Unit information: American Literature: 1945 to Present in 2011/12

Unit name	American Literature: 1945 to Present
Unit code	ENGL29007
Credit points	20
Level of study	I/5
Teaching block(s)	Teaching Block 1 (weeks 1 - 12)
Unit director	Dr. Cheeke
Open unit status	Not open
Pre-requisites	None.
Co-requisites	None.
School/department	Department of English
Faculty	Faculty of Arts

Description including Unit Aims

This unit will focus upon American writing from 1945 to the present, including novels, short stories, poetry, essays and journalism. The weekly seminar will be based around a particular author or text(s), sometimes a specific subject. The aim of the course is to introduce students to a wide range of post-war American writing and to explore the connections between this work and the extraordinary events and developments in American history and culture from 1945 to the present. Authors to be studied may include: Don DeLillo, Thomas Pynchon, Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, Richard Ford, Vladimir Nabokov, Truman Capote, Flannery O'Conner, John Barth, Cormac McCarthy, Mary McCarthy, Raymond Carver, E.L.Doctorow, John Updike, David Foster Wallace, Richard Yates, Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop, Randall Jarrell, James Merrill, the 'New York Poets'.

Aims:

The unit aims to introduce students to a wide range of post-war American novelists and poets, and to guide them through the exploration of the connections between this work and American history and culture from 1945 to the present.

Intended Learning Outcomes

Students will have enhanced their knowledge and critical understanding of a wide range of post-war American writers, and will have examined the complex ways in which the literature of this period interacts with the history, and engages with the culture, of the United States.

Teaching Information

1 x 2 hour seminar per week in one teaching block, plus 1-to-1 discussion in consultation hours where desired.

Assessment Information

• 1 short essay (2000 words max) one-third of unit mark 33.3%

• 1 long essay (4000 words max) two-thirds of unit mark 66.7%

Reading and References

General Background:

• Josephine G. Hendin, A Concise Companion to Postwar American Literature and Culture (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004)

• Tony Tanner, The American Mystery (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000)

• Jay Clayton, The Pleasures of Babel: Contemporary American Literature and Theory (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993)

Full reading lists will be provided for each author studied.