Writing of America Literature

This module provides a broadly chronological view of American poetry from the start of the twentieth century to the present day. It wonders about what the consequences might be if we consider seriously Emerson's claim (made in 1844), that America might be seen as a poem. Through detailed examination each week of groups of three related poets, the module aims both to question what constitutes an American poetics, and to examine how this conception has changed over the course of the twentieth century. As well as tracing a trajectory in American poetry from modernist to postmodernist modes, one of its primary concerns is also to start exploring how ideas of what an American poetry might be are inflected differently in 'mainstream' and in more avant-garde (or 'experimental') poetries. Indeed, by explicitly thinking about these differences the module will pay particular attention to the ways in which ideas of nationhood, of political dissent and protest, of poetic 'groupings' and canon-formation, are instrumental in determining what we choose to see as America's representative poetry. By the end of the module students should have a wide knowledge of a range of different twentieth-century American poetries, as well as a strong sense of how the political, cultural and literary 'tastes' of America across the century have delivered it the sorts of poetry it deserves.

AMAL5011B

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This module explores the rich dramatic and cinematic traditions of Shakespearean adaptation. It considers a range of adaptations, from the seventeenth-century versions of Macbeth, King Lear and Henry V to more recent film versions of Shakespeare's plays, examining the light that adaptive transformations may cast on both the original plays and on the different social and cultural circumstances of the new productions. The module focuses in particular upon cinematic adaptations of Richard III, Henry V, The Tempest, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth and King Lear, though will also discuss many other examples from stage and screen. In seminars linked to weekly screening this module offers an introduction to the theory and practice of adaptation as well as an outline view of how to read Shakespeare on film.

LDCD5021A

This module examines the involvement of the United States in Vietnam, from the Second World War to the Paris Peace Accords of 1973. Focusing on the main period of US entanglement, 1963-1973, it uses documents, historical studies, film, and literary texts to illuminate the American experience in Vietnam and its domestic repercussions.

AMAH5041A

The first book published in the New World was a hymn book. Music, sacred and profane, has been at the centre of American lives ever since. Accordingly, this module will explore the history of American music - but it will also examine the way that its development tells a larger story. Focusing largely on the vernacular musical traditions we will encounter a wide range of musical styles and musicians, each of which has something vital to tell us about the shaping of America. After all, as Plato knew, "When the mode of the music changes, the walls of the city shake."

AMAS5023A

This module surveys the prose of some of the twentieth century's most important American women writers, writers who (or whose 'other' works) tend to disappear from reading lists that include books by women only out of duty. Along the way we will seek to interrogate the terms with which we begin: American, women and prose. Assuming that biology does not define literature, we will instead seek to understand the social pressures on these women writers, and their responses to them, in an effort to maintain the specificity, diversity and range of these women's literary pursuits.

AMAL5013A

This module addresses contemporary issues in the production and display of art. It explores the status of contemporary art in relation to globalisation but also examines the problems confronting critics, curators and scholars today when...