American Literature 1800-2000

On successful completion of this module students should be able to:

1. Demonstrate critical and interpretative skills appropriate to Level 1 and deploy an appropriate critical vocabulary.
2. Demonstrate an analytical approach to issue of form, genre and language in American literature.
3. Demonstrate an ability to relate literary texts to appropriate historical and cultural contexts

This module surveys American literature and culture from founding narratives which sought to define the new Republic, and through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, examining the construction of a specifically American identity in relation to the social and cultural changes which have characterised American experiences in this period. The first half of the course explores the historical development of America via myths and legends, the search for independent and autonomous selfhood and the importance of motifs of freedom, space and wilderness; and issues of race, gender and politics. The second half of the module then explores the changing shape of American selfhood in the twentieth century, the emergence of ethnic voices in American literature, the advent of consumerism and the emergence of women's voices as politically significant, and the rise of the counterculture following World War II.

The module aims remain the same as the previous iteration of this module

Lectures and Seminars:

Week 1
Lecture: A Brief Introduction to Blackboard and Module Expectations; Founding Narratives and Puritan Perspectives
Essential Reading: Washington Irving, “Rip van Winkle,” “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” (1819-1820); Nathaniel Hawthorne, “Young Goodman Brown” (1835)

Week 2
Lecture: American Democracy, and the Advent of Civil War
Essential Reading: Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, 1855 Edition: Read “Preface” and “Song of Myself” (1855)

Week 3
Lecture: African American Slavery
Essential Reading: Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861)

Week 4
Lecture: American Literature in the South and Reconstruction
Essential Reading: Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884)

Week 5
Lecture: Women’s Voices: Causes and Rights.
Essential Reading: Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper (1892)

Week 6 – Reading Week

Week 7
Lecture: Immigrant Voices
Essential Reading: Willa Cather, My Antonia (1918)

Week 8
Lecture: Early Modernism and the American Dream
Essential Reading: F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1925)

Week 9
Lecture: Teen and Beat Counterculture
Essential Reading: J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye (1951); Allen Ginsberg, “Howl” (1956)

Week 10
Lecture: Civil Rights
Essential Reading: August Wilson, Fences (1985)

Week 11
Lecture: Twentieth-Century Multiculturalism
Essential Reading: Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club (1989)

This module is at CQFW Level 4