THE UNIVERSITY of EDINBURGH

DEGREE REGULATIONS & PROGRAMMES OF STUDY 2017/2018

University Homepage
DRPS Homepage
DRPS Search
DRPS Contact
DRPS : Course Catalogue : School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures : English Literature

Postgraduate Course: New Beginnings to the End of Days: Writing the American Republic from Reconstruction to 9/11 (ENLI11172)

Course Outline
SchoolSchool of Literatures, Languages and Cultures CollegeCollege of Humanities and Social Science
Credit level (Normal year taken)SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) AvailabilityAvailable to all students
SCQF Credits20 ECTS Credits10
SummaryThe course offers students the opportunity to engage with key texts - canonical and non-mainstream - that have contributed to the development, interrogation or undermining of notions of U.S. self-perception, understood both in terms of aesthetic significance and political impact. It proposes a series of cultural, political, or literary 'pressure points' that result in the emergence of modes of writing that seek to express transformed or contested expressions of U.S. identity. Areas of investigation include: the civil war, Reconstruction, Vietnam and the counter-culture, and 9/11.
Course description Week 1: White Mythologies of Nationhood
* Thomas Dixon, The Clansman: Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan (1905)
* Selections from W.E.B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk (1903)
* D. W. Griffith, Birth of a Nation (1915)

Week 2: Capital Fictions II: The Crisis of Capitalism and the American Left
* John Dos Passos, The 42nd Parallel (1930)

Week 3: Narrating the Depression
* John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath (1939)

Week 4: Race and Reconstruction II: The Southern Imagination and the Politics of Memory
* William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom (1936)
* Toni Morrison, Beloved (1987)

Week 5: Civil Rights and Republican Visions
* James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time (1963)
* Norman Mailer, The White Negro (1957)

Week 6: Expansionism and American Culture III: Vietnam and the American Imagination
* Norman Mailer, Why are We in Vietnam? (1967)
* Karin Ashley, Bill Ayers (et al), You Don¿t Need a Weatherman to Know Which Way the Wind Blows (1969)
* George Oppen, Of Being Numerous (1968)

Week 7: Republicanism and Reaction: Countering the Counterculture
* Joan Didion, Slouching to Bethlehem (1968)
* Saul Bellow, Mr Sammler¿s Planet (1970)
* Selections from Andrew MacDonald, The Turner Diaries (1996)


Week 8: Whose Republic/Whose Culture?: The American Diaspora
* Sandra Cisneros, The House on Mango Street (1988)
* Richard Rodriguez, Days of Obligation (1993)
* Julia Alvarez, In the time of the Butterflies (1994)

Week 9: Apocalyptic Visions: 9/11 and the End of Days 1
* Michael Cunningham, Specimen Days (2005).

Week 10: Apocalyptic Visions: 9/11 and the End of Days 2
* Marilynne Robinson, Gilead (2004)
Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
Pre-requisites Co-requisites
Prohibited Combinations Other requirements None
Information for Visiting Students
Pre-requisitesNone
High Demand Course? Yes
Course Delivery Information
Academic year 2017/18, Available to all students (SV1) Quota:  15
Course Start Semester 2
Timetable Timetable
Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) Total Hours: 200 ( Seminar/Tutorial Hours 20, Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4, Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours 176 )
Assessment (Further Info) Written Exam 0 %, Coursework 100 %, Practical Exam 0 %
Additional Information (Assessment) One essay for 4000 words (100%)
Feedback Not entered
No Exam Information
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
  1. Students will be able to demonstrate the capacity to read and criticise complex literary and political texts and arguments. In addition, students should also possess a broad understanding of some of the key American historical and cultural moments, and how those are refracted through literary texts. After completion of the course students should be able to read further and more widely in U.S. literary and cultural history, having gained the requisite background knowledge and critical vocabulary.
  2. Students will be able to demonstrate a broad understanding of some of the key American historical and cultural moments, and how those are refracted through literary texts. After completion of the course students should be able to read further and more widely in U.S. literary and cultural history, having gained the requisite background knowledge and critical vocabulary.
  3. Students will be able to demonstrate knowledge of attributes specific to American literary culture of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.
  4. Students will further improve their abilities in areas fundamental to the study of English literature at Postgraduate level: independent research, essay writing, critical thinking, class discussion, oral presentation of information, and the ability to learn autonomously in small groups
  5. On completion of the course, students should be able to read further and more widely in U.S. literary and cultural history, having gained the requisite background knowledge and critical vocabulary.
Reading List
None
Additional Information
Graduate Attributes and Skills Not entered
Special Arrangements No UG version.
KeywordsNBtED
Contacts
Course organiserDr Lee Spinks
Tel: (0131 6)50 3616
Email: Lee.Spinks@ed.ac.uk
Course secretaryMiss Kara Mccormack
Tel: (0131 6)50 3030
Email: Kara.McCormack@ed.ac.uk
Navigation
Help & Information
Home
Introduction
Glossary
Search DPTs and Courses
Regulations
Regulations
Degree Programmes
Introduction
Browse DPTs
Courses
Introduction
Humanities and Social Science
Science and Engineering
Medicine and Veterinary Medicine
Other Information
Combined Course Timetable
Prospectuses
Important Information