you should also certainly expect to familiarize yourself, and each week's reading will include a required scholarly essay, which will be selected by your classmates for their presentation. more...	AMSAM017	20	Semester 1
Theories of American Culture This Core Autumn module introduces students to key theories in American Studies. As American Studies is an interdisciplinary field, we require all MA students in our School, whether focusing upon American History, American Literature, Film and American Studies, or American Studies, to familiarize themselves with foundational concepts in the field. The reading list will vary, but will generally have a week of introduction followed by three weeks on literary and textual theory, three weeks on historiography, and three weeks on visual culture and film theory. The aim of the module is to ensure that all students are comfortable with the basic theoretical tools necessary to advanced study in American cultural studies of all varieties. more...	AMSAM009	20	Semester 1
Research and Methodology Training Seminar This module is run over two semesters. The Autumn and Spring semester element of the training requires attendance and active engagement at the School research seminars which are run on a weekly basis. In addition, during the Spring semester students will take a half-module concerned with preparation for writing their dissertations over the Summer. Students will present their dissertation proposal at the last of the School's research seminars in the Spring Semester. Assessment will be based on a reflective report, written at the end of the autumn semester, concerning the research seminars students have attended. The spring semester will be assessed through presentation and submission of the dissertation proposal. more...	AMSAM02Y	10	Year Period
Reading American Women's Lives: Her-Story in the Long Nineteenth Century The module will be structured around eight biographies of different women spanning the Revolutionary and early National period through to the late nineteenth century. The biographies under discussion will include the revolutionary Jane Adams, midwife Martha Ballard, mill girl Eunice Connolly, true women turned plantation mistress Sarah Hicks Williams, women's right activist and abolitionist Sojourner Truth, the two 'first ladies' of the Civil War era Mary Todd Lincoln and Varina Davis reflecting on their experiences in the historical and cultural context in which they lived. The seminars will reflect on the historical conditions that shaped these women's lives and consider the ways in which they negotiated the dominant ideals of the era. The concepts of race, class, region, and age will be considered alongside gender as primary factors that structured these women's experiences, in addition to considering factors such as spousal relationships, the growing ideal of romantic love, the sentimentalisation of women's roles in domestic fiction and wider society, and the developing structures of familial relationships. Biographical materials will be supplemented by historical scholarship and visual media including portraits, pictures, and film. more...	AMSAM042	20	Semester 2
Queering America This is a module that engages with queer theory and its inherent complexities in order to read American Studies `across the grain,' to explore the silences and those silenced in accepted readings of America. The module will both scrutinize and utilize the polyphony of theoretical discourses that constitute queer theory's most often (deliberate) discordant approach so as to open-up the liminal spaces in America ' those cities of night to evoke John Rechy's novel on such liminality. The module is not simply an examination of homosexuality in America, but an examination of alterity in its many different forms, and how this alterity conceptualises America in ways that problematize our immediate understanding of the nation. more...	AMSAM033	20	Semester 1
Slave Life in the Antebellum South While popular representations of New World slavery range from the dehumanized slave body to the romanticisation of enslaved life, scholarly work over the last few decades has sharpened our understanding of what it meant to be an enslaved man, woman and child in the context of Atlantic slavery. This module concerns the lived experiences of the enslaved in the slaveholding south. It is structured around the cultural histories of the lives and will consider how concepts such as race, class, gender, and sexuality interacted and were articulated in this particular historical context. Concepts of power and resistance will also be central to the discussion, as both enslaver and enslaved negotiated the limits of control in their own lives and those of others. The module will employ a variety of source materials including slave narratives, folklore tales, work-songs, and fictional representations of slavery in order to try and fully reveal the complexities of enslaved life. more...	AMSAM011	20	Semester 1
Civil Rights and American Politics This module offers an in-depth exploration of the history of the Civil Rights movement in the years after World War II. It delves into the rich and ever growing historiography of the subject to take in, among other things, the southern freedom movement and Martin Luther King, Jr; the life and times of Malcolm X; Black Power politics and culture; the political controversies surrounding Lyndon B. Johnson's attempt to mobilize the federal government behind the cause of black equality; the 'long, hot summers' of urban riots, 1964-1968; and the still contested legacy of this most turbulent period of American history. more...	AMSAM029	20	Semester 1
American Literature Dissertation Students are required to write a dissertation of a length as specified in their MA Course Guide on a topic approved by the Course Director or other authorised person. more...	AMSAM04X	90	Semester 2
American Studies Dissertation Students are required to write a dissertation of a length as specified in their MA Course Guide on a topic approved by the Course Director or other authorised person. more...	AMSAM03X	90	Semester 2
The Imperial Origins of the US and Canada The Imperial Origins of the United States and Canada begins with an examination of the condition of North America in 1492, and proceeds to discuss in the next three sessions to analyse the impact of trade, missionary work, European settlement, warfare, slavery and imperial rivalry in three broad geographic regions: 1) The Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico and southern Atlantic coasts of North America; 2) The St. Lawrence valley, New England and the Canadian Maritime regions; and 3) New Netherland, New Sweden and their successor colonies, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Having laid this foundation, the module continues chronologically, examining the Spanish, French, and British Empires in North America side-by-side, through the period of the American Revolution and on to the War of 1812. Over the long run, the British Empire spawned two huge polities in North America, and the module will close by examining its distinctive legacies on the two sides of the U.S. - Canadian border. more...	AMSAM044	20	Semester 2
American History Dissertation Students are required to write a dissertation of a length as specified in their MA Course Guide on a topic approved by the Course Director or other authorised person. more...	AMSAM06X	90	Semester 2
Body Spaces Central to post-war American avant-garde aesthetics and poetics is an investigation of the constructedness of the space we inhabit and of the bodies we occupy. By close and detailed analysis of a range of experimental American texts - painting and especially, poetry - from 1950 to the present day, this module explores the ways in which ideas of the postmodern in America can be seen to 'work' through such politicised constructions of the body as gender, sexuality and subjectivity. Running alongside its reading of poetic and artistic texts, the module will also consider the ways in which theories and theorists of the postmodern reflect the concern of America's experimental arts with an aesthetics of 'process' rather than of 'product'. It thereby questions the extent to which a poetics of the postmodern challenges the cultural space that America has inhabited in the late-twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. more...	AMSAM043	20	Semester 1
The Black Atlantic This module will consider the flow and proliferation of black culture into and within the Americas, through the medium of the middle passage and the `Black Atlantic'. This module offers a comparative perspective on American culture: the experiences of African slaves and their subsequent freedom, physical and ' for some ' also political, will be traced in the contemporary fiction and poetry of the Caribbean and the United States. Given the overwhelming importance of Africa to contemporary Caribbean and African American writing and culture, this unit will begin and end with a focus on West African perceptions of the slave trade. more...	AMSAM018	20	Semester 2
Good Good Girls and Good Bad Boys? American Fictions of Innocence Oscar Wilde wrote that 'The youth of America is their oldest tradition; it has been going on now for three hundred years'. IIs this true? If so, why? This module will seek to account for the preoccupation with youth in America by focusing particularly on the concept of 'innocence', and by examining how various models of innocence are invoked and questioned in American literary texts. Drawing on a wide array of fictional and theoretical works, we will consider the following questions: What is at stake in America's investment in innocence? Major cultural events - such as the Vietnam War and 9/11, for example - are often described as representing a 'loss of innocence' in American culture. What power interests and ideologies are maintained by repeatedly describing America as 'innocent'? How is this investment in innocence revised in different historical moments? How is it challenged? With particular reference to fictions of growing up in America, how is innocence (and loss of innocence) depicted differently for male and female protagonists? more...	AMSAM022	20	Semester 2

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Whilst the University will make every effort to offer the modules listed, changes may sometimes be made arising from the annual monitoring, review and update of modules and regular (five-yearly) review of course programmes. Where this activity leads to significant (but not minor) changes to programmes and their constituent modules, there will normally be prior consultation of students and others. It is also possible that the University may not be able to offer a module for reasons outside of its control, such as the illness of a member of staff or sabbatical leave. Where this is the case, the University will endeavour to inform students.

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