Introductory description

American fiction since the early twentieth century has encompassed a diverse range of styles and genres, and has maintained a dynamic, often fractious relationship to the turmoil of American politics and society. This module offers one particular route through this vibrant and divergent literary field.

Module web page

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

Indicative syllabus
Term 1:
Week 1 – Introduction
Week 2 – Cather, My Antonia
Week 3 – Readings on modernism
Week 4 – Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Week 5 – Larsen, Passing
Week 6 – Reading week
Week 7 – McKay, Home to Harlem
Week 8 – Faulkner, As I Lay Dying
Week 9 – Chester Himes, TBC
Week 10 – Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House
Term 2:
Week 1 – Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun
Week 2 – Morrison, The Bluest Eye
Week 3 – Silko, Ceremony
Week 4 – Cisneros, House on Mango Street
Week 5 – Gibson, Neuromancer
Week 6 – Reading week
Week 7 – Kushner, Angels in America
Week 8 – McCarthy, The Road
Week 9 – Ward, Salvage the Bones
Week 10 – Student choice

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• Acquired knowledge of selected texts and genres in modern American fiction
• Developed analytical and critical skills through close reading of the set texts
• Acquired knowledge of relevant cultural and critical contexts within which to situate the set texts
• Developed strategies for reading texts within the context of American culture
• Gained an understanding of key critical and literary concepts in their American context, including but not limited to: race, class and gender, cultural geography, individualism and democracy, late capitalism and postmodernism, war and violence, transnationalism, and empire
• Developed research skills

Indicative reading list

◾Bradbury, Malcolm and Howard Temperley. eds. Introduction to American Studies. 3rd edition.
London: Longman, 1998.
◾Campbell, Neil and Alasdair Kean. American Cultural Studies. London: Routledge, 1997.
◾Franklin, John Hope and Evelyn Higginbotham. From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African
Americans. 9th edition. McGraw-Hill, 2011.
◾Giles, Paul. The Global Remapping of American Literature. Princeton University Press, 2011.
◾Godden, Richard. Fictions of Capital: The American Novel from James to Mailer. Cambridge
University Press, 1990.
◾Graham, Maryemma and Jerry Ward (eds)., Cambridge History of African American Literature.
Cambridge, 2011.
◾Gray, Richard. A History of American Literature. Wiley-Blackwell, 2004. ◾Grice, Helena, et al. Beginning Ethnic American Literatures. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001. ◾Levander, Caroline F. Where is American Literature? Wiley, 2013 ◾Maier, Pauline at al. Inventing America: A History of the United States, Vol.2. Norton, 2006. ◾McDonald, Gail. American Literature and Culture 1900-1960. Oxford: Blackwell, 2007. ◾Mitchell, Jeremy and Richard Maidment, eds., The United States in the Twentieth Century: Culture. Hodder & Stoughton, 1994. ◾Moreley, Catherine. Modern American Literature. Edinburgh University Press, 2012. ◾Stoneley, Peter and Cindy Weinstein, ed., A Concise Companion to American Fiction 1900-1950. Blackwell, 2008. ◾Ruland, Richard & Malcolm Bradbury. From Puritanism to Postmodernism: A History of American Literature. London: Penguin Books, 1991. ◾Tallack, Douglas. Twentieth-Century America: The Intellectual and Cultural Context. London: Longman, 1991. ◾Yannella, Philip. American Literature in Context after 1929. Wiley-Blackwell, 2011.

Research element

Critical anthology requires widespread archival research (this is supported by a dedicated session in week 5 with the library staff)

International

The module concerns US culture

Subject specific skills

-Understand and deploy theoretical and methodological positions with regards to 20th-century US literature
-Place the study of 20th-century US literature within wider contexts of recent scholarship and understand professional and disciplinary boundaries

Transferable skills

-Engage with archival work and subject-specific scholarly bibliographic skills
-Demonstrate advanced critical thinking skills to enable the development and sustaining of an independently-determined argument.
-Understand and challenge the intellectual validity and institutional necessity of ‘canons’ and ‘survey courses’
-Confidently present an argument using a combination of different media and primary sources.