AMS-20065 - Module Specification
School of Humanities
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences

Programme/Approved Electives for 2020/21

Available as a Free Standing Elective

Co-requisites

None

Prerequisites

None

Barred Combinations

No barred combinations

Description for 2020/21

The transformations within American society during the Twentieth Century have been amongst the most far-reaching of any western culture. It is the purpose of this module to address the literary responses to this period of radical change, taking its examples from both poetry and prose. Drawn from the 1920s to the 1970s, these examples will be shown to register and confront social, political and cultural issues both directly and indirectly in order to develop a knowledge of literature's alterability within the modern and postmodern eras, its responsiveness to changing material and ideological conditions, and the varying shapes of that responsiveness. A key question will be the extent to which any literary text critiques or colludes with its social occasion.

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 a knowledge of how literature may be viewed as critical of, or complicit with, the society within which it is produced.

Intended Learning Outcomes

analyse 20th-century American poetry and prose in order to explore the relations between literary form, a writer's extra-literary purposes, and wider ideological factors: 1,2
describe and analyse basic features of the social, historical and political identity of the United States in the Twentieth Century: 1,2
describe and evaluate basic features of mult-disciplinary scholarship (literary, historical and/or political) relating to study of the United States in the Twentieth Century: 1,2
employ the basic bibliographical, referencing, and presentation requirements of the core disciplines: 1,2
relate textual analysis to social, cultural and historical contexts: 1,2

Study hours

11 x 2 hour seminar; 11 x 4 hour seminar preparation; 84 hours assignment preparation

School Rules

None

Description of Module Assessment