| Unit name | American Literature |
|---|---|
| Unit code | ENGL30024 |
| Credit points | 20 |
| Level of study | H/6 |
| Teaching block(s) |
Teaching Block 2 (weeks 13 - 24) |
| Unit director | Professor. Tom Sperlinger |
| Open unit status | Not open |
| Pre-requisites |
None |
| Co-requisites |
None |
| School/department | Department of English |
| Faculty | Faculty of Arts |
This unit aims to introduce students to a selection of poetry and prose that gives a flavour of the development and variety of American literature. Examples will be chosen from across the nineteenth- and twentieth centuries, and may include authors such as Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson, William Carlos Williams, Allen Ginsberg, Frank O'Hara, Sylvia Plath, Saul Bellow, and John Updike.
Aims:
This unit aims to introduce students to a variety of prose and poetry that reflects the range of writing in nineteenth- and twentieth-century American literature. Students will be encouraged to consider in depth the American voice (or American voices); use of form and forms; parallel developments in American society; and the relationship to, and commentary on, the European tradition.
Students will have had an opportunity to gain a sense of the chronology, range, and variety of American literature in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. There will have been opportunities to read novels and poetry, as well as non-fictional prose, and to draw comparisons and consider differences within this tradition and beyond it.
The unit will normally be taught in ten three-hour seminars, utilising a range of teaching methods including short lectures by the tutor(s), formal and informal presentations by students, and small group discussion. Normally one seminar will be devoted to a class conference, during which the assessed presentations will take place.
Students will be required to write two essays for formal assessment. The first will be of 1,800 to 2,500 words; in this assignment, students will be asked to engage with a particular text or a topic with a relatively defined scope. The second will be of 2,800 to 4,000 words and will normally involve a wider range of texts and/or approaches to literature in this period. The first essay will be worth 40% of the unit mark; the second essay will be worth 60%.
