BA American Literature with Creative Writing

Key details

BA AMERICAN LITERATURE WITH CREATIVE WRITING

Start Year

2021

Attendance

Full Time

Award

Degree of Bachelor of Arts

UCAS course code

T7W8

Entry Requirements

AAB

You’ll be introduced to the demands and challenges of literary creative practice. You’ll study creative writing alongside the study of American literature, helping you develop both your creative and critical abilities.

You’ll have access to UEA’s close and active links with the world of contemporary writing and publishing; a legacy of the university’s long running and highly respected courses in the writing of fiction, poetry and drama. You’ll also be able to learn about writing for the creative industries through practice-based modules and workshops covering topics such as the history and practice of American journalism and scriptwriting for the American stage and screen.

Whatever path you choose through your studies, this degree will provide you with a comprehensive understanding of how American literature has shaped the world around us. You will learn about the relationship between culture and politics, while gaining an in-depth knowledge of the forces that transform societies and forge nations. The specialised focus of American Literature with Creative Writing will give you the critical tools to better understand how culture is produced while you hone your own creative practice.

Your year abroad will give your degree even more of a cosmopolitan flavour, enhancing your understanding of your subject and presenting you with invaluable opportunities for enriching your creative writing skills from an international perspective. You’ll take modules at your host university, whilst experiencing the culture of another country first-hand. Your year abroad will increase your confidence, broaden your horizons, build your contacts and demonstrate your resilience to future employers.

About

Explore the literary tradition of the world’s most influential culture while developing your own distinctive voice.

You’ll be studying in Norwich, an ideal location for this course, with its vibrant contemporary writing scene and status as a UNESCO City of Literature. You’ll also have the advantage of spending a year studying abroad, deepening your understanding of American literature, and immersing yourself in the culture of another country. As well as developing your creative practice in the department of American Studies, you’ll study at the world-leading School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing, whose internationally esteemed alumni include Nobel Prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro.

All of this experience will enrich your final year, during which you’ll take a series of advanced classes and write a dissertation on a topic of your choice, guided by a supervisor.

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Important Information

Whilst the University will make every effort to offer the courses listed, changes may sometimes be made arising from the regular review of course programmes. Where this activity leads to significant (but not minor) changes to programmes, there will normally be prior consultation of students and others. Changes may for example consist of variations to the content and method of delivery of programmes, courses and other services, to discontinue programmes, courses and other services and to merge or combine programmes or courses. The University will endeavour to keep such changes to a minimum, and will inform students.

Assessment for Year 1

You’ll be assessed at the end of each semester through a mixture of coursework and portfolio work. In your final year, you’ll write a dissertation on a topic of your choice with the support of your tutors. Your final degree result is determined by the marks you receive in your second and fourth years.

For every piece of assessment that you submit you’ll receive written and verbal feedback from tutors. These comments and reflections will help you identify the methods and strategies that will improve your work and help you get the most out of your studies.

Structure

In your first year you’ll acquire a comprehensive historical and literary overview of the United States. You’ll analyse a series of American icons - including the Stars and Stripes, the cowboy and the prison, using them as a way to think about important issues that have shaped the American national consciousness. Through lectures and seminars you’ll also cover the often fiercely contested development of a national literature in the United States. You’ll trace the ways in which a multitude of voices – including Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Charlotte Perkins Gilman and William Faulkner – have interpreted the nation.

You’ll participate in creative writing tutorials that will help you develop your creative practice and workshop your writing. Specifically, the Creative Writing and Identity module will enable you to master and employ different creative writing techniques, read and give constructive feedback on other’s work, use a writer’s notebook, and develop and revise your own creative work.

Throughout the year you’ll cultivate and hone the key academic and practical skills needed to study at university level.

Teaching and Learning

You’ll be taught through a combination of lectures and seminars. We pride ourselves on our small group seminar teaching, which allows a greater level of discussion between academic staff and students. In seminars, you’ll learn how to listen to and critique the ideas of others, as well as how to present and defend your own arguments effectively.

You’ll acquire vital skills needed for independent learning throughout your course and have access to dedicated sessions designed to help you make the most of UEA’s state of the art library facilities. Through these sessions and your academic modules, you’ll gain the crucial research skills of uncovering resources and critically assessing sources. As you progress through your degree you’ll develop as a self-motivated researcher and independent, creative thinker.

In addition to timetabled lecture and seminar slots, each member of staff at UEA holds dedicated office hours where students can come and seek additional advice and guidance on a one-to-one basis. You’ll also be assigned an adviser who can support you through your studies by providing academic and career guidance.

During your time at UEA, you’ll be taught by academics working at the forefront of their fields. Our academics have been published widely on key issues that have shaped the development of American literature. You will also benefit from their experience as practitioners in the creative industries, and will have the opportunity to build your own network of contacts and work-related experience to further your future career.

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Assessment for Year 2

Structure

In your second year, the compulsory module ‘American Voices’ encourages you to reflect on your own creative writing. In seminars and creative writing workshops you’ll develop as a writer, reader and editor of your own and other people’s work. These modules will enhance your understanding of American literature, but also your skills as a critical reader and creative writer.

At this stage of your degree, you’ll embark on academic specialisation, meaning that the remaining credits for the year will be drawn from modules you choose run by the department of American Studies and the School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing.

Teaching and Learning

Admissions Live Chat

Virtual Open Day

Assessment for Year 3

Structure

You’ll spend your third year studying in another country at one of our partner universities. You could spend your year in the US, or add a comparative element to your studies by studying in Canada or the Pacific Rim countries.

For further details, visit our Study Abroad section of our website.

Teaching and Learning

Admissions Live Chat

Virtual Open Day

Assessment for Year 4

You’ll be assessed at the end of each semester through a mixture of coursework, portfolio work and examination. In your final year, you’ll write a dissertation on a topic of your choice with the support of your tutors. Your final degree result is determined by the marks you receive in your second and fourth years.

Structure

In your final year you’ll continue to specialise, choosing modules relating to the research specialisms of academic staff within the department of American Studies and the School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing. In the Autumn semester, you’ll also take a specialist creative writing module oriented around an American theme.

In the second semester of your final year – guided by an academic supervisor – you’ll also complete a dissertation on a literary or creative topic of your choice.

Teaching and Learning

Admissions Live Chat

Virtual Open Day

Assessment for Year 1

Compulsory Modules

AMERICAN LITERATURE I: IMAGINING AMERICA

Code AMAL4033A

Credits 20

How did American literature become American? How did literature help to shape the idea of America? This module will provide you with some answers to those questions with a thorough introduction to early American Literature. From the earliest moments of European colonization of the New World through to the bloody Civil War that Americans fought over slavery in the middle of the 19th century, you will explore the ways that a diverse group of writers helped shaped a literary culture that was distinctively American. You will encounter a rich variety of American writers and texts – travellers, novelists, poets, biographers, philosophers – and think about the role that literature played in the creation of a new nation. From puritans to politicians, from revolutionaries to romantics, from slavery to emancipation, you will explore the work of the men and women who shaped our ideas of what American Literature was, is, and might be. Each week, through lectures and seminar discussion, you will also consider the other forces that shaped these texts, and develop your ability to analyse a range of literary styles. As America was colonised, achieved independence, expanded westwards and fought a Civil War, how did American writers respond to the extraordinary tensions running through a newly born nation?

CREATIVE WRITING AND IDENTITY: TUTORIAL UNIT

Code AMAF4005B

Credits 20

This module is dedicated to incoming members of the American Literature with Creative Writing programme. They will meet with a tutor to explore the relationship between writing and identity. This may raise issues of race, class, or gender: of sexuality: of place (local, regional, national, global): of ethnicity or religion: and of memory or history, among others. Students should expect writing workshops, and that they may variously encounter the writing of either fiction or non-fiction, or of both. Genre will be determined by the tutor. This module is only available to students on U1T7W8401 and is not available to Visiting Students

AMERICA NOW, AMERICA THEN.

Code AMAS4036A

Credits 20

From COVID19 to Confederate flags, from Black Lives Matter to Donald Trump’s MAGA - how do we navigate the turbulence of contemporary American life? It is impossible to understand America now without understanding America then - the deep social, cultural and political histories which underpin contemporary events and which are still very palpable in the present. In this module, therefore, we will seek to understand some of the most pressing issues in today’s America by unpacking the rich and revealing interdisciplinary contexts that help to explain them. We will do this by using a variety of scholarly approaches and disciplinary lenses, and range widely across the American past. On completion of this module, students will also have the skills required to research, write and edit at university level.

AMERICAN LITERATURE II: MAKING IT 'NEW'

Code AMAL4031B

Credits 20

On this module you will learn the central currents of American Literature, from after the American Civil War, through the turn of the century and into modernism and the early 20th century, finishing at the close of World War II. You will follow the – often fiercely contested – development of a national literature, tracing the way this multitude of voices differs from place to place, from decade to decade, and from writer to writer. Writers studied on this module in past years have included: Henry James, Mark Twain, Nella Larsen, Langston Hughes, Kate Chopin, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, T.S. Eliot and William Faulkner. You will be introduced to these vibrant voices through reading and discussing short stories, novels, poetry, non-fiction and critical work. You will attend lectures, and take part in follow-up discussion-based seminars. Each week you will consider the context of the texts you read, as well as working to analyse and explain how they work on the reader and in society at large. You will encounter debates about the meaning of freedom in life and in art, what it might mean to be modern (or to refuse that modernity), about the responsibilities of citizenship to other people and to the environment, and about what it might mean to write and be read in the modern United States of America. By the end of this module you will be familiar with a wide range of late 19th century and early 20th century American texts and writers. You will learn the major movements in American literature from the fin de siècle through to the Second World War, and will be able to talk about the issues surrounding the development of a national and literary culture. Through doing this, you will improve your ability to read and analyse literary texts, to describe how language works in history and on the reader, and to identify and present new and exciting patterns in what you read.

AMERICAN STUDIES II: BEYOND BOUNDARIES

Code AMAS4037B

Credits 20

How has American culture been shaped by categories of race, gender, class and sexuality? How can we unpick and understand the complex experiences that shape American identity? This module will enable you to develop and expand the research methods, writing skills, and oral skills you’ll have acquired in ‘Reading Cultures I: American Icons’. You’ll continue your exploration of the contemporary United States, you’ll be introduced to the work of critical theorists, and you’ll be encouraged to think about America’s changing position in the world. Classes will further facilitate skills in reading, writing, analysis and independent thinking, through which you will gain the confidence and the tools necessary to be a self-supporting learner, giving you a strong academic foundation for the rest of your degree programme.

CREATIVE WRITING: AUTUMN SEMESTER

Code LDCC4001A

Credits 20

You will use structured exercises based on objects, handouts, discussion and visualisation to stimulate the production of prose fiction and poetry. Initially, you’ll write about 'what you know', drawing on notebooks, memories and family stories. Focus will shift to the work of established authors, using sample texts as a stimulus to your own writing. The aim of this module is to get you writing prose fiction and poetry. Along the way you’ll develop the craft elements of writing and acquire some of the disciplines necessary to be a writer: observation, keeping notebooks, writing in drafts, reading as a writer an submitting to deadlines, among others.

CREATIVE WRITING (SPRING SEMESTER)

Code LDCC4016B

Credits 20

This module is taught in workshops in which you will be producing creative writing and also reflecting on the practice of creative writing. You will be assigned to a class tutor and advised of the time and room number for your weekly class meetings. Your tutor will be a practising writer and will advise you of their office number, email address, office hours, and any arrangements for distributing work. The aim of this module is to get you writing prose fiction and poetry. Even if you have a preference for one genre over another, it’s invaluable to have an awareness of both. At this stage it’s important to experiment: not everything will come off, but you will learn from that: the awkward results of a writing exercise might contain the seeds of a later, far more successful, project. The module is designed to allow you to try things out and to this end you will not be assessed on everything that you write. Along the way you’ll begin to develop an understanding of the craft elements of writing - the technical nuts & bolts. You will also acquire some of the disciplines necessary to being a writer - observation, keeping notebooks, writing in drafts, reading as a writer, submitting to deadlines, etc. All of this will allow you to develop as a writer and expand your understanding of the discipline. We will be doing a number of in-class exercises based on objects, handouts, discussion and visualisation. On occasion we will study the work of established authors. Very often you will be asked to write about ‘what you know’, drawing on notebooks, memory, family stories, your sensory impressions. In both prose and poetry we will concentrate initially on generating material. In prose we will go on to look at character, dialogue, point-of-view, ‘showing’ vs ‘telling’, plotting, etc. In poetry, we will begin to explore the possibilities of pattern and form, sound, voice, imagery, ‘making strange’, etc. The module will be your weekly space to get ideas and words on the page and give you a sense of how you might go on to shape this material. You should equip yourself with a notebook for everyday use and a file or folder in which to keep handouts and all of your written work. You will be required to complete exercises at home and should be prepared to read your work in class.

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Important Information

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. Where this activity leads to significant (but not minor) changes to programmes and their constituent modules, the University will endeavour to consult with 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. In some cases optional modules can have limited places available and so you may be asked to make additional module choices in the event you do not gain a place on your first choice. Where this is the case, the University will inform students.

Students should choose only 60 credits each semester.

Assessment for Year 2

Compulsory Modules

AMERICAN VOICES

Code AMAL5078A

Credits 20

Addressing America as a nation and the experience of being American, Walt Whitman writes in ‘Song of Myself’: ‘Do I contradict myself? Very well, I contradict myself, I am large and contain multitudes.’ This module explores Whitman’s comments in a selection of 20th-century American writers, and considers the literary and historical contexts of their creative literary practices. You are also encouraged to reflect on your own creative writing. What can you learn from these American writers and how might their innovations enhance your own writing practices? You will encounter a broad range of American writing from Walt Whitman to Conceptual writing. You will focus on how and why American writers have addressed notions of national and individual identity through their creative practices. You will also learn about the formal innovations of American writers in order to understand the concept of ‘voice’ in terms of, for example, expression, representation, protest, and subjectivity. You will learn through seminars and creative writing workshops where you will develop your skills as a writer, reader and editor of your own and other’s work. You will develop as a writer and enhance your understanding of American literature, as critical reader and as creative writer. You will adopt, adapt and appropriate the stylistic and contextual concerns of pioneering American writers covered and articulate the significance of these concerns for your own creative work.

Optional A Modules

(40 credits)

LIVING ON THE HYPHEN: Multi-ethnic American Literatures

Code AMAL5077A

Credits 20

America has long been interpreted as the location of social possibility founded upon a desire to assimilate and negate ethnic 'others'. In this module, you’ll trace and explore the literary responses of distinct 'American' cultures: including Native American; African American; Asian American; and Latin American. Through studying each distinct group of texts, you’ll engage with the specific historical, cultural and political relationships between the US and each author's country of origin or national/cultural history, across the 20th and 21st centuries. You’ll also make connections between these distinct groups of writers, to consider topics such as race and racism, exile, return, family, belonging, identity, language and memory, colonisation, imperialism, slavery, segregation, immigration, and illegality/invisibility, with an emphasis upon contemporary experiences. Via important multi-ethnic writers and texts, you’ll explore what constitutes American literature aesthetically, temporally, geographically, and culturally, evaluate the value of the term ‘multi-ethnic’ and its place within American literary studies, and engage critically with questions of American literature as ‘World literature’. Through seminar based discussions, you’ll develop your ability to evaluate literary texts as contributions to historical revisions and debates, and also as representations of identity, belonging, the nation state, politics, and culture. You will be assessed through coursework, while gaining experience of communicating your ideas via seminar discussion and group presentation, and you’ll have the opportunity to engage in peer to peer assessment practices. On successful completion of the module, you’ll have the knowledge and skills to consider the diversity of American literature and the complexities of American cultural and national identity.

AMERICAN MUSIC

Code AMAS5023A

Credits 20

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. Distinctive American musical styles still dominate the globe, as they have done for decades. But how did American music develop into the genres that we recognise today? How did uniquely American sounds catch the ear of listeners all over the world? You will gain a thorough understanding of the development of American music. You will focus on a number of distinctive musical traditions - from minstrelsy to blues, jazz, and country; from rock and roll to hip hop - and consider the way that they have shaped popular music today. Throughout the course, you will encounter a rich variety of music and an extraordinary range of characters, from the most famous entertainers in modern culture, to the obscure, the forgotten and the neglected. Whilst exploring the development of American music, you will also examine the ways in which its growth tells a larger story about the history of America and its people. In particular, it will give you a different perspective on the issue of race in American life. Through seminar discussion, written coursework, and group presentations, you will develop your analytical and critical abilities - whether that means your ability to think about the significance of a song and its meaning for a particular historical moment, or the way that the shifting meaning of a genre of music can tell us many things about its wider social and cultural context.

EXCEPTIONAL STATES: US Intellectual and Cultural History

Code AMAS5028A

Credits 20

Exceptional States is designed to allow you to grapple with some of the distinctive, some have said exceptional, ways in which Americans have viewed the world, interpreted their own society, their own past, their own literary and artistic traditions—that is, their own culture. We aim to give you a key to understanding ‘the American mind’, or to put it another way, American ways of thinking. It is in a sense our intention to enable you to approach your subject—whether that be your own particular topic, your own discipline, or the field as a whole—with an ability to interpret it, understand its 'Americanness', and so understand the subtle nuances often lost on outsiders. We will, in short, give you a deeper insight into America, and also into the study of America. To that extent, your intellectual journey will be taken onward another stage. You will begin to see new meanings in past events, literary texts, images, films, and so on. You will be able to reach a deeper understanding of the complexities of the United States of America.

OF MICE AND KRAZY KATS: HISTORY AND ART OF AMERICAN COMICS

Code AMAS5050A

Credits 20

Are comics art? The answer is yes, and this module will show you why through an in-depth examination of American comics from early newspaper strips to contemporary graphic novels. You’ll read a wide range of different comics, including the birth of superheroes, World War II propaganda comics, controversial horror comics, underground comix from the San Francisco counterculture, recent alternative comics, and the current boom in reality-based graphic novels. You’ll learn about the complex history of American comics, including the specific contexts for the form’s development as a mass medium and its frequent marginalisation in the cultural sphere, such as the great comic-book scare of the 1950s. In the process, you’ll learn to pay special attention to form as well as content when reading comics, and will develop a critical vocabulary for evaluating the aesthetics of the form. In addition to a broad selection from the history of American comics, you’ll also examine comics through different thematic perspectives, such as race, gender, and sexuality, and you’ll read critical material that’ll further inform your understanding of the form. You’ll learn through seminars as well as through independent library study of the periods and themes that resonate the most with you, and you’ll be assessed through coursework. At the end of the module, you’ll have gained a deep understanding of the many historical and cultural issues that inform any appreciation of comics, and you’ll have learned to consider the form as a unique and mature form of American art.

MODERNISM

Code LDCL5045A

Credits 20

The modernist movement transformed literature and the arts worldwide in the early part of the 20th century, peaking in the period between 1918 and 1939. Although the term modernism was rarely used by authors in this period, in the period after World War II it became the usual term to describe a group of writers, responding to one another, whose work is characterised by radical experiments with language and form, which aimed to do justice to a range of many subjects such as the mysteries of consciousness and the unconscious, gender, sexuality, and desire, violence and democracy, the primitive and the mechanical. We will be reading a range of authors, including such long-canonised figures as James Joyce, T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, HD, Gertrude Stein, and Virginia Woolf, but expanding the modernist canon in the light of recent scholarship to other more recently revived authors such as Djuna Barnes, Mina Loy, Dorothy Richardson, and Jean Rhys. We will trace some of the origins of modernism in earlier literary movements such as Symbolism, Imagism, Aestheticism, and Impressionism, and explore its kinship with foreign literary movements such as Dada and Surrealism. Modernism invented modern methods of criticism and we will be placing a particular emphasis on the close reading of poetry and poetic prose. A study of modernism is essential for understanding all 20th century literature and this module is highly recommended for any students wishing to take any modules in 20th-century literature.

EMPIRE AND AFTER: GLOBALIZING ENGLISH

Code LDCL5079A

Credits 20

Today, literature in English is produced in many countries across the world and English increasingly enjoys a status as a ‘global’ language. In this module you will explore how this situation came about by placing the development of English literary traditions both in the British Isles and elsewhere into the long historical context of the rise and fall of the British Empire. Beginning with canonical works by British writers from the eighteenth century through the nineteenth and into the twentieth centuries, you will then consider literary and political responses to the experience of empire and colonization by writers from areas such as South Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, Australasia, and the Americas. You will explore how ‘English Literature’ has been shaped on a global scale by global historical forces, and how different the history of the English literary tradition looks when placed alongside and in counterpoint to these ‘other’ writings in English. You will then discuss the writings of authors such as Daniel Defoe, Joseph Conrad, Chinua Achebe, Jean Rhys, Amitav Ghosh, Kate Grenville and J.M Coetzee amongst others. The module will introduce you to the theoretical and conceptual apparatus of postcolonial literary studies and to some of the key frameworks for understanding the formation of the modern world, such as race and racism, nations and nationalism, colonial discourse and postcolonial theory, and how gender and sexuality were pivotal in the formation of colonial and post-colonial identities.

Optional B Modules

(40 credits)

CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN FICTION

Code AMAL5079B

Credits 20

Writers who want to address the contemporary scene confront a dilemma: as soon as you try to capture it on the page, you’ve already fallen behind the present moment. You’ll explore how contemporary American writers nonetheless respond to this challenge. You’ll consider the issues they identify as pressing in American culture, as well as the literary strategies used to explore those issues. As you progress in the module, you’ll acquire understanding of a number of important concepts associated with contemporary American fiction, such as postmodernism, metafiction, identity, globalisation, and memory. When you’ve completed the module, you’ll be familiar with a number of literary and cultural debates relating to contemporary American culture, and have detailed knowledge of some of the most exciting writers working today. You’ll be able to explain why it is difficult to define, and write about, the ‘contemporary.’ And in the course of your assessed work and seminar discussions, you will develop your communication, writing, and research skills.

WRITING THE AMERICAN SCRIPT

Code AMAM5052B

Credits 20

Writing the American Screenplay: Hollywood and Beyond For much of the twentieth century, the screenplay was synonymous with Hollywood, the Studio System, and “The Movies”; films as brash and bold as booming American power, written by screenwriting giants, such as Preston Sturges, Herman J. Mankiewicz, Billy Wilder, Anita Loos and Paddy Chayfsky. But much of what we love about more recent American film-making has been the work of writers outside the mainstream: John Cassavetes, Joan Micklin Silver, Charlie Kaufman, Spike Lee, Nora Ephron, Quentin Tarantino, and the like. Throughout, American screenwriting has produced work as dynamic and expansive as the nation itself. In this module you will move through the high points of American scriptwriting, using scripts, texts, and creative pastiche to develop an understanding of the form. Your work may be assessed through a mix of creative and critical work, writing exercises and a complete short script. In broadly the first half of the semester you will use pastiche and other techniques to develop basic screenwriting skills. The remainder of the term will be devoted to developing and workshopping an original script. You will be introduced to the basic dramaturgy of cinematic storytelling, screenwriting form and format, and skills in pitching and story development. This module will therefore help you develop your creative capacity, your communication skills, and will help broaden your commercial awareness. Students who achieve a mark of 68%+ either in this module or Adaptation and Transmedia Storytelling are eligible to enrol on Creative Writing: Scriptwriting in the School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing at Level 6.

THEY CAME FROM OUTER-THE-CLOSET: GENDER, SEXUALITY AND PANIC IN AMERICAN FILM

Code AMAS5020B

Credits 20

With a main focus on the 20th century, we will explore key moments of change or crisis in the century and consider the ways the panic caused by such changes is distinctly gendered and/or sexualised. We will concurrently examine gender and sexual resistance to dominant ideas of American identity and the subsequent creation and/or promotion of liberationist discourses and alternative communities. Film will provide the focus for this cultural study, and the module will range widely over a number of different genres including the western, sci-fi, detective and LGBT themed works.

BREAKING NEWS! AMERICAN JOURNALISM: HISTORY AND PRACTICE

Code AMAS5049B

Credits 20

How do we know what is real and what is fake? Previous generations, we are told, could reliably turn to “the news”—but is that really true? From the very beginning, American news was always synonymous with low scandal, scurrilous rumour, and fakery. And yet, there is no doubt that there have been crucial moments when journalists and journalism have gone beyond merely reporting events, to shape the public imagination. “The news” has always manipulated as much as informed its audiences, and in this module you will learn about how this in turn has shaped American life. In learning about the history of journalism and its cultural impact in America in the wider global context, you will have the opportunity to gain an understanding of the art of journalism, both critically and in practice. You will engage with questions surrounding print, broadcast and digital media—looking back to the past, reflecting on the present, and looking forward into the future of journalism. You will consider the ways in which marginalised peoples have sought to assert their voices through news media, by seizing the means by which our public understanding of reality is produced. The work will involve critical readings, engagement with primary source materials, seminar discussions, presentations, and critical writing with creative practice. You will have the opportunity to refine your communication skills, and especially the art of writing in different modes for different audiences.

AMERICAN CULTURE, 1919-1946

Code AMAS5051B

Credits 20

The period between World War I and the Cold War was a period of dramatic change in the United States: from the seemingly endless prosperity of the twenties to the depression of the thirties; from isolationism to World War II; and from a population that lived in predominantly rural or small-town communities to one increasingly located in large urban centres or their suburban satellites. You will explore the changing economic, political and cultural history of this period, particularly through an examination of the cultural debates over the modernity of the twenties, the New Deal of the thirties and America’s changing place in the world during this time. In order to explore these issues, you will engage with a wide range of sources that include political documents, literary texts and films.

ARTS AND HUMANITIES PLACEMENT MODULE

Code HUM-5004B

Credits 20

This module will provide you with the opportunity work within a creative/cultural/charity/ heritage/media or other appropriate organisation in order to apply the skills you are developing through your degree to the working world and to develop your knowledge of employment sectors within which you may wish to work in the future. The module emphasises industry experience, sector awareness and personal development through a structured reflective learning experience. Having sourced and secured your own placement (with support from Careers Central), you work within your host organisation undertaking tasks that will help you to gain a better understanding of professional practices within your chosen sector. Taught sessions enable you to acquire knowledge of both the industries in which you are placed as well as focusing on personal and professional development germane to the sector. Your assessment tasks will provide you with an opportunity to critically reflect on the creative and cultural sector in which you have worked as well as providing opportunities to undertake presentations, gather evidence, and articulate your newly acquired skills and experiences.

WORDS AND IMAGES

Code LDCL5068B

Credits 20

In this module, you will explore the relationship between words and images in contemporary literature. You will cover what is meant by reading images, examine the varying but related stories that words and pictures tell, and analyse the narrative techniques employed in illustrated texts. As well as developing a critical vocabulary with which to discuss how these two media can be combined, you will survey shifts in the generic conventions of such literature over the last few decades so you develop an awareness of the various narrative techniques utilised by the medium. Rather than assuming comics are simplistic, debased or ‘illiterary’, you will address the medium as a site of exciting and innovative literary and artistic experimentation. You will also have the chance to carry out your own creative work in the genre.

THE SHORT STORY (SPR)

Code LDCL5075B

Credits 20

What is a short story? What do short story writers have to say? What about short story critics and theorists? Is the short story a narrative in miniature? Or is there more to a short story than simply being 'short'? And why are critics so concerned with whether the short story is alive or dead? These are the kind of questions this module will investigate by asking you to think as a short story reader, theorist, critic and writer. Reading will be drawn from short story writers - and writing about the short story - roughly spanning the 19th century to the present, and from a range of cultural contexts. Our interest will not be to establish a history of the short story, but instead to explore the range of thematic preoccupations, changing definitions, and critical debates surrounding the form. You'll have the opportunity to respond to these questions in critical and/or creative forms of assessment. Writers studied might include Edgar Allan Poe, Katherine Mansfield, Julio Cortazar, Anton Chekov, Ali Smith and Ryunosuke Aqutagawa.

Optional C Modules

(20 credits)

CREATIVE WRITING: PROSE FICTION (SPR)

Code LDCC5006B

Credits 20

This module will enable you to test your abilities and potential as a writer of prose fiction, building on the experience you already have in a formal creative writing environment. The first half of the course will be exploratory and practical, using structured exercises and handouts. You’ll be asked to consider such issues as character, genre, voice, dialogue and point of view. In the second half, the emphasis will shift to constructive group discussion of your own work, along with that of your peers. The overall aim of this module will be to develop your expressive and technical skills in writing prose fiction, and to improve your abilities as an editor and critic of your own and other people's work. This module is exclusive to English Literature With Creative Writing students and for other students who have achieved a mark of 68%+ (or equivalent for Visiting students) in a previous Creative Writing module. All other students should enrol on Creative Writing: Introduction (Aut) or Creative Writing: Introduction (Spring).

CREATIVE WRITING: POETRY (SPR)

Code LDCC5007B

Credits 20

This module is for those who want to write better poems and it enables you to really test the range of your abilities in writing poetry. You’ll develop and improve your expressive and technical skills in writing poetry, and be encouraged to improve analytical awareness of both the craft elements and the wider contexts of writing poetry, and also to improve students' abilities as editors and critics of their own and other people's writing. The first half of the seminar will be exploratory and practical; we'll be using structured exercises and the writing of (mostly contemporary) published poets to consider issues like voice, persona, imagery, structure and form, with time also dedicated to sharing student work. In the second half the emphasis shifts to constructive group discussion of your own work, alongside your peers, in a workshop setting. Whether discussing published poems or our own, we will be 'reading like a writer' and discussing how poems are put together. This module is exclusive to English Literature With Creative Writing students and for other students who have achieved a mark of 68%+ (or equivalent for Visiting students) in a previous Creative Writing module. All other students should enrol on Creative Writing: Introduction (Aut) or Creative Writing: Introduction (Spring).

THE WRITING OF JOURNALISM (SPR)

Code LDCC5014B

Credits 20

What kinds of writing skills produce great journalism? This question is essential to creating powerful journalism and it’s a central concern of this module. The Writing of Journalism enables you to develop a critical awareness of the skills and structures involved in creating effective journalism. You’ll consider a range of journalistic forms and find out how best to nurture and develop your own writing. You'll have the opportunity to explore the ways in which journalistic writing works – its contexts, its demands, and its inventiveness. This will enable us to approach journalism as a discourse with its own conventions, practices, and ideologies. This module is concerned with journalism as a practice, and a genre. As such, it involves discussion, peer-workshops, and practical experience of reading and writing news and feature articles. In addition to writing your own journalism, you will examine journalistic writing and critical work concerning the craft, in order to probe and challenge your own ideas and assumptions about the practice and production of this writing form. Rather than see the practice of journalism and the critical study of journalism as distinct activities, this module aims to engage you as critical readers and writers whose work is informed by both contexts. In so doing, you’ll gain a greater understanding of the demands and conventions of journalistic writing, develop and sharpen your own work, and gain the discursive flexibility which will allow you to navigate the writing of journalism today.

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Important Information

Students spending a year in the USA/Canada must select AMAY5028Y. Students spending a semester in the USA/Canada and a semester in Australia must select AMAY5026B and AMAY5027A.

Assessment for Year 3

Compulsory Modules

AMERICAN STUDIES SEMESTER ABROAD: AUSTRALIA

Code AMAY5026B

Credits 60

A semester spent at a university in Australia or New Zealand taking an approved course of study.

AMERICAN STUDIES SEMESTER ABROAD: AMERICA

Code AMAY5027A

Credits 60

A semester spent at a North American (United States or Canada) university taking an approved course of study.

AMERICAN STUDIES YEAR ABROAD

Code AMAY5028Y

Credits 120

A year spent at an American university taking an approved course of study.

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Important Information

Students should choose only 60 credits each semester.

Assessment for Year 4

Compulsory Modules

CREATIVE WRITING-NARRATIVES

Code AMAL6025A

Credits 30

The course will take the form of weekly, three-hour workshops/seminars that will promote the discussion of yours and your peers’ work. These group sessions will also help you to enhance your understanding of creative writing and develop your editorial and writing skills. You will have the opportunity to explore a variety of genres, including prose fiction, poetry, and various forms of creative nonfiction. In addition, in-class exercises will be set in order to encourage and galvanize the production of new work. To buttress your own writing practice with examples of different approaches to creative writing, you will also be given short pieces of exemplary contemporary American writing and criticism for close reading and discussion. Throughout the semester students are required to keep comprehensive notes of both the class discussions/workshops, and records of their own editing notes.

Optional A Modules

(30 credits)

AGEING IN AMERICA

Code AMAS6037A

Credits 30

What does it mean to grow old in American culture, which glorifies youth? This is the central concern of this module. You’ll examine ways in which America’s ageing population is framed as a problem, and encounter attempts to ‘manage’ it. You will think about why ageing is seen as something to be avoided or disguised, and engage with narratives about how it is gendered, raced, and classed. You will survey the history of ageing in America, focusing on middle and old age, and then conduct detailed analyses of contemporary literature, film, and television, addressing the literary question of ‘late style’ and figures like the grandparent and the cougar. Through assessed work and seminar discussions, you’ll develop an informed understanding of issues relating to ageing in America. You’ll enhance your communication, writing, and research skills, which will enable you to account for, and analyse, the contradictory stories told about ageing in American culture.

NEW AMERICAN CENTURY: CULTURE AND CRISIS

Code AMAS6052A

Credits 30

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 and a half 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 Iraq and Syria; 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, and the election of Donald J Trump in 2016, serves to highlight the historical divisions and crises of American society and underscores that contemporary America is in crisis geopolitically, economically, democratically, environmentally, and culturally.

GENDER AND AGE IN AMERICAN CULTURE

Code AMAS6068A

Credits 30

This module will focus on two key concepts in American culture, ageing and gender. It will consider the ways in which these two concepts are deeply integral to each other, shaping the identity of men and women as gendered beings always in the process of “aging”. The module will consider the intersections of age and gender in American so-ciety and consider how these narratives engage with ideas of class and race in certain spaces in American culture. It will consider a wide variety of case studies including de-bates around the body, citizenship, and representations of age and gender in memoir and visual culture. In addition, it will also reflect on rhetoric around aging and gendered beings in public spaces such as the political arena and the workplace, allowing us to reflect how central these concepts are to the nation’s narrative.

URBAN VISIONS: THE CITY IN LITERATURE AND VISUAL CULTURE

Code LDCL6138A

Credits 30

This interdisciplinary module explores how 'the city' has been thought about and represented through a selection of writings (fiction, poetry, theory), visual material (painting, photography, film, street art) and occasionally other sensory material (sound, smell), spanning around 1850 to the present day and focused on two particular cities and great capitals of modernity, Paris and London. In this period the growth of the great European cities has created a new and diverse set of environments and possibilities. Utopias, dystopias, sites of ruin and construction of all kinds; what different, contradictory or coherent versions of urban experience do these texts and images offer? We'll investigate what kinds of writing, art, discourses and attitudes cities seem to generate. Was modernism, for example, as Malcolm Bradbury asserts, an ‘art of cities'? How do textual and pictorial techniques intersect, for example, in the case of nineteenth-century Impressionist art and writing, twentieth-century Surrealism, Situationist provocations, or contemporary street art and photography? What is ‘psychogeography’? In the company of the flâneur/flâneuse, the detective and other urban wanderers, we'll consider aspects such as space, place, urban being and time, love and eroticism, hauntings, crime, memory and the presence of the past, the individual and the crowd, consumption, nature and the natural, urban Gothic, and the pressures, preoccupations and thrills peculiar to urban living and imagining. The main mode is seminar discussion, supported by short lectures, virtual gallery visits and film viewings. Assessment is by means of an individually designed project which is supported by individual tutorials and formative work of various kinds, including the opportunity to practise reading images and spaces, as well as literary texts. There is scope to produce creative-critical (including visual) work as part of your assessment.

Optional B Modules

(60 credits)

AMERICAN APOCALYPSE: TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY CLIMATE CHANGE FICTION

Code AMAL6012B

Credits 30

In the 21st century, the threat of global warming and climate change is quite literally ‘game-changing.’ Engaging with Naomi Klein’s contention that “this changes everything,” you will consider how the apocalyptic dangers of climate change are being addressed by 21st century American fiction. Climate change fiction, or ‘cli-fi’, has recently emerged as a distinct genre, directly responding to the dangers that global warming poses to human and non-human societies. You will consider how fiction offers us ways to assess, understand, and address the phenomenon of global warming, and the impact of humans on their environments. You will evaluate ongoing debates about the ‘facts’ of climate change and global warming, including the evidence being produced by scientists, and the emergence of ‘climate change denial’ as a feature both of popular culture and at the highest levels of government in the United States. Exploring American novels published since 2010, you will develop a broad understanding of how American climate change fiction represents the profound dangers of climate change, through its depiction of drought, flood, deforestation, species extinction, intelligent biotech, and the impact of global capitalism. Through seminar based discussion, you will gain insights into the ways that writers are engaging with the fact of climate change to shape both popular awareness and popular debates, and consider how cli-fi is imagining possible futures for human and all other life on Earth. You will be assessed through coursework, reflective reports, and student-led workshops, and gain expertise in communicating your ideas via student-led group work and seminar discussion. On successful completion of the module, you will have the knowledge and skills to assess the complexities of climate change fiction as a new literary genre, discuss the emotive reach and influence of fiction in this context, and evaluate the strategies of contemporary cli-fi writers.

LITTLE WOMEN AND BAREFOOT BOYS: INVENTING AMERICAN CHILDHOODS

Code AMAL6052B

Credits 30

American children’s literature in the nineteenth century invented the idea of modern childhood. It was also responsible for some of the most iconic characters in American literary history – from the March sisters to Tom Sawyer. Yet while contemporary audiences are as familiar with these texts as their historic counterparts, the story of the development of writing for children in America in this period is itself much less understood. This module, then, will explore the ways in which American writers addressed young audiences across a century of social and cultural change. Taking in iconic texts like Little Women and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, it will also explore a diverse range of books written for children across this period. It will analyse their engagement with events like the Civil War, issues of national and social identity, and broader social and cultural issues relating to the shifting idea of childhood in America. More broadly, it will think about the development of children’s writing in America in relation to the wider issues of American literary history, and open up debates about what it meant to write for a young audience, then and now.

AMERICAN STUDIES DISSERTATION

Code AMAS6056B

Credits 30

You will complete an independent research project leading to a dissertation of 8,000 words to be submitted at the end of the semester. A member of American Studies faculty will supervise the dissertation.

QUEERS READ THIS : GENDER, SEXUALITY AND NARRATIVE

Code AMAS6061B

Credits 30

Ideas and ideals of gender and sexuality in US culture and society are all around - in advertising, film, literature and more. Most Americans engage in the performative matrix of expected patterns of gender and sexuality without really ever thinking about it; for others they can be, often painfully, aware of the limitations and impositions of such expectations. This module will see students engage with narrative theory as a means to interrogate the sustained construction and dissemination of these patterns of gender and sexuality, as well as explore those points of challenge that create fissures and changes in such patterns.

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Important Information

Entry Requirements

A Levels

AAB including English Literature or ABB including English Literature with an A in the Extended Project

BTEC

DDD, alongside grade B in English Literature A-Level (or equivalent qualification). Excludes BTEC Public Services, BTEC Uniformed Services and BTEC Business Administration

Scottish highers

AAAAA including English Literature

Scottish highers advanced

BBC including English Literature

Irish leaving certificate

4 subjects at H2, 2 subjects at H3 including English Literature

Access course

Pass the Access to HE Diploma with Distinction in 36 credits at Level 3 including 12 credits in English Literature, and Merit in 9 Level 3 credits

European Baccalaureate

80% including 7 in English Literature

International Baccalaureate

33 points including HL 5 English

GCSE offer

You are required to have Mathematics and English Language at a minimum of Grade C or Grade 4 or above at GCSE.

Additional entry requirements

If you do not have an A-Level or equivalent qualification in English Literature (or English Language and Literature), once you have submitted your UCAS form we may then contact you to ask you to submit a short analysis of a passage of a literary text in support of your application.

Applicants will be asked to send in a short sample creative writing portfolio. We ask for around five A4 pages of work which can be poetry, fiction, script or creative non-fiction (but no reviews) or a mixture of these.

If you do not meet the academic requirements for direct entry, you may be interested in one of our Foundation Year programmes.

Alternative Qualifications

UEA recognises that some students take a mixture of International Baccalaureate IB or International Baccalaureate Career-related Programme IBCP study rather than the full diploma, taking Higher levels in addition to A levels and/or BTEC qualifications. At UEA we do consider a combination of qualifications for entry, provided a minimum of three qualifications are taken at a higher Level. In addition some degree programmes require specific subjects at a higher level.

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):

IELTS: 6.5 overall (with no less than 5.5 in any component)

We also accept a number of other English language tests. Please click here to see our full list.

If you do not yet meet the English language requirements for this course, INTO UEA offer a variety of English language programmes which are designed to help you develop the English skills necessary for successful undergraduate study:

Pre-sessional English at INTO UEA

Academic English at INTO UEA

Interviews

Most applicants will not be called for an interview and a decision will be made via UCAS Track. However, for some applicants an interview will be requested. Where an interview is required the Admissions Service will contact you directly to arrange a time.

Gap year

We welcome applications from students who have already taken or intend to take a gap year. We believe that a year between school and university can be of substantial benefit. You are advised to indicate your reason for wishing to defer entry on your UCAS application.

Intakes

This course is open to UK, EU and International applicants. The annual intake for this course is in September each year.

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Course Reference Number: 1545973

BA AMERICAN LITERATURE WITH CREATIVE WRITING