English with American Literature and Culture (Q3T7)

This new multidisciplinary degree course allows you to combine the main elements of a traditional Honours degree in English literature with the specialist study of various aspects of American literature and culture. By choosing modules in other disciplines, including Film and History, you will be able to extend your knowledge of American traditions, art-forms and institutions. Two thirds of your courses will be chosen from those in English Literature. We place emphasis on small-group teaching, mainly in seminars, in which you are expected to contribute to discussion. You will spend an average of 6-8 hours per week in seminars, tutorials and lectures. In addition you will spend time preparing for classes, reading, and writing essays.

First Year / Part One

In your first year, you must take a total of 120 credits, 40 credits of American Literature and Culture (see below), 40 credits of English (the compulsory English modules: QXE1002 Textual Analysis and QXE1000 Critical Interpretations) and other modules worth 40 credits which could be taken in English, Creative Writing or Film, which are also taught by staff in the department. For more information on the modules offered at part one, click here. Alternatively, if you wish, you could sample modules worth 40 credits from other academic subjects e.g. History, Linguistics, Modern Languages, Psychology, Information Technology. To find out about part one modules in other departments, see the Gazette.

QXB1001 An Introduction to American Literature and Culture I
This 20-credit first-year module is available to English Single and Joint Honours Students and (subject to timetable restraints) to suitably qualified first-year students accepted for degrees in other subjects in the first semester. It is compulsory for students taking the English with American Literature and Culture degree course.

This module will introduce students to some of the principal historical experiences and ways of thinking that contribute to a distinctively American tradition. Students will study literary and non-literary texts which represent and re-interpret these historical features and will be encouraged to make connections with modern American culture. Literary analysis will be informed by an attention to history; historical documents and representations will be examined in their formal and rhetorical aspects. The first semester course looks at representations of the founders of the nation with particular reference to ideas of freedom, independence and democratic community that became part of the ideology of the new republic. The reinterpretation of these ideas as a criticism of contemporary America and as a hope for the future in the work of Emerson, Thoreau and Whitman leads on to a consideration of the Frontier, the treatment of native Americans, slavery and the Civil War. The questioning of American cultural values and the position of the artist is treated in the work of Melville, Poe, and feminine voices.

QXB1002 An Introduction to American Literature and Culture II
This 20-credit, first-year module is available to all first-year English Single and Joint Honours Students and (subject to timetable restraints) to suitably qualified first-year students accepted for degrees in other subjects in the second semester. It is compulsory for those students studying for the degree in English with American Literature and Culture. Students are introduced to some of the ways in which America re-defined itself during the twentieth century as a leading industrial and cultural power. Tensions between modern life and traditional values, diversity of peoples and unity of ideology, are analysed in representations of metropolitan life, consumerism, a new business mentality and attitudes towards the assimilation of black cultural forms. Newer cultural forms and institutions represented by Hollywood films, popular music and TV series will be studied for their ideological and historical significance as well as their aesthetic values. The situation of artistic values, spontaneity and individualism in the age of mass communication will be discussed.

Second and Third Years / Part Two

In your second year you must take a total of 120 credits, 80 credits of English and 40 credits of American Literature and Culture (see below). In American Literature and Culture you choose modules worth 40 credits from a range of courses in the English and other departments which might vary from year to year. Currently they include:

QXB2001 American Fiction since 1960
This 20-credit, level-two module is an optional course for students registered for the degree in English with American Literature and Culture. It is also available to second-year English honours (Q300) students as an elective. The course considers a selection of the fiction-novels and short stories-written in the USA from c.1960 to the present. This is one of the most tumultuous periods in American history: post-war affluence and conservatism meet the growing counter-culture in the 1960s as opposition to the Vietnam War grows. The period sees the death of the Kennedys and of Martin Luther King, the struggle for civil rights for black Americans, Watergate (and increased mistrust of central government, patterns of paranoia which have continued in literature and popular culture), the Reagan years, the rise of neo-conservatism. The course will consider the ways American society and its preoccupations are refracted through the fiction of the period.

QXF2001 Film Theory / Film Culture
This is a 20-credit, level-two Film module taught over two semesters. In the first semester the module investigates various approaches to cinema culture, building on the knowledge gained in the Part One film modules and developing analytical skills, to answer questions such as the following: What ideological functions has cinema served? How do we study popular culture and entertainment? What different interpretations have been given to the word "realism"? In the second semester, the module looks at more contemporary film theory, thinking about gender and sexuality.

HGH2118 The United States 1877-1945
This is a 20-credit, second-year module run by the History Department

For the remaining 80 credits, Students must choose a minimum of 20 credits from each of the sets A and B:

•    A QXE2022 Shakespeare
•    A QXE2003 Jonson to Johnson
•    A QXE2010 Writing the Renaissance
•    A QXE2101 Medieval Literature
•    B QXE2004 Romanticism
•    B QXE2005 Victorian Literature
•    B QXE2006 Early Twentieth Century Literature
•    B QXE2007 Late Twentieth Century Literature

For more information on the modules offered at level two, click here.

Third Year

In your third year you must take a total of 120 credits, 80 credits of English and 40 credits of American Literature and Culture, including the compulsory American Literature and Culture Dissertation QXB3099, which takes 20 credits from English and 20 credits from American studies. The other 20 credits of American Literature and Culture can be taken from options in the English and other Departments (see below). For more information on the modules offered at level three, click here.

QXE3015 Modern American Drama
A survey of some of the most important American plays of the twentieth century, discussing issues of form and techniques as well as themes such as race and gender, class, work, the family; this module includes work by Alice Gerstenberg, O'Neill, Williams, Miller, Albee, Shepard.

HGH3118 The United States, 1877-1945
This is a 20 credit, level-three module run by the History Department

HGH3113 The United States in the 1960s
This is a 20 credit, level-three module run by the History Department

Want to know more?

Contact:
Dr Tony Brown
Department of English
Bangor University
Gwynedd LL57 2DG, UK

phone/fax: +44 (0)1248 382102
email: els015@bangor.ac.uk