Delivery Type	Delivery length / details
Seminars / Tutorials	Two hour weekly seminar

Assessment Type	Assessment length / details	Proportion
Semester Assessment	2 x 2000 word essays 50% for each piece of work	100%
Supplementary Assessment	Resubmit or resit failed elements and/or make good any missing elements

Learning Outcomes

On completion of the module students should be able to:
demonstrate a knowledge of key historical developments in United States society since 1945 and their influence on the politics and culture of late 20th and early 21st century America;

display a capacity for significant judgement across a broad range of perspectives in the history, politics, literature and film studies of postwar American culture;

review and summarize contemporary debates about the definition of American culture in the 1950s and 1960s;

formulate responses to well defined and abstract problems using appropriate interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary resources.

Content

Seminar Programme

1. Introduction
Module introduction and overview of assessment

2. McCarthyism
Required Viewing: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Dir. Don Siegel, 1955)

3. Cold War
Required viewing: Dr Strangelove (Dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1964)

4. Countercultures I
Required Reading: Ann Charters, ed, The Penguin Book of the Beats (selections)

5. Countercultures II
Required Reading/Viewing: Ken Kesey, One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest (1970); One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (Dir. Milos Forman, 1975)

6. Youth Cultures
Required Reading/Viewing: Rebel Without a Cause (Dir. Nicholas Ray, 1955); J. D. Salinger, Catcher in the Rye (1958)

7. Suburbanisation
Required Reading/Viewing: John Cheever, from The Stories of John Cheever (1990) (i.e. `The Swimmer', `The Wrysons', `The Housebreaker of Shady Hill'); The Swimmer (Dir. Frank Perry, 1968)

8. Women in Post-War Society
Required Reading: Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (1963)

9. The Civil Rights Movement I: From Brown to Selma
Required Reading: Anne Moody, Coming of Age in Mississippi (1968)

10. The Civil Rights Movement II: From Civil Rights to Black Power
Required Reading: Alice Walker, Meridian (1976)

Brief description

This module offers an opportunity to examine in depth certain selected themes in American life and culture between 1945 and 1969: America's relationship with the rest of the world in the aftermath of World War II; the impact of that relationship on American politics, society and culture, especially as evidenced in the McCarthyite 'witch hunts'; and contests over the definition of American culture during the 1950s and 1960s.

Aims

1. To familiarise students with crucial events and important changes in U.S. society between 1945 and 1969;
2. To offer students an interdisciplinary approach to American Studies. The perspectives of history, literary and film studies, and politics will be brought to bear on a series of common topics in a way that will enhance understanding of the subject matter under investigation, as well as demonstrating the conceptual benefits (and problems) of interdisciplinary study;
3. To build on Part 1 American Studies and to supplement the existing range of modules in American Studies at Part 2, thereby enhancing students' overall understanding of American culture.

Skills Type	Skills details
Application of Number	n/a
Communication	Students' writing in an academic context will be developed and assessed in the coursework. Oral skills will be developed in individual and group work in seminars, but not assessed
Improving own Learning and Performance	This will be developed during the course of the seminars and in the assessment tasks
Information Technology	Students will be expected to present their work in word processed form (and will edit PC generated text); they will also be required to make use of computerized library resources
Personal Development and Career planning	This will be addressed in the module¿s emphasis on independent and group work, and its attempt to develop professional presentational skills.
Problem solving	This will be developed during the course of the seminars and in the assessment tasks
Research skills	This will be developed during the course of the seminars and in the assessment tasks
Subject Specific Skills	Working with a multi- and interdisciplinary focus will be developed in seminars and in the assessed work
Team work	This is built into the pedagogy of the module - all students will work in pairs and/or groups to comment on theories in relation to texts

Course Delivery

Assessment

Learning Outcomes

Content

Brief description

Aims

Module Skills

Reading List

Notes