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ENGL 304: American Literature from 1900

Course Aims and Objectives:
This course examines American literature’s engagements with an extremely dynamic period in the nation’s history and culture. The twentieth century witnessed rapid advancements in technology and industrialisation; patterns of migration and immigration producing increased urbanisation; the expansion of the US economy, the Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression; and the development of the United States as a global power through its involvement in two ‘World’ wars. All of this altered the conception of what ‘America’ was and what it stood for. Some writers subscribed to nostalgic visions of rural America, whereas others subverted these; some assimilated Modernism (and its imperative to ‘make it new’), while others sought to give Modernism a particularly American character – for example by embracing rather than resisting the mass-culture that increasingly defined modern life. Voices previously marginalised became audible, as regional and minority writers declared (in Langston Hughes’s words) ‘I, too, am America’, affirming the tradition of taking ‘America’ as a literary subject whilst implying that ‘America’ may be truest to itself at its own margins.

Assessment:
1 x non-assessed exercise; 1 x 3,000-word essay (40%); 1 x 3 hour examination (60%).

Submission Deadline:
Essay = by 12 noon on Monday, Week 10/Term 2. There will be an unassessed web-based review exercise near the end of Term 1, consisting of commentary on selected passages.

Contact Hours:
1 x 50-minute seminar and 1 x 50-minute lecture per week.

Learning Outcomes:
You should

• have acquired breadth and depth of knowledge and understanding of the development and variety of American literature in the twentieth century
• be able to relate works studied to relevant social, political and cultural issues
• to be able to critically engage the ‘idea’ of ‘America’ emerging from the texts studied
• have developed your analytical skills in the close reading of literature
• have developed your written and oral skills through the presentation of arguments and debating of issues
• have built on your ability to work independently or as part of a team
• have furthered your ability to engage with secondary criticism and theoretical responses to literature to contextualise your own ideas

Set Texts:

The latest edition of The Norton Anthology of American Literature (1865 to the present), Package 2 (vols. C, D and E), ed. Nina Baym et al. 
Douglas Coupland, Generation X: Tales from an Accelerated Culture (1991)
Don Delillo, White Noise (1985)
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1925)
Ernest Hemingway, Fiesta (The Sun Also Rises) (1926)
Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon (1977)
Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49 (1966)

For further reading, see the ENGL 304 website.

N.B. It is important that you come to the first seminar having carefully read The Great Gatsby!

Lecturers: AES = Dr Tony Sharpe; AWT = Dr Andrew Tate. BB = Dr Brian Baker; LCM = Dr Lindsey Moore; MJG = Dr Michael Greaney.

Lecture / Seminar Programme
Term 1

Term 2

Term 3

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