| Duration |
Expand+Spring Trimester - January to May
MODE OF DELIVERY: Face-to-Face
Student Effort Hours:
Student Effort Type Hours
Specified Learning Activities 36
Autonomous Student Learning 40
Lectures 12
Small Group 12
Total 100
Approaches to Teaching...
Hide-Spring Trimester - January to May
MODE OF DELIVERY: Face-to-Face
Student Effort Hours:
Student Effort Type Hours
Specified Learning Activities 36
Autonomous Student Learning 40
Lectures 12
Small Group 12
Total 100
Approaches to Teaching and Learning:
The course combines Lectures (with PowerPoint presentations) and Small Group Teaching.
The Lectures will focus on a specific writer/texts and will also engage with different critical perspectives.
The SGT classes allow for more interactive teaching: they are led by a tutor, focused on set reading (based on lecture topics) and are structured around student discussion and debate.
The course demands preparatory reading and independent preparation in advance of both lectures and SGT.
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| Course Content |
Expand+ENG20430 Modern American Literature
Academic Year 2022/2023
'Make it new' was Ezra Pound's view of the fundamental role of the Modernist writer, yet it is an indication of the complexity of American Modernism that the writers involved approach th...
Hide-ENG20430 Modern American Literature
Academic Year 2022/2023
'Make it new' was Ezra Pound's view of the fundamental role of the Modernist writer, yet it is an indication of the complexity of American Modernism that the writers involved approach the 'new' in radically different ways. The course will introduce and develop an understanding of American modernism, both in terms of the particularities of American culture in the early twentieth century, and in relation to its complex relationship with Europe. Particular attention will be paid to concepts of race/ethnicity, gender, politics and social activism as ways of emphasising the plurality of American modernism, as well as the diverse aesthetic forms which give it expression. In its geographical reach, the course encompasses writing from the American West, rural Wisconsin, New York (from Harlem to the Jewish American community of the Lower East Side), the American South, and expatriate experience in post-war Britain and France.
At the core of the course is an exploration of the complex, shifting and dynamic nature of American Modernism, both in terms of the creative output of its writers, and in relation to the critics and theorists who attempt to define it.
Learning Outcomes:
1. Demonstrate a critical understanding of American Modernism, one that is alert to its complexity and diversity.
2. Engage with key critical and theoretical concepts such as race/ethnicity, gender, and the dynamic and shifting nature of cultural forms and national identities.
3. Develop an understanding of the historical and cultural contexts from which modernist writing emerges.
4. Apply such concepts and contexts to close anlaysis of poetic and narrative form.
5. Develop an ability to engage in discussion of course texts and themes in the workshops accompanying the lectures for this module.
6. Develop and write a research essay on a topic related to this module.
7. Complete an examination at the end of the semester.
Indicative Module Content:
The key focus of the course is the diversity and complexity of American Modernism. Consequently the course examines a range of male and female writers across varied ethnic and regional perspectives, and engages with innovations in both narrative and poetic practice.
Topics and writers may include (subject to amendment):
Introduction to the Themes and Contexts of American Modernism
The Waste Land: The Poet in the Modern City
Moving Toward Modernity: Edith Wharton, 'Ethan Frome'
William Carlos Williams and Imagism
The Harlem Renaissance: Constructing Black Modernity
Langston Hughes: Modernity, the Blues and Jazz
Zora Neale Hurston/Nella Larsen: Blackness, Modernity and the Woman Writer
Willa Cather: Regional and Rural Modernisms
Anzia Yezierska: Vernacular Modernism and the Urban Immigration Novel
Lorine Niedecker’s Poetics: Folk / Avant garde Modernism
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