LT320-6-FY-CO:
Post-War(s) United States Fiction
2023/24
Literature, Film, and Theatre Studies
Colchester Campus
Full Year
Undergraduate: Level 6
Current
Thursday 05 October 2023
Friday 28 June 2024
30
31 March 2022
Requisites for this module
(none)
(none)
(none)
(none)
(none)
This course 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 course 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.
The aims of the module are:
1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
After successful completion of the module, students should 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.
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
-
-
-
-
Vonnegut, K. (1991) Slaughterhouse-five, or, The children’s crusade: a duty-dance with death. London: Vintage.
-
-
-
Phillips, J.A. (1985a) Machine dreams. London: Faber.
-
Phillips, J.A. (1985b) Machine Dreams. London: Faber.
-
Mason, B.A. (1987) In country. London: Flamingo.
-
-
Morrison, T. (1998) Paradise. London: Chatto & Windus.
-
Morrison, T. (1999) Paradise. New York: Plume.
-
-
Gurganus, A. (1999) Plays Well with Others. New edition. London: Faber & Faber.
-
Mukherjee, B. (1999) Jasmine. Chicago: Avalon Travel Publishing.
-
-
Kobek, J. and Kobek, J. (no date) Atta: & the Whitman of Tikrit. Los Angeles: Semiotext(e).
-
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) |
|
15% |
| Coursework |
Autumn Essay (3,000 words, on a single text) |
|
30% |
| Coursework |
Spring Essay (comparative 4,500 words on two or three texts) |
|
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
Reassessment
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
Yes
No
Yes
Dr Doug Haynes
University of Sussex
Reader in American Literature and Visual Culture
Available via Moodle
Of 40 hours, 40 (100%) hours available to students:
0 hours not recorded due to service coverage or fault;
0 hours not recorded due to opt-out by lecturer(s), module, or event type.
Disclaimer: The University makes every effort to ensure that this information on its Module Directory is accurate and up-to-date. Exceptionally it can
be necessary to make changes, for example to programmes, modules, facilities or fees. Examples of such reasons might include a change of law or regulatory requirements,
industrial action, lack of demand, departure of key personnel, change in government policy, or withdrawal/reduction of funding. Changes to modules may for example consist
of variations to the content and method of delivery or assessment of modules and other services, to discontinue modules and other services and to merge or combine modules.
The University will endeavour to keep such changes to a minimum, and will also keep students informed appropriately by updating our programme specifications and module directory.
The full Procedures, Rules and Regulations of the University governing how it operates are set out in the Charter, Statutes and Ordinances and in the University Regulations, Policy and Procedures.