BA (Hons) American Literature with Creative Writing

Key details

BA (HONS) AMERICAN LITERATURE WITH CREATIVE WRITING

Start Year

2022

Attendance

Full Time

Award

Degree of Bachelor of Arts

UCAS course code

T7W8

Entry Requirements

AAB

Duration (years)

Explore the rich American literary tradition that gave us Herman Melville, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Gertrude Stein, William Faulkner and Toni Morrison while also developing your own distinctive voice.

You’ll develop your creative practice, knowledge of American literature, and your industry links in the department of American Studies while taking additional modules in the School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing, whose internationally esteemed alumni include Nobel Prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro. You’ll also have the chance to see award-winning American authors, such as Michael Chabon and Jesmyn Ward, in conversation with staff at UEA’s lively and long-established writers’ festival.

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.

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.

About

You’ll be introduced to the demands and challenges of literary creative practice. Studying creative writing and the creative industries alongside American literature, will enable you to develop both your creative and your 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 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 further 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.

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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 cultural and literary overview of the United States. . You will analyse topical issues and political events as ways into thinking through 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, Pauline Hopkins 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 people’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 will 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. This module 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 choose from a range of module options, allowing you to embark on academic specialization in a particular area .

Teaching and Learning

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Assessment for Year 3

Structure

You’ll spend your third year abroad. This invaluable academic and cultural experience is one that most students consider to be the highlight of their time at university.

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

Teaching and Learning

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Assessment for Year 4

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 have the option to complete a dissertation on a topic of your choice. Indeed, as a creative writing student in the department of American Studies you will have the option to write an extended dissertation consisting of your own creative work.

Teaching and Learning

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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?

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

This module is exclusive to students enrolled on the following degree programmes: English Literature with Creative Writing; Creative Writing and English Literature; American Literature with Creative Writing. This module is designed to give students a solid basis on which to build their understanding of Creative Writing practice and themselves as writers. Students will be introduced to concepts, skills and tools, relevant to many forms of writing, and asked to consider how they might engage with these in their own work, through in-class exercises and discussions. You will be asked to read texts (critical, technical and creative) and engage in discussion around the ideas presented and how these might affect your own practice. Students may be asked to consider and experiment with forms and genres they do not usually write in. Pushing outside of our comfort zone puts us into the learning zone, and is extremely beneficial in our attempts to find our voice and identity as a writer. Learning to understand ourselves as legitimate writers, with valid, lived experience from which to draw from, is a core tenet of this module.

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.

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

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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 and review of modules. Where this activity leads to significant change to a programme and modules, the University will endeavour to consult with affected students. 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. Availability of optional modules may be restricted owing to timetabling, lack of demand, or limited places. Where this is the case, you will be asked to make alternative module choices and you will be supported during this process.

Students should choose only 60 credits each semester.

Assessment for Year 2

Compulsory Modules

MAKING IT PUBLIC: PUBLISHING, AUDIENCE, AND CREATIVE ENTERPRISE

Code AMAS5056A

Credits 20

This module will provide you an introduction to the world of publishing. What does it mean to publish, which, from the Middle French publier, means ‘to make public, to make known, to make famous’? And how do you do it? On this module, with practical support from the Media Suite, you will acquire the basic skills for designing and publishing your own short publication, whether it be a book, a magazine, a fanzine, audiobook, or podcast. In seminars you will learn what it takes to be a successful editor, and, by considering issues of readership, marketing, promotion, finance, scheduling, and copyright law, you will know how to successfully plan and manage your project. You will also be introduced different kinds of publishing—commercial, independent, DIY, and digital publishing—and gain an understanding of editorial roles and processes, the ins-and-outs of pre-production, and the best way to market and publicize your creative product. Students will also have the opportunity to attend the annual London Book Fair.

Optional A Modules

(40 credits)

TRANSATLANTIC LITERATURES

Code AMAL5081A

Credits 20

This module will explore the diversity and histories of literatures emerging from transatlantic crossings and exchange. Taught through a lecture circus format, it will draw on the research expertise of colleagues in both AMA and LDC, in order to demonstrate the breadth of the Transatlantic as both a geography and an imaginary. Materials will include literary responses to the Middle Passage of the Atlantic slave trade, writing from the Caribbean, the work of writers whose careers took them from America to Paris—or from London to New York—and transatlantic literary networks. Each lecture will be given by a different academic, based on their own areas of research, and include Q&A's on how they conceive of the Transatlantic as a critical concept and constellation, and as a crucial site for understanding decolonisation.

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.

THE POLITICS OF STORYTELLING

Code AMAS5054A

Credits 20

We all tell stories. Some stories are based in fact. Others are fictional and deliberately play with and distort realities. But how do we decide on which stories get told and which stories don’t? What does this tell us about the political structures that shape our society? Or indeed the relationship between history and power? Can the stories we tell play a role in our political present? Relevant to all students studying the arts and humanities, this module explores the politics of storytelling. It interrogates the relationship between fact and fiction, while encouraging students to think through the societal forces that shape their subject and their own work. Drawing on the expertise from a range of disciplines - from film studies, history, literature, politics and creative writing - it shows how stories can remake our reality and have the potential to profoundly shape our present moment.

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.

Optional B Modules

(60 credits)

AMERICAN LITERATURE ON SCREEN

Code AMAL5082B

Credits 20

A large number of films and television programmes are adapted from literary sources, and often produce powerful responses from viewers and critics. This module explores the phenomenon of American literature on screen, comparing the adapted screen versions with their literary originals to consider how and why the decision to adapt is taken, and what effect is achieved. This module provides the tools to critically assess and interpret how American literature adapted for the screen approaches key issues in American culture such as race, gender, class, identity, and power. We will also explore the intersectional nature of systemic structures such as settler colonialism, patriarchy, capitalism, organised religion, etc. Additionally, this module will consider the ways that screen adaptation appropriates literary texts, and assess the political and economic dimensions of such appropriations. Literary genres covered will include autobiography and the novel, including the graphic novel, with examples ranging from the 19th to the 21st centuries; screen media will include both film and television adaptations. Students will be encouraged to explore the connections and the differences between the uses of specific media, and to think through how and why adaptation works in a range of critical and often tense American cultural contexts. Students will also consider narrative and narration, characterisation, voice, point of view, style, and audience. The module is team taught by a wide variety of American Studies specialists, and our approach is firmly interdisciplinary and intersectional; students will be encouraged to take similarly diverse critical approaches. Weekly seminars will explore a range of texts and films from the 19th to 21st centuries, and students will be expected to devise their own essay topics from the interests they develop across the module.

WRITING THE AMERICAN SCRIPT

Code AMAP5052B

Credits 20

RACE AND VISUAL CULTURE

Code AMAS5055B

Credits 20

This course examines the visual construction of race, including how indigenous groups have been racialized through visual means and how the category of “black” has been established as the hyper-visual opposite of the comparatively low-profile (some might say invisible) “white.” We will consider and critically contextualize examples of visual representation of racialized bodies from throughout modern history, in an examination of the racist visual rhetoric that props up white supremacy in the West. Visual culture is part of social and political life, and in studying images we will think about the context of their production, the public for whom they were intended, and the ideologies that inform ways of seeing it. Our in-class examples will be drawn from all aspects of visual culture, including film, television, painting, comics, magazines, advertising, postcards, sculpture, anthropological illustrations, museum exhibits, digital media, and more, and our secondary readings will come from both historical considerations and contemporary critical race theory.

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.

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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)

THE AMERICAN NOVEL IN THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY

Code AMAL6010A

Credits 30

On this module you will study a vibrant selection of early twentieth century American novels and the surrounding literary, historical and critical debates. Many of the books on this module are by writers we have come to think of as a central part of ‘American Literature’, of the ‘American Tradition’, of the ‘Jazz Age’ and of ‘American Modernism’. You will look past these labels to place these books back in a more nuanced contemporary context, and you will work on your own context as twenty-first century readers in order to re-examine the ways in which they come down through history framed to us by our own historical and cultural concerns. You will use these rich, well-researched, texts to practice the deep pattern-making and problem-solving skills that are acquired by what literary theorists call ‘close reading’. Through close reading in discussion-based seminars and literary essays, you will look at the stylistic diversity of the period to unravel how these novels work on their readers, and how they look to re-imagine the form of the novel. You will consider modernity and modernism as entangled, and will use the notion of ‘the modern’ to investigate areas such as the representation of everyday life in early 20th century America, the Great Depression, urban and pastoral narratives, the place of the expatriate and immigrant in American life, fantasies of the American Dream, and ideas and negotiations of gender and race in the period. By studying on this module you will gain a working knowledge of canonical American writing in the early twentieth century. You’ll develop close reading, writing, and discussion skills that will allow you to ground your analysis of historical, cultural, and thematic concerns in the language of the novels. You’ll begin to understand the social and aesthetic concerns of American writers of the period and you’ll begin to participate in the ongoing literary and critical conversation that surrounds some of the best-known authors and moments in the American writerly tradition.

AMERICAN APOCALYPSE: TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY CLIMATE CHANGE FICTION

Code AMAL6012A

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.

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)

WRITING AND PUBLISHING AMERICAN CHILDREN'S LITERATURE: FROM LITTLE WOMEN TO BAREFOOT BOYS

Code AMAL6056B

Credits 30

This module explores the history of writing for children in America while also offering practical publishing experience. While encountering a wide range of American children’s literature, students will work with UEA’s Boiler House Press to produce a new edition of a classic American text for a new generation of young readers. As well as writing a collaborative introduction, they will engage with the full publishing process, from conception to design and marketing. This practical work will be underpinned by their exploration of the rich history of children’s literature, and their engagement with the ways in which American writers addressed young audiences across centuries of social and cultural change. 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 youthful readers, 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.

COMICS GET REAL: GRAPHIC NARRATIVES OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY, TRAUMA, AND WAR

Code AMAS6059B

Credits 30

Why do people draw their life stories in comics form? How can trauma be represented in words and pictures? What does it mean to bear witness to horrific events graphically? Throughout this module, you’ll study the recent phenomenon of reality-based American comics, which stand in sharp contrast to the form’s common association with superheroes and the fantastic. In addition to discovering comics’ powerful potential for representing real-life events in engaging and disturbing ways, you’ll learn to analyse both form and content, and will develop a critical vocabulary for reading, thinking, and writing about comics. You’ll read comics that tell a wide variety of stories anchored in real life, and from many different genres, such as autobiography, memoir, investigative journalism, and war reportage. Throughout, you’ll learn to pay special attention to issues of representation, spectatorship, and the position of the artist in relation to the events depicted. You’ll also study a variety of critical and theoretical material that puts these comics-specific issues in conversation with more general concerns about the ethics of representing the real world in diverse written or visual forms. You’ll learn through seminars and independent study, and will be assessed through coursework including a final essay. At the end of the module, you’ll be able to read reality-based as well as other comics in a transformative way, and will have gained a deep understanding of how this vibrant and upcoming cultural form creates new opportunities for representing the increasingly complex personal and geopolitical realities of the world in the twenty-first century.

QUEERS READ THIS : NARRATIVES OF GENDER AND SEXUALITY

Code AMAS6061B

Credits 30

Ideas and ideals of gender and sexuality in US culture and society are all around - in advertising, film and TV, education, the law 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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Entry Requirements

A Levels

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

T Levels

No acceptable pathways for 2022 entry

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

Access to Humanities & Social Sciences pathway. Pass the Access to HE Diploma with Distinction in 36 credits at Level 3, including 12 credits in English Literature, and Merit in 9 credits at Level 3

European Baccalaureate

80% including 70% in an English Literature related subject

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 Entry Requirements

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.

Important note

Once enrolled onto your course at UEA, your progression and continuation (which may include your eligibility for study abroad, overseas experience, placement or year in industry opportunities) is contingent on meeting the assessment requirements which are relevant to the course on which you are enrolled.

Students for whom english is a foreign language

Applications from students whose first language is not English are welcome. We require evidence of proficiency in English (including writing, speaking, listening and reading):

IELTS: 6.5 overall (minimum 5.5 in all components)
IELTS: 6.5 overall (minimum 6.0 in all components) for year 2 entry

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

INTO University of East Anglia

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:

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 and International applicants. The annual intake is in September each year. 

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Course Reference Number: 4479686

BA (Hons) AMERICAN LITERATURE WITH CREATIVE WRITING