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American Studies Undergraduate Brochure (PDF)
BA American Studies (Part time)
Duration
7 years
Attendance
Part Time
Award
Degree of Bachelor of Arts
School of Study
Course Organiser
Dr. Rebecca Tillett
The American Studies programme is an interdisciplinary course, enabling students to study American history and literature as well as politics and film if they so wish. The programme invites students to engage with diverse forms of cultural expression: photography; politics; popular culture; classic texts; bestsellers; movies.
Course Structure
American Studies at UEA begins with introductory modules that provide a foundation in many aspects of American life and culture, from dispossession of native Americans to the foreign policy of Barack Obama.
At level two, you are invited to choose from a wide range of seminars on topics such as American Drama 1945-1970, American and Vietnam, American Bestsellers. Also available are interdisiplinary American Studies units which focus on a period, like The American 1960s, or study American values in a wide range of cultural forms, such as The American West or, Native American Literature and Film.
All students in their final year will have the option of taking advanced seminars in interdisciplinary subjects (e.g. Race and Violence in 20th Century American), seminars in American writing (American Gothic; Signs and Clues; Detective Fiction). For those choosing to emphasis history, the heart of the final year is a two-semester documents-based Special Subject in American history, focusing, for example, on American Slavery, the Civil Rights Movement, Native American history or the Cold War.
Assessment
Key skills, issues and ideas are introduced in lectures given by all members of faculty, including historians, literary experts and cultural specialists. More specialist study is undertaken in small group seminars. These are chosen from a range offered within the School and across the University. You will also spend time studying and researching in the library or carrying out practical work or projects. In most subject areas, you are assessed at the end of each year on the basis of coursework and, in some cases, project and examination results. In your final year, you will write a dissertation on a topic of your choice and with the advice of tutors. There is no final examination. Your final degree result is determined by the marks you receive at levels two and three.
American Studies Undergraduate Brochure (PDF)
First Class Teaching
The School of American Studies prides itself on achieving the highest standards of teaching, as well as offering first rate provision of course information, grading, and feedback to students on their work. Our teaching is monitored internally by a comprehensive programme of reporting by the students themselves, and by annual review of these reports. All external audits of teaching quality in the last ten years have rated us as "Excellent".
Choice
Modules taught in the School range across American culture, literature, history, politics and film. This means that in your second and final years you shape your own degree, by choosing from over fifty lecture or seminar modules on topics as diverse as the cultural history of American music, US foreign policy, visual culture, African American and Native American history and culture, drama, poetry, the classic novels of the nineteenth century, and much more besides.
Academic Support
To help you shape your degree and chose your modules you will have an Academic Adviser who is a member of faculty within the School, and who stays with you throughout your time at UEA.
Friendly Community
The School of American Studies provides an academic and social ‘home’ for students and teaching staff. Offices are located close together, and all teaching staff hold regular ‘open door’ Office Hours. Students can join the UEA American Studies Society, which organises social events, and use the society’s Facebook page to stay in contact with their friends even when abroad.
Lively Academic Environment
Here at UEA we are engaged in cutting-edge interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research that seeks to break new ground in the field of American Studies. As committed university teachers, we translate that work into an exciting and constantly evolving range of modules at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Why not take a tour of our website and find out what we are researching and teaching in the School of American Studies?
Unrivalled Year Abroad Programme
We offer every one of our undergraduate students enrolled on a four year degree programme the opportunity to study abroad at one of forty American universities located across the country, from New England to California, Alaska to Louisiana. We also have placements in Canada, and some of our students may elect to spend the first half of their year abroad in the USA or Canada and the second half in Australia.
Half Year's Fee
Our students pay only half a year’s UK fees for their entire academic year spent overseas. This means that you pay the equivalent of only 3 ½ years’ worth of fees for your four years of study.
Great Sources of Financial Support
American Studies students will be eligible for University bursaries (as outlined in the University's general information). In addition, however, we offer half of our first years £1000 Arthur Miller Scholarships to those scoring top marks in their A level exams, to help finance their year abroad. This is awarded only to students in the school who will be going abroad and is paid out at the end of the second year.
Employment Opportunities
Our graduates find work in a very wide range of occupations, from research to publishing, and from teaching to banking. The extra skills and confidence gained from Study Abroad gives American Studies graduates an advantage in the job market.
Internationally renowned Literary Festival
Each year, UEA brings major writers from the USA and around the world to its International Literary Festival, open to the public and – of course – our students, too. Visitors have included Norman Mailer, Toni Morrison, Elmore Leonard, Gore Vidal, Richard Ford, Jonathan Franzen and Margaret Atwood.
This is the first year of your level 1 study. Students must select at least one module per semester in each year of study, to a total of 60 credits.
Option A Study (60 credits)
Students will select 60 credits from the following modules:
| Name | Code | Credits |
|---|
This is the second year of your level 1 study. Students must select at least one module per semester in each year of study, to a total of 60 credits.
Option A Study (60 credits)
Students will select 60 credits from the following modules:
| Name | Code | Credits |
|---|
This is the first year of your level 2 study. Students must select at least one module per semester in each year of study, to a total of 60 credits.
Option A Study (20 credits)
Students will select 20 credits from the following modules:
| Name | Code | Credits |
|---|---|---|
| ADOLESCENCE IN AMERICAN CULTURE POST-1950 This module will suggest that there is a preoccupation with adolescence in postwar and contemporary American culture, and will explore why this is the case. It will do so by introducing students to representations of adolescence in various disciplines, focusing particularly on literature, film, psychoanalysis and cultural studies. Questions to be explored will include: What is 'American' about adolescence? How do representations of adolescence vary according to factors such as gender, race and region? Is there a particular discipline or artistic form which is especially suited to depictions of adolescence? | AMSA2S53 | 20 |
| AMERICAN MASCULINITIES This interdisciplinary module will examine how national identity and white masculinity are entwined in a conflicting discourse of hegemonic and challenging narratives in the US. It will focus on a specific construction of white masculinity as it has become embedded and legitimized as the normative national identity against which all others are subordinated. The module will examine gender discourses that radically challenge this accepted link between masculinity, whiteness and national identity. | AMSA2S02 | 20 |
| AMERICAN MUSIC The first book published in the New World was a hymn book. Music, sacred and profane, has been at the centre of American lives ever since. Accordingly, this module will explore the history of American music - but it will also examine the way that its development tells a larger story. Focusing largely on the vernacular musical traditions we will encounter a wide range of musical styles and musicians, each of which has something vital to tell us about the shaping of America. After all, as Plato knew, "When the mode of the music changes, the walls of the city shake." | AMSA2S45 | 20 |
| DOING IT YOURSELF: PUNK AND AMERICA Although the exact provenance of ‘punk’ remains a contested issue, since its emergence in the mid-1970s this transnational musical and cultural phenomenon has become very much a part of the American grain. Indeed, punk’s capacity to adopt, appropriate, assimilate, and re-invent a vast and eclectic range of cultural styles, forms, and ideas, as well as its ‘do-it-yourself,’ places it in a longstanding American intellectual tradition of self-reliance and innovation. In this interdisciplinary module, we will attempt to define punk, and consider what it means to be punk, by examining its influence in music, film, poetry, and fiction. The unit will also explore the socio-political implications of punk in terms of gender, sexuality, and community, and question the possibility of punk in an increasingly globalised and commoditised world. | AMSA2S05 | 20 |
| FILMS THAT MADE US AMERICAN: THE 1980S THROUGH THE MOVIES The module will examine America in the1980s. It will look at youth culture, post-Vietnam revisionism and the ‘remasculinization of America’, yuppie culture, and the impact of both AIDS and drug addiction. Core factors of study in this module are the effects of both New Right morality upon the American socio-cultural landscape, and Ronald Reagan as postmodern president administrating to a ‘celluloid America’ of his own fantastic imagining. Overall, the module will offer the chance to analyse the tensions and contradictions of the decade as they were played out in both the content and structure of contemporary American film. | AMSA2S03 | 20 |
| LOOKING AT PICTURES: PHOTOGRAPHY AND VISUAL CULTURE IN THE USA Photographic portraits, family albums, anthropological illustrations, lynching postcards, advertisements, food packaging and fashion photos are just some of the pictures that will be "read" and analysed in this module. Students will explore how visual texts can contribute to an understanding of nationhood, class, race, sexuality and identity in the USA. Opening sessions will focus on ways of "reading" visual texts. [No previous experience of working with images is necessary]. Most of the semester will be devoted to analysing how photographic images both reflect and contribute to constructions of American culture. | AMSA2S48 | 20 |
| THE GHETTO SINCE 1945 âTo smash something is the ghettoâs chronic need,â James Baldwin wrote in 1955 â describing a place of pent-up anger, bitterness, and violence. Through the 1960s, sociologists would describe those communities as âtangles of pathology.â They were environmentally degraded, too. The âphysical ugliness â the dirt, the filth, the neglect,â Kenneth Clark stated in 1965, was âthe most concrete fact of the ghetto.â And things seemed to get worse after the Sixties. By the 1990s, Cornel West would write of âthe murky waters of despair and dread that now flood the streets of black Americaâ as inner city poverty grew ever more intense, violent crime seemed to reach new heights, and hope vanished. In recent times, the stark divide between black and white in urban America has formed a massive question mark over claims that the United States, after the election of Barak Obama, has truly become a âpost-racialâ nation. To that extent, the ghetto has long been defined as a central problem in American society. But let us not to forget, these inner city districts, which are called ghettos, are also places where Americans have struggled to forge communities. Ghettos have given rise to some of Americaâs most dynamic social movements, most radical political ideas, and most acclaimed works of art, literature, and music. They have been areas defined by the social ills of poverty but, seemingly paradoxically, they have also been vibrant centres of American culture. This module takes an interdisciplinary approach to the history of the ghetto since World War II, offering students an opportunity to gain new insights into the culture of urban America and the politics of race. | AMSA2S07 | 20 |
| THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE Centred in New York City, the Harlem Renaissance was a period of intense cultural production and political activity amongst African Americans in the early twentieth century. This movement is often credited with ushering in the era of the âNew Negroâ â a generation of defiant and empowered African Americans who claimed the right to âspeak for themselvesâ in the face of race discrimination. Through an intensive interdisciplinary examination of African American fiction, poetry, music, painting, theatre, this module will assess the extent to which the Harlem Renaissanceâs influence extended beyond the confines New York City. How did African Americans view their relationship with the United States? How did they view the Caribbean, Europe and Africa? How was Harlem Renaissance art received overseas? Students will explore these key questions by examining, among other works, the novels of Claude McKay, Nella Larsen and Zora Neale Hurston, poetry by Alice Dunbar-Nelson, Langston Hughes and Countee Cullee as well as the blues lyrics of Billie Holiday and Ma Rainey. | AMSA2S16 | 20 |
Option B Study (20 credits)
Students will select 20 credits from the following modules:
| Name | Code | Credits |
|---|---|---|
| 19TH CENTURY AMERICAN WRITING Seminar discussing 19th century American fiction and non-fictional prose. Alternative timetable slots to C2-C3 are E1-E2 or A4*AX. | AMSA2L59 | 20 |
| 20TH CENTURY AMERICAN POETRY This module will explore 20th Century American poetry from the turn of the century through to the 1960s. We begin by considering the contributions of Modernist-affiliated poets including Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot and Gertrude Stein. We continue chronologically, stopping along the way to study and define the New Criticism, the Objectivist nexus, the Harlem Renaissance, Formalism, Free Verse, the Beats, the New York School and more. | AMSA2L24 | 20 |
| AMERICAN PARIS BETWEEN THE WARS This module introduces some of the styles, ideas and ideologies of trans-Atlantic modernism as elements in the creation of a myth. It centres on the American expatriate colony in Paris and, from this, works to contextualise and re-imagine some of the century's most notorious literary and artistic moments. Initial studies of the little magazines, manifestos, publishers, painters and photographers provide a sense of the driving political and aesthetic energies of the period, while the module's middle weeks uses this context to re-read a group of expatriate novels. The final three weeks of the course shifts the emphasis to considerations of memory, memoir and the construction of myth | AMSA2L04 | 20 |
| AMERICAN WOMEN WRITERS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY This module surveys the prose of some of the twentieth century's most important American women writers, writers who (or whose 'other' works) tend to disappear from reading lists that include books by women only out of duty. Along the way we will seek to interrogate the terms with which we begin: American, women and prose. Assuming that biology does not define literature, we will instead seek to understand the social pressures on these women writers, and their responses to them, in an effort to maintain the specificity, diversity and range of these women's literary pursuits. | AMSA2L63 | 20 |
| CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN FICTION This unit examines some of the ways in which very recent American fiction has responded to postmodernism, to generic border-crossing, and to pervasive cultural and social issues like multiculturalism and identity politics. How does literature imagine itself in an age of increasing globalization of media and literature? How does it respond to challenges to canon formation and to the very notion of the literary? Two Timetable slots: C5*C6 or D5*D6. | AMSA2L78 | 20 |
| RADICAL COUSINS OR RIVAL SIBLINGS? U.S. AND AUSTRALIAN LITERATURES This module takes as its point of departure critic Joseph Jonesâ representation of America and Australia as âradical cousinsâ and extends this formulation to ask whether they might equally be thought of as rival siblings. From its establishment as a penal colony in 1788âin large part as a result of the newly independent United Statesâ refusal to harbour Britainâs convicts any longerâAustralia remained loyal to the Empire, even as it looked increasingly to the United States for guidance in matters of politics and popular culture. The module compares American and Australian literature from the past century or so in order to examine how both countries have engaged and explored shared questions about settler and post/ colonial identity; the staging of cultural independence from Great Britain; the size and scope of the natural environment; and gender performance, among others. | AMSA2L19 | 20 |
| THE BEATS AND THE LIMITS OF WRITING This module covers the writers known as âThe Beatsâ in terms of their antecedents, the literary and cultural traditions in which they worked, and the social and critical debates that raged during their heyday. Students will be asked to read widely, to compare and contrast different writersâ styles, and to make informed judgements about the writersâ relationships to the times in which they wrote. The module aims to foster an understanding of the Beat literary phenomenon in literary, political and social contexts. It will also examine the debts Beat writers owed to âAmerican Renaissanceâ writers including Emerson and Whitman, to wider ideas of the âavant-gardeâ in the Twentieth Century generally, and to European Romantic traditions. It will investigate how a Beat poetics developed as a response to Cold War âconsensus cultureâ, and sought to establish a countercultural (though distinctly American) âtraditionâ. | AMSA2L55 | 20 |
| THE HOLOCAUST IN AMERICAN LITERATURE This module aims to explore representations of the Holocaust in American literature. Students will explore how the Holocaust is represented by American Jewish and non-Jewish authors. Students will consider whether, and how, the Holocaust is ‘Americanised’ by American writers; they will consider some of the ethical and philosophical debates concerning representation of the Holocaust in art; they will examine how American Jewish writers engage with the Holocaust to negotiate questions of Jewish identity; and they will consider the problematic uses and definitions of the term ‘holocaust’ in American culture. | AMSA2L82 | 20 |
Option C Study (20 credits)
Students will select 20 credits from the following modules:
| Name | Code | Credits |
|---|---|---|
| AMERICA AND VIETNAM This module examines the involvement of the United States in Vietnam, from the Second World War to the Paris Peace Accords of 1973. Focusing on the main period of US entanglement, 1963-1973, it uses documents, historical studies, film, and literary texts to illuminate the American experience in Vietnam and its domestic repercussions. | AMSA2H01 | 20 |
| AMERICA IN THE WORLD: THE HISTORY OF U.S. FOREIGN RELATIONS This course offers a critical introduction to understanding Americaâs role in the world. It provides historical and political analyses of U.S. foreign relations, looking at the themes and traditions that have shaped Americaâs increasing influence in global affairs during the twentieth century up to the present day. From the war of 1898 to the conflicts of the early twenty-first century, it examines how and why the U.S. relationship to the world has changed. Has the United States helped or harmed the rest of the world during its rise to world power? In discussing foreign relations, the course analyses political and diplomatic elites, but also, the role of foreign actors and private organisations, from religious groups to citizen organisations to NGOs, in defining America in the world. | AMSA2H21 | 20 |
| NEW FRONTIERS: THE AMERICAN SIXTIES âAsk not what your country can do for you â ask what you can do for your country.â John F. Kennedyâs famous words, spoken at his inauguration, January 1961, have been remembered as marking not just the beginning of a new Presidency but also of the kindling of a renewed ambition and spirit of endeavour. JFK would not live to see the end of his first term but, in many ways, the vision he shared at his inauguration would be carried forward by his successor, Lyndon Johnson. The 1960s would be a decade in which Americans would strive for social justice at home â for black civil rights and against poverty â confront the environmental challenges of the modern age, reach for the Moon, and square up to enemies abroad, notably, in Vietnam. By 1968, just 7 short years after JFKâs Inauguration, the nation seemed torn â with anti-war activists, New Left radicals and black militants at odds with a conservative âsilent majorityâ â whose votes propelled Richard Nixon into office. Had liberal America squandered the promise of the Kennedy years? Or should we see the turmoil of the Sixties as a crucible, in which new ideas were forged, which sought to question the assumptions of the Cold War era? Or was it all a terrible mistake, a time of âbig governmentâ and immorality, which weakened the nation, contrary to JFKâs stated ambition? The legacy of the 1960s is still contested in the âculture warsâ of today: this module explores that contentious decade. | AMSA2H12 | 20 |
| NEW YORK CITY: HISTORY AND CULTURE IN THE 20TH CENTURY This module will explore the history and culture of New York City in the 20th century. The readings, lectures, and discussions will concentrate on ethnic identity, the civil rights movement, public art, political and social conflict, urban development, film, architecture, and literature. The course will also examine why New Yorkers pay inordinate attention to their neighbourhoods and how this emphasis on place has racial and ethnic implications. | AMSA2H10 | 20 |
| RACE AND RACISM IN THE USA This seminar will explore the origins and continued role in American culture of the idea of race. Where did the concept of race come from? And to what uses has it been put by various groups within America's pluralistic society? Restricted to students on programmes in American History or Literature, or who have previously done modules on race. Not available to first year students. | AMSA2H32 | 20 |
| THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION In a painful and violent series of crises between 1763 and 1789, settlers in the most populous British colonies in North America divorced themselves from the Empire and created the United States. The Revolution affected nearly all aspects of American life, including the political economy of slavery, gender relations, economic development, and the pace and pattern of the expansion of white settlement. With these transformations in mind, this module traces the history of North America from the end of the Seven Yearsâ War through the ratification of the U.S. Constitution to the election of Thomas Jefferson in the ârevolution of 1800â. Students will consider the origins of tensions with Britain, the methods used to express discontent, the impact of the war, and the political influence of the ideas developed during the revolutionary era on the early development of the United States. | AMSA2H23 | 20 |
| THE COLD WAR AND AMERICAN CULTURE This module explores the way in which American society and culture was shaped during the years of the Cold War, the tense standoff between the two âsuperpowersâ between the end of World War II and the fall of the Berlin Wall. The work includes consideration of the key events, issues, and concepts in the history of the Cold War, from the division of Europe and the Marshall Plan, the emergence of the Truman Doctrine, the impact of the Chinese Revolution, through the Cuban missile crisis, the period of detente in the 1970s and the chilling of US-Soviet relations during the âsecond Cold Warâ of the early 1980s. Particular attention is given to the impact of those events in the USA, upon the ways in which Cold War anxieties were represented â and, also, the ways in which anxieties about American society became meshed in the Cold War. Discussion will range across issues from the bomb and the space race to the family, gender, and race. Throughout, particular use will be made of visual sources and film. | AMSA2H44 | 20 |
This is the second year of your Level 2 study. Students must select at least one module per semester in each year of study, to a total of 60 credits.
Option A Study (20 credits)
Students will select 20 credits from the following modules:
| Name | Code | Credits |
|---|---|---|
| ADOLESCENCE IN AMERICAN CULTURE POST-1950 This module will suggest that there is a preoccupation with adolescence in postwar and contemporary American culture, and will explore why this is the case. It will do so by introducing students to representations of adolescence in various disciplines, focusing particularly on literature, film, psychoanalysis and cultural studies. Questions to be explored will include: What is 'American' about adolescence? How do representations of adolescence vary according to factors such as gender, race and region? Is there a particular discipline or artistic form which is especially suited to depictions of adolescence? | AMSA2S53 | 20 |
| AMERICAN MASCULINITIES This interdisciplinary module will examine how national identity and white masculinity are entwined in a conflicting discourse of hegemonic and challenging narratives in the US. It will focus on a specific construction of white masculinity as it has become embedded and legitimized as the normative national identity against which all others are subordinated. The module will examine gender discourses that radically challenge this accepted link between masculinity, whiteness and national identity. | AMSA2S02 | 20 |
| AMERICAN MUSIC The first book published in the New World was a hymn book. Music, sacred and profane, has been at the centre of American lives ever since. Accordingly, this module will explore the history of American music - but it will also examine the way that its development tells a larger story. Focusing largely on the vernacular musical traditions we will encounter a wide range of musical styles and musicians, each of which has something vital to tell us about the shaping of America. After all, as Plato knew, "When the mode of the music changes, the walls of the city shake." | AMSA2S45 | 20 |
| DOING IT YOURSELF: PUNK AND AMERICA Although the exact provenance of ‘punk’ remains a contested issue, since its emergence in the mid-1970s this transnational musical and cultural phenomenon has become very much a part of the American grain. Indeed, punk’s capacity to adopt, appropriate, assimilate, and re-invent a vast and eclectic range of cultural styles, forms, and ideas, as well as its ‘do-it-yourself,’ places it in a longstanding American intellectual tradition of self-reliance and innovation. In this interdisciplinary module, we will attempt to define punk, and consider what it means to be punk, by examining its influence in music, film, poetry, and fiction. The unit will also explore the socio-political implications of punk in terms of gender, sexuality, and community, and question the possibility of punk in an increasingly globalised and commoditised world. | AMSA2S05 | 20 |
| FILMS THAT MADE US AMERICAN: THE 1980S THROUGH THE MOVIES The module will examine America in the1980s. It will look at youth culture, post-Vietnam revisionism and the ‘remasculinization of America’, yuppie culture, and the impact of both AIDS and drug addiction. Core factors of study in this module are the effects of both New Right morality upon the American socio-cultural landscape, and Ronald Reagan as postmodern president administrating to a ‘celluloid America’ of his own fantastic imagining. Overall, the module will offer the chance to analyse the tensions and contradictions of the decade as they were played out in both the content and structure of contemporary American film. | AMSA2S03 | 20 |
| LOOKING AT PICTURES: PHOTOGRAPHY AND VISUAL CULTURE IN THE USA Photographic portraits, family albums, anthropological illustrations, lynching postcards, advertisements, food packaging and fashion photos are just some of the pictures that will be "read" and analysed in this module. Students will explore how visual texts can contribute to an understanding of nationhood, class, race, sexuality and identity in the USA. Opening sessions will focus on ways of "reading" visual texts. [No previous experience of working with images is necessary]. Most of the semester will be devoted to analysing how photographic images both reflect and contribute to constructions of American culture. | AMSA2S48 | 20 |
| THE GHETTO SINCE 1945 âTo smash something is the ghettoâs chronic need,â James Baldwin wrote in 1955 â describing a place of pent-up anger, bitterness, and violence. Through the 1960s, sociologists would describe those communities as âtangles of pathology.â They were environmentally degraded, too. The âphysical ugliness â the dirt, the filth, the neglect,â Kenneth Clark stated in 1965, was âthe most concrete fact of the ghetto.â And things seemed to get worse after the Sixties. By the 1990s, Cornel West would write of âthe murky waters of despair and dread that now flood the streets of black Americaâ as inner city poverty grew ever more intense, violent crime seemed to reach new heights, and hope vanished. In recent times, the stark divide between black and white in urban America has formed a massive question mark over claims that the United States, after the election of Barak Obama, has truly become a âpost-racialâ nation. To that extent, the ghetto has long been defined as a central problem in American society. But let us not to forget, these inner city districts, which are called ghettos, are also places where Americans have struggled to forge communities. Ghettos have given rise to some of Americaâs most dynamic social movements, most radical political ideas, and most acclaimed works of art, literature, and music. They have been areas defined by the social ills of poverty but, seemingly paradoxically, they have also been vibrant centres of American culture. This module takes an interdisciplinary approach to the history of the ghetto since World War II, offering students an opportunity to gain new insights into the culture of urban America and the politics of race. | AMSA2S07 | 20 |
| THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE Centred in New York City, the Harlem Renaissance was a period of intense cultural production and political activity amongst African Americans in the early twentieth century. This movement is often credited with ushering in the era of the âNew Negroâ â a generation of defiant and empowered African Americans who claimed the right to âspeak for themselvesâ in the face of race discrimination. Through an intensive interdisciplinary examination of African American fiction, poetry, music, painting, theatre, this module will assess the extent to which the Harlem Renaissanceâs influence extended beyond the confines New York City. How did African Americans view their relationship with the United States? How did they view the Caribbean, Europe and Africa? How was Harlem Renaissance art received overseas? Students will explore these key questions by examining, among other works, the novels of Claude McKay, Nella Larsen and Zora Neale Hurston, poetry by Alice Dunbar-Nelson, Langston Hughes and Countee Cullee as well as the blues lyrics of Billie Holiday and Ma Rainey. | AMSA2S16 | 20 |
Option B Study (20 credits)
Students will select 20 credits from the following modules:
| Name | Code | Credits |
|---|---|---|
| 19TH CENTURY AMERICAN WRITING Seminar discussing 19th century American fiction and non-fictional prose. Alternative timetable slots to C2-C3 are E1-E2 or A4*AX. | AMSA2L59 | 20 |
| 20TH CENTURY AMERICAN POETRY This module will explore 20th Century American poetry from the turn of the century through to the 1960s. We begin by considering the contributions of Modernist-affiliated poets including Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot and Gertrude Stein. We continue chronologically, stopping along the way to study and define the New Criticism, the Objectivist nexus, the Harlem Renaissance, Formalism, Free Verse, the Beats, the New York School and more. | AMSA2L24 | 20 |
| AMERICAN PARIS BETWEEN THE WARS This module introduces some of the styles, ideas and ideologies of trans-Atlantic modernism as elements in the creation of a myth. It centres on the American expatriate colony in Paris and, from this, works to contextualise and re-imagine some of the century's most notorious literary and artistic moments. Initial studies of the little magazines, manifestos, publishers, painters and photographers provide a sense of the driving political and aesthetic energies of the period, while the module's middle weeks uses this context to re-read a group of expatriate novels. The final three weeks of the course shifts the emphasis to considerations of memory, memoir and the construction of myth | AMSA2L04 | 20 |
| AMERICAN WOMEN WRITERS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY This module surveys the prose of some of the twentieth century's most important American women writers, writers who (or whose 'other' works) tend to disappear from reading lists that include books by women only out of duty. Along the way we will seek to interrogate the terms with which we begin: American, women and prose. Assuming that biology does not define literature, we will instead seek to understand the social pressures on these women writers, and their responses to them, in an effort to maintain the specificity, diversity and range of these women's literary pursuits. | AMSA2L63 | 20 |
| CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN FICTION This unit examines some of the ways in which very recent American fiction has responded to postmodernism, to generic border-crossing, and to pervasive cultural and social issues like multiculturalism and identity politics. How does literature imagine itself in an age of increasing globalization of media and literature? How does it respond to challenges to canon formation and to the very notion of the literary? Two Timetable slots: C5*C6 or D5*D6. | AMSA2L78 | 20 |
| RADICAL COUSINS OR RIVAL SIBLINGS? U.S. AND AUSTRALIAN LITERATURES This module takes as its point of departure critic Joseph Jonesâ representation of America and Australia as âradical cousinsâ and extends this formulation to ask whether they might equally be thought of as rival siblings. From its establishment as a penal colony in 1788âin large part as a result of the newly independent United Statesâ refusal to harbour Britainâs convicts any longerâAustralia remained loyal to the Empire, even as it looked increasingly to the United States for guidance in matters of politics and popular culture. The module compares American and Australian literature from the past century or so in order to examine how both countries have engaged and explored shared questions about settler and post/ colonial identity; the staging of cultural independence from Great Britain; the size and scope of the natural environment; and gender performance, among others. | AMSA2L19 | 20 |
| THE BEATS AND THE LIMITS OF WRITING This module covers the writers known as âThe Beatsâ in terms of their antecedents, the literary and cultural traditions in which they worked, and the social and critical debates that raged during their heyday. Students will be asked to read widely, to compare and contrast different writersâ styles, and to make informed judgements about the writersâ relationships to the times in which they wrote. The module aims to foster an understanding of the Beat literary phenomenon in literary, political and social contexts. It will also examine the debts Beat writers owed to âAmerican Renaissanceâ writers including Emerson and Whitman, to wider ideas of the âavant-gardeâ in the Twentieth Century generally, and to European Romantic traditions. It will investigate how a Beat poetics developed as a response to Cold War âconsensus cultureâ, and sought to establish a countercultural (though distinctly American) âtraditionâ. | AMSA2L55 | 20 |
| THE HOLOCAUST IN AMERICAN LITERATURE This module aims to explore representations of the Holocaust in American literature. Students will explore how the Holocaust is represented by American Jewish and non-Jewish authors. Students will consider whether, and how, the Holocaust is ‘Americanised’ by American writers; they will consider some of the ethical and philosophical debates concerning representation of the Holocaust in art; they will examine how American Jewish writers engage with the Holocaust to negotiate questions of Jewish identity; and they will consider the problematic uses and definitions of the term ‘holocaust’ in American culture. | AMSA2L82 | 20 |
Option C Study (20 credits)
Students will select 20 credits from the following modules:
| Name | Code | Credits |
|---|---|---|
| AMERICA AND VIETNAM This module examines the involvement of the United States in Vietnam, from the Second World War to the Paris Peace Accords of 1973. Focusing on the main period of US entanglement, 1963-1973, it uses documents, historical studies, film, and literary texts to illuminate the American experience in Vietnam and its domestic repercussions. | AMSA2H01 | 20 |
| AMERICA IN THE WORLD: THE HISTORY OF U.S. FOREIGN RELATIONS This course offers a critical introduction to understanding Americaâs role in the world. It provides historical and political analyses of U.S. foreign relations, looking at the themes and traditions that have shaped Americaâs increasing influence in global affairs during the twentieth century up to the present day. From the war of 1898 to the conflicts of the early twenty-first century, it examines how and why the U.S. relationship to the world has changed. Has the United States helped or harmed the rest of the world during its rise to world power? In discussing foreign relations, the course analyses political and diplomatic elites, but also, the role of foreign actors and private organisations, from religious groups to citizen organisations to NGOs, in defining America in the world. | AMSA2H21 | 20 |
| NEW FRONTIERS: THE AMERICAN SIXTIES âAsk not what your country can do for you â ask what you can do for your country.â John F. Kennedyâs famous words, spoken at his inauguration, January 1961, have been remembered as marking not just the beginning of a new Presidency but also of the kindling of a renewed ambition and spirit of endeavour. JFK would not live to see the end of his first term but, in many ways, the vision he shared at his inauguration would be carried forward by his successor, Lyndon Johnson. The 1960s would be a decade in which Americans would strive for social justice at home â for black civil rights and against poverty â confront the environmental challenges of the modern age, reach for the Moon, and square up to enemies abroad, notably, in Vietnam. By 1968, just 7 short years after JFKâs Inauguration, the nation seemed torn â with anti-war activists, New Left radicals and black militants at odds with a conservative âsilent majorityâ â whose votes propelled Richard Nixon into office. Had liberal America squandered the promise of the Kennedy years? Or should we see the turmoil of the Sixties as a crucible, in which new ideas were forged, which sought to question the assumptions of the Cold War era? Or was it all a terrible mistake, a time of âbig governmentâ and immorality, which weakened the nation, contrary to JFKâs stated ambition? The legacy of the 1960s is still contested in the âculture warsâ of today: this module explores that contentious decade. | AMSA2H12 | 20 |
| NEW YORK CITY: HISTORY AND CULTURE IN THE 20TH CENTURY This module will explore the history and culture of New York City in the 20th century. The readings, lectures, and discussions will concentrate on ethnic identity, the civil rights movement, public art, political and social conflict, urban development, film, architecture, and literature. The course will also examine why New Yorkers pay inordinate attention to their neighbourhoods and how this emphasis on place has racial and ethnic implications. | AMSA2H10 | 20 |
| RACE AND RACISM IN THE USA This seminar will explore the origins and continued role in American culture of the idea of race. Where did the concept of race come from? And to what uses has it been put by various groups within America's pluralistic society? Restricted to students on programmes in American History or Literature, or who have previously done modules on race. Not available to first year students. | AMSA2H32 | 20 |
| THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION In a painful and violent series of crises between 1763 and 1789, settlers in the most populous British colonies in North America divorced themselves from the Empire and created the United States. The Revolution affected nearly all aspects of American life, including the political economy of slavery, gender relations, economic development, and the pace and pattern of the expansion of white settlement. With these transformations in mind, this module traces the history of North America from the end of the Seven Yearsâ War through the ratification of the U.S. Constitution to the election of Thomas Jefferson in the ârevolution of 1800â. Students will consider the origins of tensions with Britain, the methods used to express discontent, the impact of the war, and the political influence of the ideas developed during the revolutionary era on the early development of the United States. | AMSA2H23 | 20 |
| THE COLD WAR AND AMERICAN CULTURE This module explores the way in which American society and culture was shaped during the years of the Cold War, the tense standoff between the two âsuperpowersâ between the end of World War II and the fall of the Berlin Wall. The work includes consideration of the key events, issues, and concepts in the history of the Cold War, from the division of Europe and the Marshall Plan, the emergence of the Truman Doctrine, the impact of the Chinese Revolution, through the Cuban missile crisis, the period of detente in the 1970s and the chilling of US-Soviet relations during the âsecond Cold Warâ of the early 1980s. Particular attention is given to the impact of those events in the USA, upon the ways in which Cold War anxieties were represented â and, also, the ways in which anxieties about American society became meshed in the Cold War. Discussion will range across issues from the bomb and the space race to the family, gender, and race. Throughout, particular use will be made of visual sources and film. | AMSA2H44 | 20 |
This is the first year of your Level 3 study. Students must select at least one module per semester in each year of study, to a total of 60 credits.
Option A Study (30 credits)
Students will select 30 credits from the following modules:
| Name | Code | Credits |
|---|---|---|
| NATIVE AMERICAN WRITING AND FILM This module considers Native American writing and film as sites of cultural and political resistance, analysing the ways in which a diverse range of Native authors, screenwriters and directors within the United States respond to contemporary tribal socio-economic and political conditions. Taking popular ideas of 'the Indian', this module considers the ways in which stereotypes and audience expectations are subverted and challenged. Topics include race and racism, indigeneity, identity, culture, gender, genre, land and notions of 'home', community, dialogue, postcolonial theory in its application to those who remain colonised, and political issues such as human rights and environmental racism. | AMSA3S02 | 30 |
Option B Study (30 credits)
Students will select 30 credits from the following modules:
| Name | Code | Credits |
|---|---|---|
| AMERICAN AUTOBIOGRAPHY This module examines the fascination of American literature with questions of selfhood, identity and autobiography. Opening sessions of the module will look at ways in which the very idea of America and its literature emerges from early-national attempts to 'write the self' and discuss changing theories of selfhood, identity and individuality as they are played out in America's historical development from colony, to nation, to postmodern superpower. Subsequent sessions will focus on specific texts of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries which engage questions of selfhood in order to define, maintain and develop an idea of what being an American might mean. | AMSA3L07 | 30 |
| AMERICAN AUTOBIOGRAPHY This is a 20 credit version of AMSA3L07 AMERICAN AUTOBIOGRAPHY and is available only to Visiting Students. This module examines the fascination of American literature with questions of selfhood, identity and autobiography. Opening sessions of the module will look at ways in which the very idea of America and its literature emerges from early-national attempts to 'write the self' and discuss changing theories of selfhood, identity and individuality as they are played out in America's historical development from colony, to nation, to postmodern superpower. Subsequent sessions will focus on specific texts of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries which engage questions of selfhood in order to define, maintain and develop an idea of what being an American might mean. | AMSA3L13 | 20 |
| AMERICAN GOTHIC American fiction began in the period of the European Gothic novel, which thus marked the American tradition from the first. In this seminar module we will establish the meaning of gothic conventions and consider their persisting effects in American fiction. | AMSA3L62 | 30 |
| AMERICAN GOTHIC This module is a 20-credit version of AMSA3L62 AMERICAN GOTHIC and is available only to Visiting Students. American fiction began in the period of the European Gothic novel, which thus marked the American tradition from the first. In this seminar module we will establish the meaning of gothic conventions and consider their persisting effects in American fiction | AMSA3L68 | 20 |
| AMERICAN PARADISE: LAND AND CULTURE IN THE USA This module is about land. It is about the dream of the American wilderness, of bountiful nature in a land of plenty, and about earth turned to profit. It is about plants and botany - and the way in which the American people have responded to the natural environment around them. For scientists, explorers, artists and writers, that could mean a sense of wonder. In rural America, though, it often meant, more prosaically, viewing the land as a resource, to be exploited, by cultivation or mineral extraction and mining, perhaps. In the industrial city, it often meant creating protected enclaves â gardens, parks, national parks â which might offer a retreat from urban smokestacks. In the post-industrial age, it has very often meant returning to derelict land to plant crops or parks where factories once stood, to grow food and, possibly more importantly, to regrow communities. Above all, this module is about the many different ways in which Americans have defined their own sense of their nation and their own identities through reference to the natural world. | AMSA3S16 | 30 |
| AMERICAN PARADISE: LAND AND CULTURE IN THE USA This is a 20 credit version of AMSA3S16 AMERICAN PARADISE: LAND AND CULTURE IN THE USA and is available only to Visiting students. | AMSA3S18 | 20 |
| AMERICAN VIOLENCE âViolence,â the firebrand black militant H. Rap Brown infamously said, âis as American as cherry pie.â Many Americans who lived through the turbulent 1960s understood what Brown meant even if they disagreed with his politics. Writing in 1969, the liberal historian Arthur M. Schlesinger conceded that, with the Vietnam War raging overseas and ghetto riots exploding at home on a yearly basis, in the wake of the assassinations of JFK, Martin Luther King, and Bobby Kennedy, and looking at the violent preoccupations of TV and movies, Americans must surely be judged âthe most frightening people on the planet.â Certainly, viewed from the relatively orderly perspective of Europe, the United States appears to have an exceptional relationship with violence â perhaps represented above all by a homicide rate far higher than other comparable industrialised nations. This module explores key themes in the history of violence in the United States. It takes an interdisciplinary approach, drawing on a range of sources, including film, photography and music, in order to understand how violence has shaped American society and culture. | AMSA3S27 | 30 |
| AMERICAN VIOLENCE This is the 20 credit version of AMSA3S27 AMERICAN VIOLENCE and is available only to Visiting students. | AMSA3S29 | 20 |
| CALIFORNIA DREAMING: NOVELS OF THE GOLDEN STATE This module looks at the ways in which California has represented itself, or been represented, in fiction. Beginning with the ���first��� published Californian novel of 1854, The Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta, the Celebrated California Bandit, we will trace the development of the Californian novel into the early twenty-first century. One particular interest is the ways in which Californian novels engage with, dissect, and critique notions of California as a ���dream��� or ideal/idyll; and we will explore how novelists address crucial, and often contentious, historical moments in Californian history. Topics include settlement and ���removal���; migration and immigration; corporate interests and ���big business���; Los Angleles as the City of Dreams; and ���global��� California. Writers will include some or all of the following: Mary Austin, T C Boyle, Joan Didion, Chester Himes, Frank Norris, Kem Nunn; John Rollin Ridge, Upton Sinclair, John Steinbeck, Helena Maria Viramontes, Nathaniel West, and Karen Tei Yamashita. | AMSA3L39 | 30 |
| CALIFORNIA DREAMING: NOVELS OF THE GOLDEN STATE This is a 20 credit version of AMSA3L39 CALIFORNIA DREAMING: NOVELS OF THE GOLDEN STATE and is available only to Visiting students. | AMSA3L41 | 20 |
| CREATIVE WRITING-FICTION In this course you will write original works of fiction and present them to your peers for feedback in a workshop environment. The instructor will guide you in critiquing your peers' writing, and advise you as you work your way through the drafting process. | AMSA3L66 | 30 |
| FIRST PEOPLES, COLONIZERS AND THE USA A two-semester special subject, this module situates the study of Indian history within the broad sweep of America's past, from colonial times to the present day. White settlement and expansion are the back-drop to the story, but native experiences and interpretations, which do not fit comfortably into the traditional narrative of nation-building, are given equal importance. In addition to studying such topics as federal Indian policy, missionary activities and reservation casinos, students will choose a specific tribe for individual study. | AMSA3H7Y | 60 |
| NATIVE AMERICAN WRITING AND FILM This module considers Native American writing and film as sites of cultural and political resistance, analysing the ways in which a diverse range of Native authors, screenwriters and directors within the United States respond to contemporary tribal socio-economic and political conditions. Taking popular ideas of 'the Indian', this module considers the ways in which stereotypes and audience expectations are subverted and challenged. Topics include race and racism, indigeneity, identity, culture, gender, genre, land and notions of 'home', community, dialogue, postcolonial theory in its application to those who remain colonised, and political issues such as human rights and environmental racism. | AMSA3S02 | 30 |
| NATIVE AMERICAN WRITING AND FILM This is a 20-credit version of AMSA3S02: NATIVE AMERICAN WRITING AND FILM and is available only to Visiting Students. This module considers Native American writing and film as sites of cultural and political resistance, analysing the ways in which a diverse range of Native authors, screenwriters and directors within the United States respond to contemporary tribal socio-economic and political conditions. Taking popular ideas of 'the Indian', this module considers the ways in which stereotypes and audience expectations are subverted and challenged. Topics include race and racism, indigeneity, identity, culture, gender, genre, land and notions of 'home', community, dialogue, postcolonial theory in its application to those who remain colonised, and political issues such as human rights and environmental racism. | AMSA3S04 | 20 |
| NEW AMERICAN CENTURY: CULTURE AND CRISIS A two semester special subject American Studies module that reads contemporary American culture through the lens of crisis. On the eve of the twenty-first century it appeared that the United States of America was indeed entering into a new American Century with its role as global leader as strongly defined as it was a century earlier. However, the last decade has been witness to a nation in turmoil and crisis, from the conflict between a universalising (Americanising) globalisation and an introspective nationalism; the war on terror and the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq; environmental crisis and disaster; the conflict surrounding immigration and national identity, to the present financial crisis. The renewed and vigorous return to rhetoric of national ‘unity’ that characterised the campaign and election of Barack Obama as President of the United States in 2008 highlighted the historical divisions and crises of American society and underscored that contemporary America is in crisis geopolitically, economically, democratically, environmentally, and culturally. Indeed, Obama’s presidency has witnessed further polarisation of American politics and culture with the birth of the Tea Party Movement and the very recent Occupy Wall Street (now global) movement. Through a variety of cultural texts, from literature, film and documentary, political speeches and letters, to historical texts and pop culture, this course examines the ways in which these crises have been culturally and politically constructed and given particular sets of meaning and the ways in which these ‘meanings’ have been utilised and mobilised to further create ‘Fortress America’ and its particular brand of nationalism at the expense of all ‘others’, whether outside or inside the United States. The way culture has engaged with, coproduced, and resisted these sets of meanings will be the main focus of this module. | AMSA3S1Y | 60 |
| POPULAR MUSIC AND THE CITY This module will examine the relationship between popular music and its social context by concentrating on several music forms such as the blues, soul, hip hop, funk, dancehall, Afrobeat, Afro-Brazilian, and tango. Readings will focus on: (1) concepts such as audiences, the music industry, cultural infrastructure, the African Diaspora, youth culture, and race; (2) processes such as urbanization, demographic change, globalization, and the politicization of popular music. | AMSA3H5Y | 60 |
| TALES OF THE JAZZ AGE This module examines American prose of the 1920s in the context of the Jazz Age. American literature of the 20s is often conflated with modernism, or the expatriate experience, or the Harlem Renaissance; this module will consider 1920s writing in the context of the market and the rise of professional authorship, anxieties about imitation and the middlebrow and conformism, and the pressures of commercial success on fiction. It will draw on reception studies and the influence of publication formats (mass-market magazines, serial publication, the burgeoning market for film adaptations). Texts will be drawn from a mix of “high” and “low.” After considering the pressures of commercialism on the publication of The Waste Land, texts could include the short stories of Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise, The Sun Also Rises, The Great Gatsby, Babbitt, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Winesburg, Ohio, Glimpses of the Moon, and Manhattan Transfer. Students will also be expected to research journalism of the day, such as The New Yorker and the New York Times, which have accessible online archives. | AMSA3L31 | 30 |
| TALES OF THE JAZZ AGE This is a 20 credit version of AMSA3L31 TALES OF THE JAZZ AGE and is available only to Visiting students. | AMSA3L33 | 20 |
| THE AMERICAN SUPREME COURT Alexander Hamilton famously described the US Supreme Court as the âleast dangerous branchâ of government. But is it? Although the Court lacks the âpower of the purse and the swordâ this has not prevented it becoming involved in some of the most controversial political and policy issues in American history. From establishing the power of judicial review in 1803, proclaiming that the Constitution never intended for African Americans to be considered âcitizensâ in 1857, giving judicial support to Jim Crow laws in 1896, repeatedly striking down New Deal legislation in the early 1930s, and halting the recount of votes in Florida during the 2000 election, the Court has played a major role in US politics. Since World War Two the Court has been even more active in areas of public policy, deciding cases involving freedom of speech, religion and the press, campaign finance, gun control and the right to bear arms, the rights of criminal suspects and defendants, abortion, and the death penalty, among many others. This course introduces students to both the role of the Court in the American system of government and the impact its decisions have had in crucial areas of public policy. By addressing questions such as the internal workings of the Court, the appointment process, and the power of judicial review students will gain a better understanding of the relative power of the Court. By studying some of the Courtâs major opinions students will develop an understanding of the role the Court has played in shaping modern American society. | AMSA3H24 | 30 |
| THE LITERARY 1960s When thinking of the sixties, literature, in general, is not what immediately springs to mind - pushed, as it is, to the background of music and the counterculture. Yet the decade brought about many profound changes in the paradigms of literature. Amongst such changes was the proliferation of metafiction as a narrative response to both the 'exhaustion' of literature in the light of the period's dramatic events, and to the new literary and philosophical developments in critical theory (poststructuralism). There was also the emergence of two 'new' genres: new journalism, and the non-fiction novel. This module is an examination of literary responses to the many changes and challenges brought about in this decade. It will discuss whether literature simply recoiled into solipsistic abstraction or whether it was a motivating force in the general struggle to conceptualize a ânewâ or countercultural American consciousness. | AMSA3L32 | 30 |
| THE LITERARY 1960s This is a 20 credit version of AMSA3L32 THE LITERARY 1960s and is available only to Visiting students. | AMSA3L34 | 20 |
| THE RISING TIDE OF THE TRANSPACIFIC This module considers the ways in which American literature has engaged with the opening up of Pacific space from the early nineteenth century to the present. From Melvilleâs adventures on whaling vessels throughout the Pacific, to Pearl Harbour and anxieties about Japanese presence in and beyond the borders of the United States, to writing by contemporary Asian-American authors whose work evinces influences from China, Korea and India, the texts on this course chart the ways in which the Pacific Ocean and its peoples have contributed to, created, and contested American national narratives. The module will develop studentsâ insights into issues of U.S. national history and cultural geography, and deepen their engagement with current theories of nationalism and transnationalism either in preparation for, or as a frame for reflection on, their studies abroad. | AMSA3L36 | 30 |
| THE RISING TIDE OF THE TRANSPACIFIC This is a 20 credit version of AMSA3L36 THE RISING TIDE OF THE TRANSPACIFIC and is available only to Visiting students. | AMSA3L38 | 20 |
| US INTERVENTIONISM, THE CIA AND COVERT ACTION The covert activities of the CIA represent arguably the most notorious face of US foreign relations. Yet to what extent is clandestine American interventionism consistent with official overt policies? And how do we come to understand covert action campaigns? This module will introduce the main conceptual and historic debates relevant to the analysis of covert action as a tool of US foreign relations. In so doing it will consider the institutions and processes behind covert action, especially the role of the CIA. It also considers the mediums that narrate and explain American covert action. This will provide a fuller and richer understanding of the United States’ place in the international system since World War II, its relationship to other states and non-state actors, and discussions about American identity and the nation’s role in the world. | AMSA3H26 | 30 |
| US INTERVENTIONISM, THE CIA AND COVERT ACTION This is the 20 credit version of AMSA3H26 US INTERVENTIONISM, THE CIA AND COVERT ACTION and is available only to Visiting students. | AMSA3H28 | 20 |
This is the second year of your Level 3 study. Students must select at least one module per semester in each year of study, to a total of 60 credits.
Option A Study (60 credits)
Students will select 60 credits from the following modules:
| Name | Code | Credits |
|---|---|---|
| AMERICAN AUTOBIOGRAPHY This module examines the fascination of American literature with questions of selfhood, identity and autobiography. Opening sessions of the module will look at ways in which the very idea of America and its literature emerges from early-national attempts to 'write the self' and discuss changing theories of selfhood, identity and individuality as they are played out in America's historical development from colony, to nation, to postmodern superpower. Subsequent sessions will focus on specific texts of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries which engage questions of selfhood in order to define, maintain and develop an idea of what being an American might mean. | AMSA3L07 | 30 |
| AMERICAN AUTOBIOGRAPHY This is a 20 credit version of AMSA3L07 AMERICAN AUTOBIOGRAPHY and is available only to Visiting Students. This module examines the fascination of American literature with questions of selfhood, identity and autobiography. Opening sessions of the module will look at ways in which the very idea of America and its literature emerges from early-national attempts to 'write the self' and discuss changing theories of selfhood, identity and individuality as they are played out in America's historical development from colony, to nation, to postmodern superpower. Subsequent sessions will focus on specific texts of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries which engage questions of selfhood in order to define, maintain and develop an idea of what being an American might mean. | AMSA3L13 | 20 |
| AMERICAN GOTHIC American fiction began in the period of the European Gothic novel, which thus marked the American tradition from the first. In this seminar module we will establish the meaning of gothic conventions and consider their persisting effects in American fiction. | AMSA3L62 | 30 |
| AMERICAN GOTHIC This module is a 20-credit version of AMSA3L62 AMERICAN GOTHIC and is available only to Visiting Students. American fiction began in the period of the European Gothic novel, which thus marked the American tradition from the first. In this seminar module we will establish the meaning of gothic conventions and consider their persisting effects in American fiction | AMSA3L68 | 20 |
| AMERICAN PARADISE: LAND AND CULTURE IN THE USA This module is about land. It is about the dream of the American wilderness, of bountiful nature in a land of plenty, and about earth turned to profit. It is about plants and botany - and the way in which the American people have responded to the natural environment around them. For scientists, explorers, artists and writers, that could mean a sense of wonder. In rural America, though, it often meant, more prosaically, viewing the land as a resource, to be exploited, by cultivation or mineral extraction and mining, perhaps. In the industrial city, it often meant creating protected enclaves â gardens, parks, national parks â which might offer a retreat from urban smokestacks. In the post-industrial age, it has very often meant returning to derelict land to plant crops or parks where factories once stood, to grow food and, possibly more importantly, to regrow communities. Above all, this module is about the many different ways in which Americans have defined their own sense of their nation and their own identities through reference to the natural world. | AMSA3S16 | 30 |
| AMERICAN PARADISE: LAND AND CULTURE IN THE USA This is a 20 credit version of AMSA3S16 AMERICAN PARADISE: LAND AND CULTURE IN THE USA and is available only to Visiting students. | AMSA3S18 | 20 |
| AMERICAN VIOLENCE âViolence,â the firebrand black militant H. Rap Brown infamously said, âis as American as cherry pie.â Many Americans who lived through the turbulent 1960s understood what Brown meant even if they disagreed with his politics. Writing in 1969, the liberal historian Arthur M. Schlesinger conceded that, with the Vietnam War raging overseas and ghetto riots exploding at home on a yearly basis, in the wake of the assassinations of JFK, Martin Luther King, and Bobby Kennedy, and looking at the violent preoccupations of TV and movies, Americans must surely be judged âthe most frightening people on the planet.â Certainly, viewed from the relatively orderly perspective of Europe, the United States appears to have an exceptional relationship with violence â perhaps represented above all by a homicide rate far higher than other comparable industrialised nations. This module explores key themes in the history of violence in the United States. It takes an interdisciplinary approach, drawing on a range of sources, including film, photography and music, in order to understand how violence has shaped American society and culture. | AMSA3S27 | 30 |
| AMERICAN VIOLENCE This is the 20 credit version of AMSA3S27 AMERICAN VIOLENCE and is available only to Visiting students. | AMSA3S29 | 20 |
| CALIFORNIA DREAMING: NOVELS OF THE GOLDEN STATE This module looks at the ways in which California has represented itself, or been represented, in fiction. Beginning with the ���first��� published Californian novel of 1854, The Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta, the Celebrated California Bandit, we will trace the development of the Californian novel into the early twenty-first century. One particular interest is the ways in which Californian novels engage with, dissect, and critique notions of California as a ���dream��� or ideal/idyll; and we will explore how novelists address crucial, and often contentious, historical moments in Californian history. Topics include settlement and ���removal���; migration and immigration; corporate interests and ���big business���; Los Angleles as the City of Dreams; and ���global��� California. Writers will include some or all of the following: Mary Austin, T C Boyle, Joan Didion, Chester Himes, Frank Norris, Kem Nunn; John Rollin Ridge, Upton Sinclair, John Steinbeck, Helena Maria Viramontes, Nathaniel West, and Karen Tei Yamashita. | AMSA3L39 | 30 |
| CALIFORNIA DREAMING: NOVELS OF THE GOLDEN STATE This is a 20 credit version of AMSA3L39 CALIFORNIA DREAMING: NOVELS OF THE GOLDEN STATE and is available only to Visiting students. | AMSA3L41 | 20 |
| CREATIVE WRITING-FICTION In this course you will write original works of fiction and present them to your peers for feedback in a workshop environment. The instructor will guide you in critiquing your peers' writing, and advise you as you work your way through the drafting process. | AMSA3L66 | 30 |
| FIRST PEOPLES, COLONIZERS AND THE USA A two-semester special subject, this module situates the study of Indian history within the broad sweep of America's past, from colonial times to the present day. White settlement and expansion are the back-drop to the story, but native experiences and interpretations, which do not fit comfortably into the traditional narrative of nation-building, are given equal importance. In addition to studying such topics as federal Indian policy, missionary activities and reservation casinos, students will choose a specific tribe for individual study. | AMSA3H7Y | 60 |
| FIRST PEOPLES, COLONIZERS AND THE USA A two-semester special subject, this module situates the study of Indian history within the broad sweep of America's past, from colonial times to the present day. White settlement and expansion are the back-drop to the story, but native experiences and interpretations, which do not fit comfortably into the traditional narrative of nation-building, are given equal importance. In addition to studying such topics as federal Indian policy, missionary activities and reservation casinos, students will choose a specific tribe for individual study. | AMSA3H7Y | 60 |
| NATIVE AMERICAN WRITING AND FILM This module considers Native American writing and film as sites of cultural and political resistance, analysing the ways in which a diverse range of Native authors, screenwriters and directors within the United States respond to contemporary tribal socio-economic and political conditions. Taking popular ideas of 'the Indian', this module considers the ways in which stereotypes and audience expectations are subverted and challenged. Topics include race and racism, indigeneity, identity, culture, gender, genre, land and notions of 'home', community, dialogue, postcolonial theory in its application to those who remain colonised, and political issues such as human rights and environmental racism. | AMSA3S02 | 30 |
| NATIVE AMERICAN WRITING AND FILM This is a 20-credit version of AMSA3S02: NATIVE AMERICAN WRITING AND FILM and is available only to Visiting Students. This module considers Native American writing and film as sites of cultural and political resistance, analysing the ways in which a diverse range of Native authors, screenwriters and directors within the United States respond to contemporary tribal socio-economic and political conditions. Taking popular ideas of 'the Indian', this module considers the ways in which stereotypes and audience expectations are subverted and challenged. Topics include race and racism, indigeneity, identity, culture, gender, genre, land and notions of 'home', community, dialogue, postcolonial theory in its application to those who remain colonised, and political issues such as human rights and environmental racism. | AMSA3S04 | 20 |
| NEW AMERICAN CENTURY: CULTURE AND CRISIS A two semester special subject American Studies module that reads contemporary American culture through the lens of crisis. On the eve of the twenty-first century it appeared that the United States of America was indeed entering into a new American Century with its role as global leader as strongly defined as it was a century earlier. However, the last decade has been witness to a nation in turmoil and crisis, from the conflict between a universalising (Americanising) globalisation and an introspective nationalism; the war on terror and the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq; environmental crisis and disaster; the conflict surrounding immigration and national identity, to the present financial crisis. The renewed and vigorous return to rhetoric of national ‘unity’ that characterised the campaign and election of Barack Obama as President of the United States in 2008 highlighted the historical divisions and crises of American society and underscored that contemporary America is in crisis geopolitically, economically, democratically, environmentally, and culturally. Indeed, Obama’s presidency has witnessed further polarisation of American politics and culture with the birth of the Tea Party Movement and the very recent Occupy Wall Street (now global) movement. Through a variety of cultural texts, from literature, film and documentary, political speeches and letters, to historical texts and pop culture, this course examines the ways in which these crises have been culturally and politically constructed and given particular sets of meaning and the ways in which these ‘meanings’ have been utilised and mobilised to further create ‘Fortress America’ and its particular brand of nationalism at the expense of all ‘others’, whether outside or inside the United States. The way culture has engaged with, coproduced, and resisted these sets of meanings will be the main focus of this module. | AMSA3S1Y | 60 |
| NEW AMERICAN CENTURY: CULTURE AND CRISIS A two semester special subject American Studies module that reads contemporary American culture through the lens of crisis. On the eve of the twenty-first century it appeared that the United States of America was indeed entering into a new American Century with its role as global leader as strongly defined as it was a century earlier. However, the last decade has been witness to a nation in turmoil and crisis, from the conflict between a universalising (Americanising) globalisation and an introspective nationalism; the war on terror and the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq; environmental crisis and disaster; the conflict surrounding immigration and national identity, to the present financial crisis. The renewed and vigorous return to rhetoric of national ‘unity’ that characterised the campaign and election of Barack Obama as President of the United States in 2008 highlighted the historical divisions and crises of American society and underscored that contemporary America is in crisis geopolitically, economically, democratically, environmentally, and culturally. Indeed, Obama’s presidency has witnessed further polarisation of American politics and culture with the birth of the Tea Party Movement and the very recent Occupy Wall Street (now global) movement. Through a variety of cultural texts, from literature, film and documentary, political speeches and letters, to historical texts and pop culture, this course examines the ways in which these crises have been culturally and politically constructed and given particular sets of meaning and the ways in which these ‘meanings’ have been utilised and mobilised to further create ‘Fortress America’ and its particular brand of nationalism at the expense of all ‘others’, whether outside or inside the United States. The way culture has engaged with, coproduced, and resisted these sets of meanings will be the main focus of this module. | AMSA3S1Y | 60 |
| POPULAR MUSIC AND THE CITY This module will examine the relationship between popular music and its social context by concentrating on several music forms such as the blues, soul, hip hop, funk, dancehall, Afrobeat, Afro-Brazilian, and tango. Readings will focus on: (1) concepts such as audiences, the music industry, cultural infrastructure, the African Diaspora, youth culture, and race; (2) processes such as urbanization, demographic change, globalization, and the politicization of popular music. | AMSA3H5Y | 60 |
| TALES OF THE JAZZ AGE This module examines American prose of the 1920s in the context of the Jazz Age. American literature of the 20s is often conflated with modernism, or the expatriate experience, or the Harlem Renaissance; this module will consider 1920s writing in the context of the market and the rise of professional authorship, anxieties about imitation and the middlebrow and conformism, and the pressures of commercial success on fiction. It will draw on reception studies and the influence of publication formats (mass-market magazines, serial publication, the burgeoning market for film adaptations). Texts will be drawn from a mix of “high” and “low.” After considering the pressures of commercialism on the publication of The Waste Land, texts could include the short stories of Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise, The Sun Also Rises, The Great Gatsby, Babbitt, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Winesburg, Ohio, Glimpses of the Moon, and Manhattan Transfer. Students will also be expected to research journalism of the day, such as The New Yorker and the New York Times, which have accessible online archives. | AMSA3L31 | 30 |
| TALES OF THE JAZZ AGE This is a 20 credit version of AMSA3L31 TALES OF THE JAZZ AGE and is available only to Visiting students. | AMSA3L33 | 20 |
| THE AMERICAN SUPREME COURT Alexander Hamilton famously described the US Supreme Court as the âleast dangerous branchâ of government. But is it? Although the Court lacks the âpower of the purse and the swordâ this has not prevented it becoming involved in some of the most controversial political and policy issues in American history. From establishing the power of judicial review in 1803, proclaiming that the Constitution never intended for African Americans to be considered âcitizensâ in 1857, giving judicial support to Jim Crow laws in 1896, repeatedly striking down New Deal legislation in the early 1930s, and halting the recount of votes in Florida during the 2000 election, the Court has played a major role in US politics. Since World War Two the Court has been even more active in areas of public policy, deciding cases involving freedom of speech, religion and the press, campaign finance, gun control and the right to bear arms, the rights of criminal suspects and defendants, abortion, and the death penalty, among many others. This course introduces students to both the role of the Court in the American system of government and the impact its decisions have had in crucial areas of public policy. By addressing questions such as the internal workings of the Court, the appointment process, and the power of judicial review students will gain a better understanding of the relative power of the Court. By studying some of the Courtâs major opinions students will develop an understanding of the role the Court has played in shaping modern American society. | AMSA3H24 | 30 |
| THE LITERARY 1960s When thinking of the sixties, literature, in general, is not what immediately springs to mind - pushed, as it is, to the background of music and the counterculture. Yet the decade brought about many profound changes in the paradigms of literature. Amongst such changes was the proliferation of metafiction as a narrative response to both the 'exhaustion' of literature in the light of the period's dramatic events, and to the new literary and philosophical developments in critical theory (poststructuralism). There was also the emergence of two 'new' genres: new journalism, and the non-fiction novel. This module is an examination of literary responses to the many changes and challenges brought about in this decade. It will discuss whether literature simply recoiled into solipsistic abstraction or whether it was a motivating force in the general struggle to conceptualize a ânewâ or countercultural American consciousness. | AMSA3L32 | 30 |
| THE LITERARY 1960s This is a 20 credit version of AMSA3L32 THE LITERARY 1960s and is available only to Visiting students. | AMSA3L34 | 20 |
| THE RISING TIDE OF THE TRANSPACIFIC This module considers the ways in which American literature has engaged with the opening up of Pacific space from the early nineteenth century to the present. From Melvilleâs adventures on whaling vessels throughout the Pacific, to Pearl Harbour and anxieties about Japanese presence in and beyond the borders of the United States, to writing by contemporary Asian-American authors whose work evinces influences from China, Korea and India, the texts on this course chart the ways in which the Pacific Ocean and its peoples have contributed to, created, and contested American national narratives. The module will develop studentsâ insights into issues of U.S. national history and cultural geography, and deepen their engagement with current theories of nationalism and transnationalism either in preparation for, or as a frame for reflection on, their studies abroad. | AMSA3L36 | 30 |
| THE RISING TIDE OF THE TRANSPACIFIC This is a 20 credit version of AMSA3L36 THE RISING TIDE OF THE TRANSPACIFIC and is available only to Visiting students. | AMSA3L38 | 20 |
| US INTERVENTIONISM, THE CIA AND COVERT ACTION The covert activities of the CIA represent arguably the most notorious face of US foreign relations. Yet to what extent is clandestine American interventionism consistent with official overt policies? And how do we come to understand covert action campaigns? This module will introduce the main conceptual and historic debates relevant to the analysis of covert action as a tool of US foreign relations. In so doing it will consider the institutions and processes behind covert action, especially the role of the CIA. It also considers the mediums that narrate and explain American covert action. This will provide a fuller and richer understanding of the United States’ place in the international system since World War II, its relationship to other states and non-state actors, and discussions about American identity and the nation’s role in the world. | AMSA3H26 | 30 |
| US INTERVENTIONISM, THE CIA AND COVERT ACTION This is the 20 credit version of AMSA3H26 US INTERVENTIONISM, THE CIA AND COVERT ACTION and is available only to Visiting students. | AMSA3H28 | 20 |
Disclaimer
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.
Entry Requirements
- Qualification:
- BA (Hons)
Entry Requirement
Students who apply for part-time courses, generally do so with a wide variety of qualifications and experience. For the majority of candidates the most important factors in assessing the application will be past and future achievement in examinations, academic interest in the subject being applied for, personal interest and extra-curricular activities and the confidential reference. We consider applicants as individuals and accept students from a very wide range of educational backgrounds and spend time considering your application in order to reach an informed decision relating your application. Please note, there may be additional subject entry requirements specific to individual degree courses. We encourage applicants to contact the university if they are unsure about the relevance of their qualifications.
Students for whom English is a Foreign language
We welcome applications from students from all academic backgrounds. We require evidence of proficiency in English (including writing, speaking, listening and reading). Recognised English Language qualifications include:
- IELTS: 6.5 overall (minimum 6.0 in Reading and Writing with no less than 5.5 in any component)
- TOEFL: Internet-based score of 88 overall (minimum 20 in Reading and Speaking components, 19 in Writing component and 17 in Listening components.
- PTE: 62 overall (minimum 55 in Reading and Writing components with no less than 51 in any component).
If you do not meet the University's entry requirements, our INTO Language Learning Centre offers a range of university preparation courses to help you develop the high level of academic and English skills necessary for successful undergraduate study.
Special Entry Requirements
Students who have been away from mainstream education for a significant period of time may be required to submit a short essay to help in assessing suitability for the course.
GCSE Offer
Students are required to have Mathematics and English at Grade C or above at GCSE Level.
Fees and Funding
University Fees and Financial Support: UK/EU Students
See www.uea.ac.uk/study/undergraduate/finance/fees-loans-grants for further information
See www.uea.ac.uk/study/undergraduate/finance/fees-loans-grants for further information
Applying for Part-Time Degrees
The University of East Anglia offers some of its undergraduate degrees on a part-time basis. Applications are made directly to the University: More information and an application form can be found at our Part-Time Study pages. For further information on the part-time application process, please contact our Admissions Office at admissions@uea.ac.uk.
Each year we hold a series of Open Days, where potential applicants to our Undergraduate courses can come and visit the university to learn more about the courses they are interested in, meet current students and staff and tour our campus. If you decide to apply for a course and are made an offer, you will be invited to a School specific Visit Day. Applicants may be invited for interview or audition for some courses.
For enquiries about the content of the degree or your qualifications please contact Admissions at 01603 591515 or email admissions@uea.ac.uk We can then direct your enquiry to the relevant department to assist you.