LT320-6-FY-CO:
Post-War(s) United States Fiction

The details
2024/25
Literature, Film, and Theatre Studies
Colchester Campus
Full Year
Undergraduate: Level 6
Current
Thursday 03 October 2024
Friday 27 June 2025
30
23 August 2024

 

Requisites for this module
(none)
(none)
(none)
(none)

 

(none)

Key module for

(none)

Module description

This module explores disparate and changing treatments of American identity and purpose from the emergence from World War Two up to recent re-evaluations of history, applying a variety of critical approaches and considering crucial social, political and cultural contexts.


The module begins and ends with novels by Cormac McCarthy that extend the study into a violent past and a post-apocalyptic future. Between these texts, broadly speaking, we follow a chronology of setting, rather than publication date, allowing a fluid, intertextual picture of the United States to emerge, kicking off with work with the Second World War as the recurrent central image, sometimes portraying combat, but with its aftermath always in mind.


The difficulties of return and re-assimilation into (or rejection from) the United States are explored from different perspectives: white middle-class, Native American, and African American. Post-war conditions of different kinds are then explored in work haunted not so much by the presence of great historical events but rather by absence and sense of loss.


Fictional treatments of effects of the Vietnam War increasingly become concerned with America's perpetually 'post-war' state, with striking studies of this conflict and the continuing resonance of the Civil War appearing in the 1970s and 80s. The course ends with late-twentieth and early-twentieth century studies of America's attitudes towards itself, its history, and its ongoing role in the world.

Module aims

The aims of the module are:



  • To provide students with an overview and knowledge of some key themes and concepts in United States literature, particularly in relation to the post-1945 period.

  • To provide students with a critical understanding of the legacies of slavery, colonialism, freedom, independence, class, gender, and social mobility in United States literature, with particular reference to how these feature in understandings of American involvement in foreign wars, and in culture wars domestically.

  • To enable students to develop the critical tools to evaluate how United States authors attempted to write about their nation and collectively have produced national and regional literatures.

Module learning outcomes

By the end of this module, students will be expected to be able to:



  1. Demonstrate a critical understanding of a range of key themes and concepts in United States literature, particularly in the post-1945 period

  2. Critically evaluate and situate the legacies of slavery, colonialism, freedom, independence, class, gender, and social mobility in United States literature, and their ongoing relevance in American wars

  3. Apply a critical insight into how United States authors attempted to write about their nation to their own literary analysis of a selection of United States literature.

Module information

General Reading:



  • Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian

  • Norman Mailer, The Naked and the Dead

  • Norman Mailer, The Naked and the Dead

  • Joseph Heller, Catch-22

  • Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

  • Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony

  • Walter Mosley, Devil in a Blue Dress

  • Jack Kerouac, On the Road

  • Joan Didion, Play It As It Lays

  • Jayne Anne Phillips, Machine Dreams

  • Bobbie Ann Mason, In Country

  • Toni Morrison, Paradise

  • Toni Morrison, Paradise

  • Don DeLillo, White Noise

  • Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho

  • Philip Roth, American Pastoral

  • Philip Roth, American Pastoral

  • John Updike, Terrorist

  • Cormac McCarthy, The Road

Learning and teaching methods

This module will be delivered via:

  • Weekly 2-hour seminars

Bibliography

The above list is indicative of the essential reading for the course.
The library makes provision for all reading list items, with digital provision where possible, and these resources are shared between students.
Further reading can be obtained from this module's reading list.

Assessment items, weightings and deadlines

Coursework / exam Description Deadline Coursework weighting
Coursework   Close reading assignment (1500 words)  29/11/2024  15% 
Coursework   Autumn Essay (3,000 words, on a single text)  13/01/2025  30% 
Coursework   Spring Essay (comparative 4,500 words on two or three texts)  22/04/2025  50% 
Practical   Participation mark    5% 

Exam format definitions

  • Remote, open book: Your exam will take place remotely via an online learning platform. You may refer to any physical or electronic materials during the exam.
  • In-person, open book: Your exam will take place on campus under invigilation. You may refer to any physical materials such as paper study notes or a textbook during the exam. Electronic devices may not be used in the exam.
  • In-person, open book (restricted): The exam will take place on campus under invigilation. You may refer only to specific physical materials such as a named textbook during the exam. Permitted materials will be specified by your department. Electronic devices may not be used in the exam.
  • In-person, closed book: The exam will take place on campus under invigilation. You may not refer to any physical materials or electronic devices during the exam. There may be times when a paper dictionary, for example, may be permitted in an otherwise closed book exam. Any exceptions will be specified by your department.

Your department will provide further guidance before your exams.

Overall assessment

Coursework Exam
100% 0%

Reassessment

Coursework Exam
100% 0%
Module supervisor and teaching staff
Dr Owen Robinson, email: orobin@essex.ac.uk.
Dr Owen Robinson
LiFTS General Office - email liftstt@essex.ac.uk. Telephone 01206 872626

 

Availability
Yes
No
Yes

External examiner

Dr Doug Haynes
University of Sussex
Reader in American Literature and Visual Culture
Resources
Available via Moodle
Of 18 hours, 14 (77.8%) hours available to students:
4 hours not recorded due to service coverage or fault;
0 hours not recorded due to opt-out by lecturer(s), module, or event type.

 

Further information

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