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American Studies |
Keele pioneered the development of American Studies in Great Britain as an Honours degree subject. As one of the country's leading programmes (the Department was awarded the highest rating in the National Research Assessment Exercise of 1996 and 2001, and achieved a maximum rating in the Teaching Quality Audit of 1998) the course flourishes within the distinctive context of the Keele
curriculum.
Love it or loathe it, as an imperial superpower the United States occupies a pivotal position in the global community and its policies and culture impact on all our daily lives. American Studies explores the nature, development, and rich diversity of the United States from a variety of perspectives, offering a wide range of teaching in American literature, history, politics, geography, and popular culture, including film. In many ways, this multi-disciplinary approach reflects the core of Keele's educational philosophy - areas of knowledge are interdependent and different disciplines illuminate each other.
Students are encouraged to approach the diversity of the United States from the diversity of perspective offered by the various disciplines, and after a grounding in those methods students can take advantage of an extensive choice of modules that portray the development of American civilization from the founding of the Republic to the present day - from the career of Abraham Lincoln to the rise of Disney theme parks..
Following on from the successful launch of the Single Honours English and American Literatures course in 2004/05 (see the EALs entry), we introduced a new Single Honours American Studies degree programme in addition to the existing Dual Honours programme.
NB. Because of variations in staff availability and research interests, certain modules may not run in particular semesters. Erasm
| Semester 1 | C/O | TYP | ECTS | CATS | ||
| AMS-10022 | A Beginner's Guide to Contemporary America | C | C | 7.5 | 15 | |
| American society holds a special place in the modern world. Whether it enthralls or appalls, American society, with its economic power, cultural diversity, and military reach, remains a vital concern that can often seem too complex to do justice to. This module offers arriving students an opportunity to experience both the diversity and complexity of contemporary America and to explore the variety of disciplinary approaches available within American Studies, making it possible for them to get to grips with the American experience. Students will be encouraged to develop an interest in both particular topics and wider concerns, to recognise the opportunities inherent in seeing America through the prisms offered by academia, the press, the media and the web, and thereby prepare themselves for further study. | ||||||
| AMS-10025 | Starting Out: An Introduction to American Literature | EP | C | 7.5 | 15 | |
| `Starting Out' introduces students to a number of important nineteenth- and twentieth-century literary texts, to major themes in American literature (the Gothic, the city, commodity culture, the `American Adam', constructions of gender, class and race) and to relevant historical contexts (the Revolution, slavery and Civil War, the Great Depression, Vietnam). The module is designed to introduce students to the standards and conventions of university-level work and to develop appropriate writing and research skills. Works studied include: `The Fall of the House of Usher', the slave narrative, `The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn', `The Yellow Wallpaper' and `The Great Gatsby'. | ||||||
| ENG-10024 | Reading Film | EA | C | 7.5 | 15 | |
| Of all forms of communication, film often seems the most obvious, pleasurable and self-explanatory. With an emphasis on variety of film practice, this module aims to introduce students to the essential elements of film narrative and engage them in thinking critically about the choices made by film-makers in constructing the look and sound of their films. We will be asking, therefore, how meaning is created in the cinema, as well as what ideas and arguments such meanings may generate among critically aware spectators of it. In doing so we will be exploring the richness and complexity of cinema's potential to communicate with its spectators through a carefully selected variety of films. Represented amongst these will not only be the classic Hollywood model with which we are all most familiar, but also films from other national and artistic traditions. These will be examined in the context of both fortnightly lecture/workshops and small group classes. | ||||||
| HIS-10030 | Historical Research and Writing | EA | C | 7.5 | 15 | |
| This course introduces first-year students to the study of History at university. It will provide you with the particular skills you will need to study History and which you will apply throughout your degree course. Your tutor will devise a historical topic or debate through which to identify and apply the skills needed to undertake historical research and writing. The lecture programme provides an introduction to the practises expected of and the resources available to a History student at Keele. It also introduces you to the range of historical research undertaken by History staff at Keele - the questions asked; the techniques used; the range of historical writing produced and its relevance to today. Small group seminars supported by a series of exercises will provide the means to locate the acquisition and development of skills within the study of a specific historical debate or topic. The course is assessed by a number of written exercises and an essay. Although primarily designed for History students, this course will also appeal to students of other Humanities and Social Science subjects. | ||||||
| PIR-10048 | Mass Media in America: If it Bleeds, It Leads | EA | M | 7.5 | 15 | |
| This module explores the different types of media in the United States, focusing on newspapers, TV, radio and the internet. Students will learn to analyse the structure and content of these media. How does America differ from Britain? For a start, most people read local papers. Similarly, most people watch local, not national, news. Does local versus national matter? One difference is a heavy emphasis upon crime and violence, prompting the saying "if it bleeds, it leads." Interestingly, while there is lots of violence, Americans are much more prudish about sex. This course encourages you to analyse the form and content of the media to understand why it looks the way it does. The issues raised in the course will give you better insight into British, as well as American, media | ||||||
| Semester 2 | C/O | TYP | ECTS | CATS | ||
| AMS-10023 | The Unreliable Truth: Studies in Twentieth-Century English and American Literatures | EP | C | 7.5 | 15 | |
| "The Unreliable Truth" looks at the ways twentieth-century British and American writers - including Virginia Woolf, George Orwell, Kurt Vonnegut and Maxine Hong Kingston - experiment with different types of narration to challenge the idea of reliablility in storytelling. Various techniques are studied, including first-person narration, stream of consciousness and metafictional strategies, and throughout the module students are encouraged to compare and contrast texts through open discussion and close textual reading, as well as looking at the historical and cultural contexts in which the texts were written in order to speculate on why different techniques were adopted. | ||||||
| AMS-10024 | New York, New York: An Introduction to American Culture | C | M | 7.5 | 15 | |
| New York City holds a special place in the popular imagination. Immortalised in cinema, literature, visual art and song, it continues to symbolise much that is iconic about the United States, but also to maintain a unique identity as somewhere diverse, inclusive, democratic and edgy. This module offers Level I students a chance to explore and discuss the icons, the myths and the realities of this infamous urban space, and at the same time, through a range of texts which includes literature, film, visual art and journalism, demonstrate the unique cross-disciplinary approach of American Studies as a degree programme. | ||||||
| AMS-10026 | The American Past: Explorations in U.S. History | EP | C | 7.5 | 15 | |
| The American Past module is designed to equip students with a basic grounding in U.S. history from the colonial period to the present day. It stresses the multifaceted character of American development, interweaving such issues as nationalism, race, gender, and class in a broad narrative and thematic synthesis. Students will be particularly encouraged to develop specific insights into the American historial experience through investigation of documentary evidence which will provide the the basis for seminar discussion. | ||||||
| AMS-10027 | Transatlantic Gothic: Studies in Nineteenth-Century English and American Literature | EP | C | 7.5 | 15 | |
| `Transatlantic Gothic' is an exciting and innovative course which introduces students to one of the most important of nineteenth-century literary genres, both in England and the United States. Students study the prominent texts of this period both individually and comparatively, and are given training in key critical and theoretical concepts (for example, psychoanalytical, deconstructionist and Marxist approaches to Gothic literature). The module is designed to develop intermediate writing and research skills; a formative assessment and individual feedback is also provided. Authors studied may include: Bram Stoker, Mary Shelley, Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Brockden Brown and Henry James. The course combines a variety of traditional learning activities (lectures and seminars) with small group work carried out in workshops. A balance of shorter and longer reading assignments makes the workload manageable. | ||||||
| ENG-10025 | Approaches to Film | EA | M | 7.5 | 15 | |
| Who is the author of a film? How do we categorize and make sense of films in relation to each other? How is the meaning of a film shaped by the historical period or national culture that produced it? What sorts of ideas and ideologies about gender and race do films include or exclude? This module provides an introduction to all these questions addressed within film theory. Like any other discipline of enquiry, Film Studies has generated a set of debates about value and meaning that revolve around some key questions, concepts and terms. Through a series of fortnightly two hour workshop lectures and small group classes, this module will examine the development of critical thinking on the cinema and will invite students to debate, question and apply ideas on: film authorship; film genre; history; psychoanalysis. Each of these critical areas will be investigated with reference to an exciting range of films, chosen for the way they have shaped film history and challenged cinema's potential as a form of art and entertainment. | ||||||
| PIR-10039 | Debates in American Politics | EA | C | 7.5 | 15 | |
| American Politics is driven by debate. Americans are divided over their foreign policy. Over social issues such as race and abortion, the U.S. has embarked upon debates so heated that they're sometimes referred to as the "culture wars". Then there are ongoing contests over areas such as education and environmental policy. This module will introduce to many of these debates. Each week, we look at a new policy area and get you to debate the rights and wrongs of current U.S. policy and where it should go next. The module also serves to introduce you to the subject of American Politics - it's all pitched at those new to the topic. Much of the module depends on your presentations, advocating one side or the other of a debate in a key policy area. Over the semester, you should learn about a series of policy debates, who's advocating what and develop your skills in presentation and argument. | ||||||
| Semester 1 | C/O | TYP | ECTS | CATS | ||
| AMS-20027 | AMS - Study Abroad I (dble) | O | C | 15 | 30 | |
| Studying abroad is a unique and, for many students, life-changing experience. It is also one which can broaden your academic perspectives and improve your career prospects. American Studies Single Honours students are entitled to study abroad for one semester or a whole year.
Keele has exchange arrangements with a number of overseas universities where you can study for one semester in your second year (language students have different arrangements). The list includes universities in Australia, Canada, Finland, Iceland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, South Africa, Sweden, Turkey and the USA. The majority of American Studies students go to universities in North America and Australia, but American Studies is also taught in one of our European partner universities. The Centre for International Exchange and Language (CIEL) website has an up-to-date list of which universities are suitable for students studying American Studies overseas, with particular reference to those partner universities willing to accept Keele students for a whole year (two semesters). Before you can apply to study abroad you must (a) attend an information session; (b) research the universities that are most appropriate for your subject combination; and (c) complete a budgeting sheet. Anyone planning on studying abroad must take the Intercultural Communications CSP module which runs in the second semester of the first year. When you have completed these requirements you should sign up for an appointment with the Study Abroad Adviser in CIEL, Dr Erica Arthur. Appointment slots will be posted in the Walter Moberly building in mid-November. The deadline for applications will be Friday 14th January 2008 and selection will take place in February-March. You will need to be in good academic standing, and have finished all your Complementary Studies modules at the end of the first year. For further details see the CIEL website, http://www.keele.ac.uk/depts/ solcca/ciel/ or talk to the Study Abroad Coordinator, Dr Steve Mills. Information files, including student questionnaires, are available for you to consult in the Resource Room in CIEL (Room WMO.05, Ground Floor, Walter Moberly Building). The Resource Room is open from 900am - 5.OOpm on weekdays. Peer advisers (students who have been abroad and now work for CIEL) will be available in the Resource Room to provide assistance from week 3. |
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| # | AMS-20048 | US History and Society Since the 1940s | O | M | 7.5 | 15 |
| This module seeks to engage students in a critical discussion of crucial issues in post-World War II U.S. history. We will examine selected developments in American society and culture from a comparative and issue-oriented perspective, using primary and secondary source materials. Particular emphasis will be put on Cold War society and politics, the growth of the post-war state, socio-economic change, social movements, and political realignmnets. This will give students a sense of how people thought about themselves and their society in various decades, and provide a backdrop for understanding current affairs in the U.S. | ||||||
| # | AMS-20051 | Hooray for Hollywood? Approaches to American Film | O | M | 7.5 | 15 |
| This module will look at American popular film, concentrating on the transition from the so-called “classic Hollywood cinema” (from the 1920s to the ‘40s) to a “New” Hollywood consolidating itself in the 1960s and 1970s, and from this to the contemporary high-tech multi-media global industry we know today. We will examine developments in film form and content, and questions of gender and genre in relation to the changing social contexts of film production and reception. We will consider changes in the organisation of the film industry, its target audiences, its technological innovations and commercial complicity. | ||||||
| # | AMS-20053 | The Romance of Fiction: History and Society in 19th Century American Literature | O | M | 7.5 | 15 |
| The module introduces students to the work of some of the major canonical writers of the nineteenth century, notably Poe, Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Whitman, Cooper and James. These writers have often been said to work in the genre/tradition of the ‘Romance’, and the course seeks both to define that term and to analyse what ideas or literary strategies these writers held in common. In the work of post-war American literary critics, there has been an assumption that romance was primarily interested in questions of individual psychology; the course explores some of the ways in which romance may also be seen to be interested in questions of history. | ||||||
| # | AMS-20054 | American Environmental History | O | M | 7.5 | 15 |
| The main aim of this module is to engage with a series of critical debates about the environment by examining American environmental history from the early settlement through to the present day. through to the present day, with a substantial focus upon the 19th century's shift from an agrarian and industrial society. By the end of the module, students should be able to identify important continuities as well as significant changes in American attitudes and practices towards the natural world since first settlement. Students should be enabled to develop good historical practice and analytical skills through the analysis of primary documents, and to relate these analyses to ecological, social, and cultural contexts. Finally, students should be enabled to demonstrate an understanding of key aspects of American environmental history, ranging from the initial interaction with novel ecological situations via the impact of modernization upon a variety of ecological niches, to the perils and promise of large flooding/reclamation projects. | ||||||
| # | AMS-20055 | The Slave South: From Settlement to Secession | O | M | 7.5 | 15 |
| The main aim of the module is to examine the changing character of Southern society, economics and politics from seventeenth-century settlement to the Civil War. Slavery and slaveholding are central themes and the module culminates in an attempt to understand why white Southerners determined to defend the slave system against the logic of the age. The course textbook is Escott et al, Main Problems in the History of the American South I which combines documents and secondary texts. | ||||||
| # | AMS-20056 | Burning Crosses: Religion and American Culture | O | M | 7.5 | 15 |
| This module offers a broadly chronological look at religion’s importance in American cultural movements. It aims to raise students’ awareness of the complex interactions between religious faith and cultural production through readings of a wide variety of stimulating and challenging texts, from literature, cinema and visual art. These diverse texts, which deal with equally diverse belief systems, show how in both celebration of and violent reaction to organised religion, culture is inextricably bound up with belief. One of the questions the module will address is: in an era when the death of religion has been widely cited, how does one account for the apparent resurgence and centrality of religious belief in American life? | ||||||
| Semester 2 | C/O | TYP | ECTS | CATS | ||
| AMS-20039 | AMS - Study Abroad III (dble) | O | C | 15 | 30 | |
|
Studying abroad is a unique and, for many students, life-changing experience. It is also one which can broaden your academic perspectives and improve your career prospects. American Studies Single Honours students are entitled to study abroad for one semester or a whole year.
Keele has exchange arrangements with a number of overseas universities where you can study for one semester in your second year (language students have different arrangements). The list includes universities in Australia, Canada, Finland, Iceland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, South Africa, Sweden, Turkey and the USA. The majority of American Studies students go to universities in North America and Australia, but American Studies is also taught in one of our European partner universities. The Centre for International Exchange and Language (CIEL) website has an up-to-date list of which universities are suitable for students studying American Studies overseas, with particular reference to those partner universities willing to accept Keele students for a whole year (two semesters). Before you can apply to study abroad you must (a) attend an information session; (b) research the universities that are most appropriate for your subject combination; and (c) complete a budgeting sheet. Anyone planning on studying abroad must take the Intercultural Communications CSP module which runs in the second semester of the first year. When you have completed these requirements you should sign up for an appointment with the Study Abroad Adviser in CIEL, Dr Erica Arthur. Appointment slots will be posted in the Walter Moberly building in mid-November. The deadline for applications will be Friday 14th January 2008 and selection will take place in February-March. You will need to be in good academic standing, and have finished all your Complementary Studies modules at the end of the first year. For further details see the CIEL website, http://www.keele.ac.uk/depts/ solcca/ciel/ or talk to the Study Abroad Coordinator, Dr Steve Mills. Information files, including student questionnaires, are available for you to consult in the Resource Room in CIEL (Room WMO.05, Ground Floor, Walter Moberly Building). The Resource Room is open from 900am - 5.OOpm on weekdays. Peer advisers (students who have been abroad and now work for CIEL) will be available in the Resource Room to provide assistance from week 3. |
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| # | AMS-20047 | The Detective and the American City | O | C | 7.5 | 15 |
| Students are invited to analyse and discuss the relationship between the detective and the city across a number of cultural fields – literature, visual art and film. Throughout, the detective is taken as a figure which reflects economic, demographic, cultural and political changes in American cities, and anxieties about identity and status attending those changes. Attention is also paid to the detective as a peculiarly reflexive figure – someone who, in his or her quest to reconstruct plot and deliver explanation, reflects the processes both of the reader and the writer. As the course content indicates, the module looks not only at traditional detectives, but also at broader theoretical issues of reading, spectatorship and criticism which will be of value to students in their further literary studies. | ||||||
| # | AMS-20049 | Alfred Hitchcock's America | O | C | 7.5 | 15 |
| # | AMS-20050 | The New South: From Emancipation to Civil Rights | O | C | 7.5 | 15 |
| The module aims to examine the changing character of Southern society, economics, politics and race relations from the end of the Civil War to the 1960s. The module explores through the use of a range of written and visual material the changing character and interconnectedness of Southern society and politics from emancipation in 1865 to the Civil Rights era of1960s. General themes to be addressed include race relations, economic and political development, the social fabric and changing gender roles and expectations. We will watch and discus two key “New South” films: Gone With The Wind (1939) and To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) The course text, which students should buy, is Paul D. Escott and David R. Goldfield, eds., Main Problems in the History of the American South, Volume II: The New South 2nd ed. (Houghton Mifflin paperback). | ||||||
| # | AMS-20052 | From Modernity to Counter-Culture: American Literature and Social Criticism in the 20th Century | O | C | 7.5 | 15 |
| The module is designed to examine the relationship between American literature as a critical force and historical developments in 20thC American society. The approach is to look beyond explicit social “content” or polemical intentions. This involves studying a diverse range of texts in order to explore the relations between literary form, a writer’s extra-literary purposes, and wider ideological factors. As a result, students will be examining the changing and various nature and role of American literature during the modern period. The module’s horizon is an understanding of how literature may be viewed as critical of, or complicit with, the society within which it is produced. | ||||||
| # | AMS-20057 | The History of the American West | O | C | 7.5 | 15 |
| + | PIR-20058 | The Road to the White House: Campaigning for the Presidency | O | M | 7.5 | 15 |
| The aims of the course are to equip students with a specialised knowledge and understanding of the process by which political leaders seek nomination and election to the presidency of the United States. The module will concentrate specifically on the structure of presidential opportunities in the post war period; the consequences of the democratisation of the delegate selection process for candidate selection and party nominations; changes in the regulatory framework of campaign finance and the ensuing consequences; and changes in advertising and media coverage to assess the impact on the presidential election process. Case studies will be used as specific illustrations of these changes. | ||||||
| + | PIR-20059 | The Presidency of the United States | O | M | 7.5 | 15 |
| The module will study, week-by-week, the president's relationship with other players and their interests within the political system. Analysis focuses on the ability of the president to coerce or persuade other actors in the political system to follow his chosen public policy agenda. Using illustrative evidence from individual presidencies, the module will outline the structural restraints acting upon a president, how presidents attempt to deal with these restraints, and with what success i.e. what the president does and why. Analysis of historical case studies in policy-making will be used to demonstrate how the interaction of these restraints shapes the president’s ability to lead the American nation. | ||||||
| Semester 1 | C/O | TYP | ECTS | CATS | ||
| # | AMS-30014 | Contemporary American Fiction | O | M | 15 | 30 |
| This course sets out to trace the emergence of a distinctive `structure of feeling’ in a number of works published in the last six years by writers now emerging or reaching the peaks of their careers as well as in the works of more established novelists. There will be a weekly two-hour seminar focussing on the core texts. There will also be a further one-hur weekly lecture/workshop in which we will investigate some of the relevant critical and theoretical issues. | ||||||
| AMS-30018 | Abraham Lincoln and His Times | O | M | 15 | 30 | |
| The aim of the module is to explore the origins and development of the American sectional crisis through detailed investigation of Abraham Lincoln’s life and times. Its objectives are to provide students with a better understanding of historical process through examination of a range of primary and secondary texts, with a focus on Lincoln’s speeches and letters. Accompanying and complementing the seminars will be a series of visual presentations, including the feature film Glory and extracts from Ken Burns’ award-winning documentary The Civil War. The course text, required for seminars, is: Michael P. Johnson ed., Abraham Lincoln, Slavery and the Civil War: Selected Writings and Speeches (Bedford). Students are also strongly advised to read James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom (Penguin paperback), the best general history of the period. | ||||||
| # | AMS-30027 | Gender and Sexuality in C19 American Writing | O | M | 15 | 30 |
| The module proposes to analyse the presentation of the female in selected texts of the nineteenth century. Attention will be given to not only the characteristics of the female, but to the possibilities for governing principles of femininity as they inform notions of authorship, of writing practices, and of transformations in understandings of the self and social intercourse. Attention will also be paid to various and competing depictions of masculinity, and attendant fears of gender ambiguity or feminisation. | ||||||
| + | PIR-30079 | Electoral Behaviour in the United States | O | M | 7.5 | 15 |
| The aims of the module are to equip students with a specialised knowledge and understanding of individual and aggregate level voting behaviour in the United States. This will be achieved analysing and evaluating conceptual models of electoral behaviour, for example party identification and rational voting. In addition students will study the catalysts of electoral change, life cycle and generation effects and the impact that short term factors (issues, candidates and governmental performance) have on the distribution of party loyalties over time in the American political system. Case studies of presidential elections since 1960 will be used to assess whether the United States is entering a period of party realignment/dealignment. | ||||||
| + | PIR-30087 | The US Presidency and Public Policy | O | M | 7.5 | 15 |
| Can a president arriving in office really change what the government does? This module will equip you to analyse the prospects for a president trying to lead policy change. The module looks at a series of arguments about the circumstances presidents face, and examines recent presidents as historical examples. | ||||||
| Semester 2 | C/O | TYP | ECTS | CATS | ||
| # | AMS-30004 | Dissertation for AMS | C | C | 15 | 30 |
| This module allows final year students to explore an area of particular interest in depth and complete an extended piece of focused research and writing of between 10 and 12,000 words. The intention is to allow you the time and autonomy to produce genuinely thoughtful and original work, develop and demonstrate advanced skills of independent working, and give expression to your academic interests in an intellectually disciplined and creative way. Taught by individual faculty supervision and small-group workshops | ||||||
| Semester 1 | C/O | TYP | ECTS | CATS | ||
| AMS-10022 | A Beginner's Guide to Contemporary America | C | C | 7.5 | 15 | |
| American society holds a special place in the modern world. Whether it enthralls or appalls, American society, with its economic power, cultural diversity, and military reach, remains a vital concern that can often seem too complex to do justice to. This module offers arriving students an opportunity to experience both the diversity and complexity of contemporary America and to explore the variety of disciplinary approaches available within American Studies, making it possible for them to get to grips with the American experience. Students will be encouraged to develop an interest in both particular topics and wider concerns, to recognise the opportunities inherent in seeing America through the prisms offered by academia, the press, the media and the web, and thereby prepare themselves for further study. | ||||||
| AMS-10025 | Starting Out: An Introduction to American Literature | EP | C | 7.5 | 15 | |
| `Starting Out' introduces students to a number of important nineteenth- and twentieth-century literary texts, to major themes in American literature (the Gothic, the city, commodity culture, the `American Adam', constructions of gender, class and race) and to relevant historical contexts (the Revolution, slavery and Civil War, the Great Depression, Vietnam). The module is designed to introduce students to the standards and conventions of university-level work and to develop appropriate writing and research skills. Works studied include: `The Fall of the House of Usher', the slave narrative, `The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn', `The Yellow Wallpaper' and `The Great Gatsby'. | ||||||
| ENG-10024 | Reading Film | EA | C | 7.5 | 15 | |
| Of all forms of communication, film often seems the most obvious, pleasurable and self-explanatory. With an emphasis on variety of film practice, this module aims to introduce students to the essential elements of film narrative and engage them in thinking critically about the choices made by film-makers in constructing the look and sound of their films. We will be asking, therefore, how meaning is created in the cinema, as well as what ideas and arguments such meanings may generate among critically aware spectators of it. In doing so we will be exploring the richness and complexity of cinema's potential to communicate with its spectators through a carefully selected variety of films. Represented amongst these will not only be the classic Hollywood model with which we are all most familiar, but also films from other national and artistic traditions. These will be examined in the context of both fortnightly lecture/workshops and small group classes. | ||||||
| HIS-10030 | Historical Research and Writing | EA | C | 7.5 | 15 | |
| This course introduces first-year students to the study of History at university. It will provide you with the particular skills you will need to study History and which you will apply throughout your degree course. Your tutor will devise a historical topic or debate through which to identify and apply the skills needed to undertake historical research and writing. The lecture programme provides an introduction to the practises expected of and the resources available to a History student at Keele. It also introduces you to the range of historical research undertaken by History staff at Keele - the questions asked; the techniques used; the range of historical writing produced and its relevance to today. Small group seminars supported by a series of exercises will provide the means to locate the acquisition and development of skills within the study of a specific historical debate or topic. The course is assessed by a number of written exercises and an essay. Although primarily designed for History students, this course will also appeal to students of other Humanities and Social Science subjects. | ||||||
| PIR-10048 | Mass Media in America: If it Bleeds, It Leads | EA | M | 7.5 | 15 | |
| This module explores the different types of media in the United States, focusing on newspapers, TV, radio and the internet. Students will learn to analyse the structure and content of these media. How does America differ from Britain? For a start, most people read local papers. Similarly, most people watch local, not national, news. Does local versus national matter? One difference is a heavy emphasis upon crime and violence, prompting the saying "if it bleeds, it leads." Interestingly, while there is lots of violence, Americans are much more prudish about sex. This course encourages you to analyse the form and content of the media to understand why it looks the way it does. The issues raised in the course will give you better insight into British, as well as American, media | ||||||
| Semester 2 | C/O | TYP | ECTS | CATS | ||
| AMS-10023 | The Unreliable Truth: Studies in Twentieth-Century English and American Literatures | EP | C | 7.5 | 15 | |
| "The Unreliable Truth" looks at the ways twentieth-century British and American writers - including Virginia Woolf, George Orwell, Kurt Vonnegut and Maxine Hong Kingston - experiment with different types of narration to challenge the idea of reliablility in storytelling. Various techniques are studied, including first-person narration, stream of consciousness and metafictional strategies, and throughout the module students are encouraged to compare and contrast texts through open discussion and close textual reading, as well as looking at the historical and cultural contexts in which the texts were written in order to speculate on why different techniques were adopted. | ||||||
| AMS-10024 | New York, New York: An Introduction to American Culture | C | M | 7.5 | 15 | |
| New York City holds a special place in the popular imagination. Immortalised in cinema, literature, visual art and song, it continues to symbolise much that is iconic about the United States, but also to maintain a unique identity as somewhere diverse, inclusive, democratic and edgy. This module offers Level I students a chance to explore and discuss the icons, the myths and the realities of this infamous urban space, and at the same time, through a range of texts which includes literature, film, visual art and journalism, demonstrate the unique cross-disciplinary approach of American Studies as a degree programme. | ||||||
| AMS-10026 | The American Past: Explorations in U.S. History | EP | C | 7.5 | 15 | |
| The American Past module is designed to equip students with a basic grounding in U.S. history from the colonial period to the present day. It stresses the multifaceted character of American development, interweaving such issues as nationalism, race, gender, and class in a broad narrative and thematic synthesis. Students will be particularly encouraged to develop specific insights into the American historial experience through investigation of documentary evidence which will provide the the basis for seminar discussion. | ||||||
| AMS-10027 | Transatlantic Gothic: Studies in Nineteenth-Century English and American Literature | EP | C | 7.5 | 15 | |
| `Transatlantic Gothic' is an exciting and innovative course which introduces students to one of the most important of nineteenth-century literary genres, both in England and the United States. Students study the prominent texts of this period both individually and comparatively, and are given training in key critical and theoretical concepts (for example, psychoanalytical, deconstructionist and Marxist approaches to Gothic literature). The module is designed to develop intermediate writing and research skills; a formative assessment and individual feedback is also provided. Authors studied may include: Bram Stoker, Mary Shelley, Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Brockden Brown and Henry James. The course combines a variety of traditional learning activities (lectures and seminars) with small group work carried out in workshops. A balance of shorter and longer reading assignments makes the workload manageable. | ||||||
| ENG-10025 | Approaches to Film | EA | M | 7.5 | 15 | |
| Who is the author of a film? How do we categorize and make sense of films in relation to each other? How is the meaning of a film shaped by the historical period or national culture that produced it? What sorts of ideas and ideologies about gender and race do films include or exclude? This module provides an introduction to all these questions addressed within film theory. Like any other discipline of enquiry, Film Studies has generated a set of debates about value and meaning that revolve around some key questions, concepts and terms. Through a series of fortnightly two hour workshop lectures and small group classes, this module will examine the development of critical thinking on the cinema and will invite students to debate, question and apply ideas on: film authorship; film genre; history; psychoanalysis. Each of these critical areas will be investigated with reference to an exciting range of films, chosen for the way they have shaped film history and challenged cinema's potential as a form of art and entertainment. | ||||||
| PIR-10039 | Debates in American Politics | EA | C | 7.5 | 15 | |
| American Politics is driven by debate. Americans are divided over their foreign policy. Over social issues such as race and abortion, the U.S. has embarked upon debates so heated that they're sometimes referred to as the "culture wars". Then there are ongoing contests over areas such as education and environmental policy. This module will introduce to many of these debates. Each week, we look at a new policy area and get you to debate the rights and wrongs of current U.S. policy and where it should go next. The module also serves to introduce you to the subject of American Politics - it's all pitched at those new to the topic. Much of the module depends on your presentations, advocating one side or the other of a debate in a key policy area. Over the semester, you should learn about a series of policy debates, who's advocating what and develop your skills in presentation and argument. | ||||||
| Semester 1 | C/O | TYP | ECTS | CATS | ||
| AMS-20027 | AMS - Study Abroad I (dble) | O | C | 15 | 30 | |
| Studying abroad is a unique and, for many students, life-changing experience. It is also one which can broaden your academic perspectives and improve your career prospects. American Studies Single Honours students are entitled to study abroad for one semester or a whole year.
Keele has exchange arrangements with a number of overseas universities where you can study for one semester in your second year (language students have different arrangements). The list includes universities in Australia, Canada, Finland, Iceland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, South Africa, Sweden, Turkey and the USA. The majority of American Studies students go to universities in North America and Australia, but American Studies is also taught in one of our European partner universities. The Centre for International Exchange and Language (CIEL) website has an up-to-date list of which universities are suitable for students studying American Studies overseas, with particular reference to those partner universities willing to accept Keele students for a whole year (two semesters). Before you can apply to study abroad you must (a) attend an information session; (b) research the universities that are most appropriate for your subject combination; and (c) complete a budgeting sheet. Anyone planning on studying abroad must take the Intercultural Communications CSP module which runs in the second semester of the first year. When you have completed these requirements you should sign up for an appointment with the Study Abroad Adviser in CIEL, Dr Erica Arthur. Appointment slots will be posted in the Walter Moberly building in mid-November. The deadline for applications will be Friday 14th January 2008 and selection will take place in February-March. You will need to be in good academic standing, and have finished all your Complementary Studies modules at the end of the first year. For further details see the CIEL website, http://www.keele.ac.uk/depts/ solcca/ciel/ or talk to the Study Abroad Coordinator, Dr Steve Mills. Information files, including student questionnaires, are available for you to consult in the Resource Room in CIEL (Room WMO.05, Ground Floor, Walter Moberly Building). The Resource Room is open from 900am - 5.OOpm on weekdays. Peer advisers (students who have been abroad and now work for CIEL) will be available in the Resource Room to provide assistance from week 3. |
||||||
| # | AMS-20048 | US History and Society Since the 1940s | O | M | 7.5 | 15 |
| This module seeks to engage students in a critical discussion of crucial issues in post-World War II U.S. history. We will examine selected developments in American society and culture from a comparative and issue-oriented perspective, using primary and secondary source materials. Particular emphasis will be put on Cold War society and politics, the growth of the post-war state, socio-economic change, social movements, and political realignmnets. This will give students a sense of how people thought about themselves and their society in various decades, and provide a backdrop for understanding current affairs in the U.S. | ||||||
| # | AMS-20051 | Hooray for Hollywood? Approaches to American Film | O | M | 7.5 | 15 |
| This module will look at American popular film, concentrating on the transition from the so-called “classic Hollywood cinema” (from the 1920s to the ‘40s) to a “New” Hollywood consolidating itself in the 1960s and 1970s, and from this to the contemporary high-tech multi-media global industry we know today. We will examine developments in film form and content, and questions of gender and genre in relation to the changing social contexts of film production and reception. We will consider changes in the organisation of the film industry, its target audiences, its technological innovations and commercial complicity. | ||||||
| # | AMS-20053 | The Romance of Fiction: History and Society in 19th Century American Literature | O | M | 7.5 | 15 |
| The module introduces students to the work of some of the major canonical writers of the nineteenth century, notably Poe, Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Whitman, Cooper and James. These writers have often been said to work in the genre/tradition of the ‘Romance’, and the course seeks both to define that term and to analyse what ideas or literary strategies these writers held in common. In the work of post-war American literary critics, there has been an assumption that romance was primarily interested in questions of individual psychology; the course explores some of the ways in which romance may also be seen to be interested in questions of history. | ||||||
| # | AMS-20055 | The Slave South: From Settlement to Secession | O | M | 7.5 | 15 |
| The main aim of the module is to examine the changing character of Southern society, economics and politics from seventeenth-century settlement to the Civil War. Slavery and slaveholding are central themes and the module culminates in an attempt to understand why white Southerners determined to defend the slave system against the logic of the age. The course textbook is Escott et al, Main Problems in the History of the American South I which combines documents and secondary texts. | ||||||
| # | AMS-20056 | Burning Crosses: Religion and American Culture | O | M | 7.5 | 15 |
| This module offers a broadly chronological look at religion’s importance in American cultural movements. It aims to raise students’ awareness of the complex interactions between religious faith and cultural production through readings of a wide variety of stimulating and challenging texts, from literature, cinema and visual art. These diverse texts, which deal with equally diverse belief systems, show how in both celebration of and violent reaction to organised religion, culture is inextricably bound up with belief. One of the questions the module will address is: in an era when the death of religion has been widely cited, how does one account for the apparent resurgence and centrality of religious belief in American life? | ||||||
| Semester 2 | C/O | TYP | ECTS | CATS | ||
| AMS-20039 | AMS - Study Abroad III (dble) | O | C | 15 | 30 | |
|
Studying abroad is a unique and, for many students, life-changing experience. It is also one which can broaden your academic perspectives and improve your career prospects. American Studies Single Honours students are entitled to study abroad for one semester or a whole year.
Keele has exchange arrangements with a number of overseas universities where you can study for one semester in your second year (language students have different arrangements). The list includes universities in Australia, Canada, Finland, Iceland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, South Africa, Sweden, Turkey and the USA. The majority of American Studies students go to universities in North America and Australia, but American Studies is also taught in one of our European partner universities. The Centre for International Exchange and Language (CIEL) website has an up-to-date list of which universities are suitable for students studying American Studies overseas, with particular reference to those partner universities willing to accept Keele students for a whole year (two semesters). Before you can apply to study abroad you must (a) attend an information session; (b) research the universities that are most appropriate for your subject combination; and (c) complete a budgeting sheet. Anyone planning on studying abroad must take the Intercultural Communications CSP module which runs in the second semester of the first year. When you have completed these requirements you should sign up for an appointment with the Study Abroad Adviser in CIEL, Dr Erica Arthur. Appointment slots will be posted in the Walter Moberly building in mid-November. The deadline for applications will be Friday 14th January 2008 and selection will take place in February-March. You will need to be in good academic standing, and have finished all your Complementary Studies modules at the end of the first year. For further details see the CIEL website, http://www.keele.ac.uk/depts/ solcca/ciel/ or talk to the Study Abroad Coordinator, Dr Steve Mills. Information files, including student questionnaires, are available for you to consult in the Resource Room in CIEL (Room WMO.05, Ground Floor, Walter Moberly Building). The Resource Room is open from 900am - 5.OOpm on weekdays. Peer advisers (students who have been abroad and now work for CIEL) will be available in the Resource Room to provide assistance from week 3. |
||||||
| # | AMS-20047 | The Detective and the American City | O | C | 7.5 | 15 |
| Students are invited to analyse and discuss the relationship between the detective and the city across a number of cultural fields – literature, visual art and film. Throughout, the detective is taken as a figure which reflects economic, demographic, cultural and political changes in American cities, and anxieties about identity and status attending those changes. Attention is also paid to the detective as a peculiarly reflexive figure – someone who, in his or her quest to reconstruct plot and deliver explanation, reflects the processes both of the reader and the writer. As the course content indicates, the module looks not only at traditional detectives, but also at broader theoretical issues of reading, spectatorship and criticism which will be of value to students in their further literary studies. | ||||||
| # | AMS-20049 | Alfred Hitchcock's America | O | C | 7.5 | 15 |
| # | AMS-20050 | The New South: From Emancipation to Civil Rights | O | C | 7.5 | 15 |
| The module aims to examine the changing character of Southern society, economics, politics and race relations from the end of the Civil War to the 1960s. The module explores through the use of a range of written and visual material the changing character and interconnectedness of Southern society and politics from emancipation in 1865 to the Civil Rights era of1960s. General themes to be addressed include race relations, economic and political development, the social fabric and changing gender roles and expectations. We will watch and discus two key “New South” films: Gone With The Wind (1939) and To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) The course text, which students should buy, is Paul D. Escott and David R. Goldfield, eds., Main Problems in the History of the American South, Volume II: The New South 2nd ed. (Houghton Mifflin paperback). | ||||||
| # | AMS-20052 | From Modernity to Counter-Culture: American Literature and Social Criticism in the 20th Century | O | C | 7.5 | 15 |
| The module is designed to examine the relationship between American literature as a critical force and historical developments in 20thC American society. The approach is to look beyond explicit social “content” or polemical intentions. This involves studying a diverse range of texts in order to explore the relations between literary form, a writer’s extra-literary purposes, and wider ideological factors. As a result, students will be examining the changing and various nature and role of American literature during the modern period. The module’s horizon is an understanding of how literature may be viewed as critical of, or complicit with, the society within which it is produced. | ||||||
| # | AMS-20057 | The History of the American West | O | C | 7.5 | 15 |
| + | PIR-20058 | The Road to the White House: Campaigning for the Presidency | O | M | 7.5 | 15 |
| The aims of the course are to equip students with a specialised knowledge and understanding of the process by which political leaders seek nomination and election to the presidency of the United States. The module will concentrate specifically on the structure of presidential opportunities in the post war period; the consequences of the democratisation of the delegate selection process for candidate selection and party nominations; changes in the regulatory framework of campaign finance and the ensuing consequences; and changes in advertising and media coverage to assess the impact on the presidential election process. Case studies will be used as specific illustrations of these changes. | ||||||
| + | PIR-20059 | The Presidency of the United States | O | M | 7.5 | 15 |
| The module will study, week-by-week, the president's relationship with other players and their interests within the political system. Analysis focuses on the ability of the president to coerce or persuade other actors in the political system to follow his chosen public policy agenda. Using illustrative evidence from individual presidencies, the module will outline the structural restraints acting upon a president, how presidents attempt to deal with these restraints, and with what success i.e. what the president does and why. Analysis of historical case studies in policy-making will be used to demonstrate how the interaction of these restraints shapes the president’s ability to lead the American nation. | ||||||
| Semester 1 | C/O | TYP | ECTS | CATS | ||
| AMS-10022 | A Beginner's Guide to Contemporary America | C | C | 7.5 | 15 | |
| American society holds a special place in the modern world. Whether it enthralls or appalls, American society, with its economic power, cultural diversity, and military reach, remains a vital concern that can often seem too complex to do justice to. This module offers arriving students an opportunity to experience both the diversity and complexity of contemporary America and to explore the variety of disciplinary approaches available within American Studies, making it possible for them to get to grips with the American experience. Students will be encouraged to develop an interest in both particular topics and wider concerns, to recognise the opportunities inherent in seeing America through the prisms offered by academia, the press, the media and the web, and thereby prepare themselves for further study. | ||||||
| AMS-10025 | Starting Out: An Introduction to American Literature | C | C | 7.5 | 15 | |
| `Starting Out' introduces students to a number of important nineteenth- and twentieth-century literary texts, to major themes in American literature (the Gothic, the city, commodity culture, the `American Adam', constructions of gender, class and race) and to relevant historical contexts (the Revolution, slavery and Civil War, the Great Depression, Vietnam). The module is designed to introduce students to the standards and conventions of university-level work and to develop appropriate writing and research skills. Works studied include: `The Fall of the House of Usher', the slave narrative, `The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn', `The Yellow Wallpaper' and `The Great Gatsby'. | ||||||
| ENG-10024 | Reading Film | EA | C | 7.5 | 15 | |
| Of all forms of communication, film often seems the most obvious, pleasurable and self-explanatory. With an emphasis on variety of film practice, this module aims to introduce students to the essential elements of film narrative and engage them in thinking critically about the choices made by film-makers in constructing the look and sound of their films. We will be asking, therefore, how meaning is created in the cinema, as well as what ideas and arguments such meanings may generate among critically aware spectators of it. In doing so we will be exploring the richness and complexity of cinema's potential to communicate with its spectators through a carefully selected variety of films. Represented amongst these will not only be the classic Hollywood model with which we are all most familiar, but also films from other national and artistic traditions. These will be examined in the context of both fortnightly lecture/workshops and small group classes. | ||||||
| HIS-10030 | Historical Research and Writing | EA | C | 7.5 | 15 | |
| This course introduces first-year students to the study of History at university. It will provide you with the particular skills you will need to study History and which you will apply throughout your degree course. Your tutor will devise a historical topic or debate through which to identify and apply the skills needed to undertake historical research and writing. The lecture programme provides an introduction to the practises expected of and the resources available to a History student at Keele. It also introduces you to the range of historical research undertaken by History staff at Keele - the questions asked; the techniques used; the range of historical writing produced and its relevance to today. Small group seminars supported by a series of exercises will provide the means to locate the acquisition and development of skills within the study of a specific historical debate or topic. The course is assessed by a number of written exercises and an essay. Although primarily designed for History students, this course will also appeal to students of other Humanities and Social Science subjects. | ||||||
| PIR-10048 | Mass Media in America: If it Bleeds, It Leads | EA | M | 7.5 | 15 | |
| This module explores the different types of media in the United States, focusing on newspapers, TV, radio and the internet. Students will learn to analyse the structure and content of these media. How does America differ from Britain? For a start, most people read local papers. Similarly, most people watch local, not national, news. Does local versus national matter? One difference is a heavy emphasis upon crime and violence, prompting the saying "if it bleeds, it leads." Interestingly, while there is lots of violence, Americans are much more prudish about sex. This course encourages you to analyse the form and content of the media to understand why it looks the way it does. The issues raised in the course will give you better insight into British, as well as American, media | ||||||
| Semester 2 | C/O | TYP | ECTS | CATS | ||
| AMS-10023 | The Unreliable Truth: Studies in Twentieth-Century English and American Literatures | EP | C | 7.5 | 15 | |
| "The Unreliable Truth" looks at the ways twentieth-century British and American writers - including Virginia Woolf, George Orwell, Kurt Vonnegut and Maxine Hong Kingston - experiment with different types of narration to challenge the idea of reliablility in storytelling. Various techniques are studied, including first-person narration, stream of consciousness and metafictional strategies, and throughout the module students are encouraged to compare and contrast texts through open discussion and close textual reading, as well as looking at the historical and cultural contexts in which the texts were written in order to speculate on why different techniques were adopted. | ||||||
| AMS-10024 | New York, New York: An Introduction to American Culture | C | M | 7.5 | 15 | |
| New York City holds a special place in the popular imagination. Immortalised in cinema, literature, visual art and song, it continues to symbolise much that is iconic about the United States, but also to maintain a unique identity as somewhere diverse, inclusive, democratic and edgy. This module offers Level I students a chance to explore and discuss the icons, the myths and the realities of this infamous urban space, and at the same time, through a range of texts which includes literature, film, visual art and journalism, demonstrate the unique cross-disciplinary approach of American Studies as a degree programme. | ||||||
| AMS-10026 | The American Past: Explorations in U.S. History | O | C | 7.5 | 15 | |
| The American Past module is designed to equip students with a basic grounding in U.S. history from the colonial period to the present day. It stresses the multifaceted character of American development, interweaving such issues as nationalism, race, gender, and class in a broad narrative and thematic synthesis. Students will be particularly encouraged to develop specific insights into the American historial experience through investigation of documentary evidence which will provide the the basis for seminar discussion. | ||||||
| AMS-10026 | The American Past: Explorations in U.S. History | EP | C | 7.5 | 15 | |
| The American Past module is designed to equip students with a basic grounding in U.S. history from the colonial period to the present day. It stresses the multifaceted character of American development, interweaving such issues as nationalism, race, gender, and class in a broad narrative and thematic synthesis. Students will be particularly encouraged to develop specific insights into the American historial experience through investigation of documentary evidence which will provide the the basis for seminar discussion. | ||||||
| AMS-10027 | Transatlantic Gothic: Studies in Nineteenth-Century English and American Literature | EP | C | 7.5 | 15 | |
| `Transatlantic Gothic' is an exciting and innovative course which introduces students to one of the most important of nineteenth-century literary genres, both in England and the United States. Students study the prominent texts of this period both individually and comparatively, and are given training in key critical and theoretical concepts (for example, psychoanalytical, deconstructionist and Marxist approaches to Gothic literature). The module is designed to develop intermediate writing and research skills; a formative assessment and individual feedback is also provided. Authors studied may include: Bram Stoker, Mary Shelley, Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Brockden Brown and Henry James. The course combines a variety of traditional learning activities (lectures and seminars) with small group work carried out in workshops. A balance of shorter and longer reading assignments makes the workload manageable. | ||||||
| ENG-10025 | Approaches to Film | EA | M | 7.5 | 15 | |
| Who is the author of a film? How do we categorize and make sense of films in relation to each other? How is the meaning of a film shaped by the historical period or national culture that produced it? What sorts of ideas and ideologies about gender and race do films include or exclude? This module provides an introduction to all these questions addressed within film theory. Like any other discipline of enquiry, Film Studies has generated a set of debates about value and meaning that revolve around some key questions, concepts and terms. Through a series of fortnightly two hour workshop lectures and small group classes, this module will examine the development of critical thinking on the cinema and will invite students to debate, question and apply ideas on: film authorship; film genre; history; psychoanalysis. Each of these critical areas will be investigated with reference to an exciting range of films, chosen for the way they have shaped film history and challenged cinema's potential as a form of art and entertainment. | ||||||
| PIR-10039 | Debates in American Politics | O | C | 7.5 | 15 | |
| American Politics is driven by debate. Americans are divided over their foreign policy. Over social issues such as race and abortion, the U.S. has embarked upon debates so heated that they're sometimes referred to as the "culture wars". Then there are ongoing contests over areas such as education and environmental policy. This module will introduce to many of these debates. Each week, we look at a new policy area and get you to debate the rights and wrongs of current U.S. policy and where it should go next. The module also serves to introduce you to the subject of American Politics - it's all pitched at those new to the topic. Much of the module depends on your presentations, advocating one side or the other of a debate in a key policy area. Over the semester, you should learn about a series of policy debates, who's advocating what and develop your skills in presentation and argument. | ||||||
| PIR-10039 | Debates in American Politics | EA | C | 7.5 | 15 | |
| American Politics is driven by debate. Americans are divided over their foreign policy. Over social issues such as race and abortion, the U.S. has embarked upon debates so heated that they're sometimes referred to as the "culture wars". Then there are ongoing contests over areas such as education and environmental policy. This module will introduce to many of these debates. Each week, we look at a new policy area and get you to debate the rights and wrongs of current U.S. policy and where it should go next. The module also serves to introduce you to the subject of American Politics - it's all pitched at those new to the topic. Much of the module depends on your presentations, advocating one side or the other of a debate in a key policy area. Over the semester, you should learn about a series of policy debates, who's advocating what and develop your skills in presentation and argument. | ||||||
| Semester 1 | C/O | TYP | ECTS | CATS | ||
| AMS-20027 | AMS - Study Abroad I (dble) | O | C | 15 | 30 | |
| Studying abroad is a unique and, for many students, life-changing experience. It is also one which can broaden your academic perspectives and improve your career prospects. American Studies Single Honours students are entitled to study abroad for one semester or a whole year.
Keele has exchange arrangements with a number of overseas universities where you can study for one semester in your second year (language students have different arrangements). The list includes universities in Australia, Canada, Finland, Iceland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, South Africa, Sweden, Turkey and the USA. The majority of American Studies students go to universities in North America and Australia, but American Studies is also taught in one of our European partner universities. The Centre for International Exchange and Language (CIEL) website has an up-to-date list of which universities are suitable for students studying American Studies overseas, with particular reference to those partner universities willing to accept Keele students for a whole year (two semesters). Before you can apply to study abroad you must (a) attend an information session; (b) research the universities that are most appropriate for your subject combination; and (c) complete a budgeting sheet. Anyone planning on studying abroad must take the Intercultural Communications CSP module which runs in the second semester of the first year. When you have completed these requirements you should sign up for an appointment with the Study Abroad Adviser in CIEL, Dr Erica Arthur. Appointment slots will be posted in the Walter Moberly building in mid-November. The deadline for applications will be Friday 14th January 2008 and selection will take place in February-March. You will need to be in good academic standing, and have finished all your Complementary Studies modules at the end of the first year. For further details see the CIEL website, http://www.keele.ac.uk/depts/ solcca/ciel/ or talk to the Study Abroad Coordinator, Dr Steve Mills. Information files, including student questionnaires, are available for you to consult in the Resource Room in CIEL (Room WMO.05, Ground Floor, Walter Moberly Building). The Resource Room is open from 900am - 5.OOpm on weekdays. Peer advisers (students who have been abroad and now work for CIEL) will be available in the Resource Room to provide assistance from week 3. |
||||||
| AMS-20028 | AMS - Study Abroad II (dble) | O | C | 15 | 30 | |
| Studying abroad is a unique and, for many students, life-changing experience. It is also one which can broaden your academic perspectives and improve your career prospects. American Studies Single Honours students are entitled to study abroad for one semester or a whole year.
Keele has exchange arrangements with a number of overseas universities where you can study for one semester in your second year (language students have different arrangements). The list includes universities in Australia, Canada, Finland, Iceland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, South Africa, Sweden, Turkey and the USA. The majority of American Studies students go to universities in North America and Australia, but American Studies is also taught in one of our European partner universities. The Centre for International Exchange and Language (CIEL) website has an up-to-date list of which universities are suitable for students studying American Studies overseas, with particular reference to those partner universities willing to accept Keele students for a whole year (two semesters). Before you can apply to study abroad you must (a) attend an information session; (b) research the universities that are most appropriate for your subject combination; and (c) complete a budgeting sheet. Anyone planning on studying abroad must take the Intercultural Communications CSP module which runs in the second semester of the first year. When you have completed these requirements you should sign up for an appointment with the Study Abroad Adviser in CIEL, Dr Erica Arthur. Appointment slots will be posted in the Walter Moberly building in mid-November. The deadline for applications will be Friday 14th January 2008 and selection will take place in February-March. You will need to be in good academic standing, and have finished all your Complementary Studies modules at the end of the first year. For further details see the CIEL website, http://www.keele.ac.uk/depts/ solcca/ciel/ or talk to the Study Abroad Coordinator, Dr Steve Mills. Information files, including student questionnaires, are available for you to consult in the Resource Room in CIEL (Room WMO.05, Ground Floor, Walter Moberly Building). The Resource Room is open from 900am - 5.OOpm on weekdays. Peer advisers (students who have been abroad and now work for CIEL) will be available in the Resource Room to provide assistance from week 3. |
||||||
| # | AMS-20048 | US History and Society Since the 1940s | O | M | 7.5 | 15 |
| This module seeks to engage students in a critical discussion of crucial issues in post-World War II U.S. history. We will examine selected developments in American society and culture from a comparative and issue-oriented perspective, using primary and secondary source materials. Particular emphasis will be put on Cold War society and politics, the growth of the post-war state, socio-economic change, social movements, and political realignmnets. This will give students a sense of how people thought about themselves and their society in various decades, and provide a backdrop for understanding current affairs in the U.S. | ||||||
| # | AMS-20051 | Hooray for Hollywood? Approaches to American Film | O | M | 7.5 | 15 |
| This module will look at American popular film, concentrating on the transition from the so-called “classic Hollywood cinema” (from the 1920s to the ‘40s) to a “New” Hollywood consolidating itself in the 1960s and 1970s, and from this to the contemporary high-tech multi-media global industry we know today. We will examine developments in film form and content, and questions of gender and genre in relation to the changing social contexts of film production and reception. We will consider changes in the organisation of the film industry, its target audiences, its technological innovations and commercial complicity. | ||||||
| # | AMS-20053 | The Romance of Fiction: History and Society in 19th Century American Literature | O | M | 7.5 | 15 |
| The module introduces students to the work of some of the major canonical writers of the nineteenth century, notably Poe, Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Whitman, Cooper and James. These writers have often been said to work in the genre/tradition of the ‘Romance’, and the course seeks both to define that term and to analyse what ideas or literary strategies these writers held in common. In the work of post-war American literary critics, there has been an assumption that romance was primarily interested in questions of individual psychology; the course explores some of the ways in which romance may also be seen to be interested in questions of history. | ||||||
| # | AMS-20054 | American Environmental History | O | M | 7.5 | 15 |
| The main aim of this module is to engage with a series of critical debates about the environment by examining American environmental history from the early settlement through to the present day. through to the present day, with a substantial focus upon the 19th century's shift from an agrarian and industrial society. By the end of the module, students should be able to identify important continuities as well as significant changes in American attitudes and practices towards the natural world since first settlement. Students should be enabled to develop good historical practice and analytical skills through the analysis of primary documents, and to relate these analyses to ecological, social, and cultural contexts. Finally, students should be enabled to demonstrate an understanding of key aspects of American environmental history, ranging from the initial interaction with novel ecological situations via the impact of modernization upon a variety of ecological niches, to the perils and promise of large flooding/reclamation projects. | ||||||
| # | AMS-20055 | The Slave South: From Settlement to Secession | O | M | 7.5 | 15 |
| The main aim of the module is to examine the changing character of Southern society, economics and politics from seventeenth-century settlement to the Civil War. Slavery and slaveholding are central themes and the module culminates in an attempt to understand why white Southerners determined to defend the slave system against the logic of the age. The course textbook is Escott et al, Main Problems in the History of the American South I which combines documents and secondary texts. | ||||||
| # | AMS-20056 | Burning Crosses: Religion and American Culture | O | M | 7.5 | 15 |
| This module offers a broadly chronological look at religion’s importance in American cultural movements. It aims to raise students’ awareness of the complex interactions between religious faith and cultural production through readings of a wide variety of stimulating and challenging texts, from literature, cinema and visual art. These diverse texts, which deal with equally diverse belief systems, show how in both celebration of and violent reaction to organised religion, culture is inextricably bound up with belief. One of the questions the module will address is: in an era when the death of religion has been widely cited, how does one account for the apparent resurgence and centrality of religious belief in American life? | ||||||
| Semester 2 | C/O | TYP | ECTS | CATS | ||
| AMS-20039 | AMS - Study Abroad III (dble) | O | C | 15 | 30 | |
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Studying abroad is a unique and, for many students, life-changing experience. It is also one which can broaden your academic perspectives and improve your career prospects. American Studies Single Honours students are entitled to study abroad for one semester or a whole year.
Keele has exchange arrangements with a number of overseas universities where you can study for one semester in your second year (language students have different arrangements). The list includes universities in Australia, Canada, Finland, Iceland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, South Africa, Sweden, Turkey and the USA. The majority of American Studies students go to universities in North America and Australia, but American Studies is also taught in one of our European partner universities. The Centre for International Exchange and Language (CIEL) website has an up-to-date list of which universities are suitable for students studying American Studies overseas, with particular reference to those partner universities willing to accept Keele students for a whole year (two semesters). Before you can apply to study abroad you must (a) attend an information session; (b) research the universities that are most appropriate for your subject combination; and (c) complete a budgeting sheet. Anyone planning on studying abroad must take the Intercultural Communications CSP module which runs in the second semester of the first year. When you have completed these requirements you should sign up for an appointment with the Study Abroad Adviser in CIEL, Dr Erica Arthur. Appointment slots will be posted in the Walter Moberly building in mid-November. The deadline for applications will be Friday 14th January 2008 and selection will take place in February-March. You will need to be in good academic standing, and have finished all your Complementary Studies modules at the end of the first year. For further details see the CIEL website, http://www.keele.ac.uk/depts/ solcca/ciel/ or talk to the Study Abroad Coordinator, Dr Steve Mills. Information files, including student questionnaires, are available for you to consult in the Resource Room in CIEL (Room WMO.05, Ground Floor, Walter Moberly Building). The Resource Room is open from 900am - 5.OOpm on weekdays. Peer advisers (students who have been abroad and now work for CIEL) will be available in the Resource Room to provide assistance from week 3. |
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| AMS-20040 | AMS - Study Abroad IV (dble) | O | C | 15 | 30 | |
| Studying abroad is a unique and, for many students, life-changing experience. It is also one which can broaden your academic perspectives and improve your career prospects. American Studies Single Honours students are entitled to study abroad for one semester or a whole year.
Keele has exchange arrangements with a number of overseas universities where you can study for one semester in your second year (language students have different arrangements). The list includes universities in Australia, Canada, Finland, Iceland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, South Africa, Sweden, Turkey and the USA. The majority of American Studies students go to universities in North America and Australia, but American Studies is also taught in one of our European partner universities. The Centre for International Exchange and Language (CIEL) website has an up-to-date list of which universities are suitable for students studying American Studies overseas, with particular reference to those partner universities willing to accept Keele students for a whole year (two semesters). Before you can apply to study abroad you must (a) attend an information session; (b) research the universities that are most appropriate for your subject combination; and (c) complete a budgeting sheet. Anyone planning on studying abroad must take the Intercultural Communications CSP module which runs in the second semester of the first year. When you have completed these requirements you should sign up for an appointment with the Study Abroad Adviser in CIEL, Dr Erica Arthur. Appointment slots will be posted in the Walter Moberly building in mid-November. The deadline for applications will be Friday 14th January 2008 and selection will take place in February-March. You will need to be in good academic standing, and have finished all your Complementary Studies modules at the end of the first year. For further details see the CIEL website, http://www.keele.ac.uk/depts/ solcca/ciel/ or talk to the Study Abroad Coordinator, Dr Steve Mills. Information files, including student questionnaires, are available for you to consult in the Resource Room in CIEL (Room WMO.05, Ground Floor, Walter Moberly Building). The Resource Room is open from 900am - 5.OOpm on weekdays. Peer advisers (students who have been abroad and now work for CIEL) will be available in the Resource Room to provide assistance from week 3. |
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| # | AMS-20047 | The Detective and the American City | O | C | 7.5 | 15 |
| Students are invited to analyse and discuss the relationship between the detective and the city across a number of cultural fields – literature, visual art and film. Throughout, the detective is taken as a figure which reflects economic, demographic, cultural and political changes in American cities, and anxieties about identity and status attending those changes. Attention is also paid to the detective as a peculiarly reflexive figure – someone who, in his or her quest to reconstruct plot and deliver explanation, reflects the processes both of the reader and the writer. As the course content indicates, the module looks not only at traditional detectives, but also at broader theoretical issues of reading, spectatorship and criticism which will be of value to students in their further literary studies. | ||||||
| # | AMS-20049 | Alfred Hitchcock's America | O | C | 7.5 | 15 |
| # | AMS-20050 | The New South: From Emancipation to Civil Rights | O | C | 7.5 | 15 |
| The module aims to examine the changing character of Southern society, economics, politics and race relations from the end of the Civil War to the 1960s. The module explores through the use of a range of written and visual material the changing character and interconnectedness of Southern society and politics from emancipation in 1865 to the Civil Rights era of1960s. General themes to be addressed include race relations, economic and political development, the social fabric and changing gender roles and expectations. We will watch and discus two key “New South” films: Gone With The Wind (1939) and To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) The course text, which students should buy, is Paul D. Escott and David R. Goldfield, eds., Main Problems in the History of the American South, Volume II: The New South 2nd ed. (Houghton Mifflin paperback). | ||||||
| # | AMS-20052 | From Modernity to Counter-Culture: American Literature and Social Criticism in the 20th Century | O | C | 7.5 | 15 |
| The module is designed to examine the relationship between American literature as a critical force and historical developments in 20thC American society. The approach is to look beyond explicit social “content” or polemical intentions. This involves studying a diverse range of texts in order to explore the relations between literary form, a writer’s extra-literary purposes, and wider ideological factors. As a result, students will be examining the changing and various nature and role of American literature during the modern period. The module’s horizon is an understanding of how literature may be viewed as critical of, or complicit with, the society within which it is produced. | ||||||
| # | AMS-20057 | The History of the American West | O | C | 7.5 | 15 |
| + | PIR-20058 | The Road to the White House: Campaigning for the Presidency | O | M | 7.5 | 15 |
| The aims of the course are to equip students with a specialised knowledge and understanding of the process by which political leaders seek nomination and election to the presidency of the United States. The module will concentrate specifically on the structure of presidential opportunities in the post war period; the consequences of the democratisation of the delegate selection process for candidate selection and party nominations; changes in the regulatory framework of campaign finance and the ensuing consequences; and changes in advertising and media coverage to assess the impact on the presidential election process. Case studies will be used as specific illustrations of these changes. | ||||||
| + | PIR-20059 | The Presidency of the United States | O | M | 7.5 | 15 |
| The module will study, week-by-week, the president's relationship with other players and their interests within the political system. Analysis focuses on the ability of the president to coerce or persuade other actors in the political system to follow his chosen public policy agenda. Using illustrative evidence from individual presidencies, the module will outline the structural restraints acting upon a president, how presidents attempt to deal with these restraints, and with what success i.e. what the president does and why. Analysis of historical case studies in policy-making will be used to demonstrate how the interaction of these restraints shapes the president’s ability to lead the American nation. | ||||||
| Semester 1 | C/O | TYP | ECTS | CATS | ||
| # | AMS-30014 | Contemporary American Fiction | O | M | 15 | 30 |
| This course sets out to trace the emergence of a distinctive `structure of feeling’ in a number of works published in the last six years by writers now emerging or reaching the peaks of their careers as well as in the works of more established novelists. There will be a weekly two-hour seminar focussing on the core texts. There will also be a further one-hur weekly lecture/workshop in which we will investigate some of the relevant critical and theoretical issues. | ||||||
| AMS-30018 | Abraham Lincoln and His Times | O | M | 15 | 30 | |
| The aim of the module is to explore the origins and development of the American sectional crisis through detailed investigation of Abraham Lincoln’s life and times. Its objectives are to provide students with a better understanding of historical process through examination of a range of primary and secondary texts, with a focus on Lincoln’s speeches and letters. Accompanying and complementing the seminars will be a series of visual presentations, including the feature film Glory and extracts from Ken Burns’ award-winning documentary The Civil War. The course text, required for seminars, is: Michael P. Johnson ed., Abraham Lincoln, Slavery and the Civil War: Selected Writings and Speeches (Bedford). Students are also strongly advised to read James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom (Penguin paperback), the best general history of the period. | ||||||
| # | AMS-30027 | Gender and Sexuality in C19 American Writing | O | M | 15 | 30 |
| The module proposes to analyse the presentation of the female in selected texts of the nineteenth century. Attention will be given to not only the characteristics of the female, but to the possibilities for governing principles of femininity as they inform notions of authorship, of writing practices, and of transformations in understandings of the self and social intercourse. Attention will also be paid to various and competing depictions of masculinity, and attendant fears of gender ambiguity or feminisation. | ||||||
| + | PIR-30079 | Electoral Behaviour in the United States | O | M | 7.5 | 15 |
| The aims of the module are to equip students with a specialised knowledge and understanding of individual and aggregate level voting behaviour in the United States. This will be achieved analysing and evaluating conceptual models of electoral behaviour, for example party identification and rational voting. In addition students will study the catalysts of electoral change, life cycle and generation effects and the impact that short term factors (issues, candidates and governmental performance) have on the distribution of party loyalties over time in the American political system. Case studies of presidential elections since 1960 will be used to assess whether the United States is entering a period of party realignment/dealignment. | ||||||
| + | PIR-30087 | The US Presidency and Public Policy | O | M | 7.5 | 15 |
| Can a president arriving in office really change what the government does? This module will equip you to analyse the prospects for a president trying to lead policy change. The module looks at a series of arguments about the circumstances presidents face, and examines recent presidents as historical examples. | ||||||
| Semester 2 | C/O | TYP | ECTS | CATS | ||
| # | AMS-30004 | Dissertation for AMS | C | C | 15 | 30 |
| This module allows final year students to explore an area of particular interest in depth and complete an extended piece of focused research and writing of between 10 and 12,000 words. The intention is to allow you the time and autonomy to produce genuinely thoughtful and original work, develop and demonstrate advanced skills of independent working, and give expression to your academic interests in an intellectually disciplined and creative way. Taught by individual faculty supervision and small-group workshops | ||||||
| # | AMS-30026 | Foreign Travellers' Views of the United States | C | M | 15 | 30 |
| This module reviews American life through the lens of foreign travellers, outsiders who through their often substantial experience of the realities of ordinary American life, are able to provide considered and not always conventional interpretations of an emerging great power. Through a variety of initially written (letters, diaries, and particularly travelogues) and then electronic sources (radio and television broadcasts) this module will explore the constant and sometimes changing images held by outsiders from the late colonial period to the present day. | ||||||