Beyond the Border: The Politics of Place in Contemporary North American Literature and Culture

Overview
Module description

Beyond the Border: The Politics of Place in Contemporary North American Literature and Culture (EASM153)

Staff	Dr Paul Williams - Lecturer
Credit Value	30
ECTS Value	15
NQF Level	7
Pre-requisites	None
Co-requisites	None
Duration of Module	Term 1: 11 weeks;

Module aims

This module aims to

encourage students to engage comparatively with the contexts in which mythologies of space and place were formulated historically in the U.S. and Canada
stimulate students to frame their readings of contemporary U.S. and Canadian literature and culture within a range of theoretical and contextual frameworks, for example: transnationalism, globalisation, multiculturalism, eco-criticism, feminism, postcolonialism, and cosmopolitanism
motivate students to consider the extent to which U.S. and Canadian mythologies of place have been adopted, revised and/or transformed in North American literature and culture since 1970.
consider the place of North American literary texts within the global literary marketplace, particularly as this pertains to questions of prestige and prize-giving.

ILO: Module-specific skills

1. demonstrate an advanced capacity to compare and contrast primary material of different forms (literary texts, photography, film), making connections between these forms across the module.
2. demonstrate an advanced ability to analyse contemporary North American literature and culture since 1970 and to relate its concerns and its modes of expression to its historical context.
3. apply at an advanced level current debates in literary, film, and cultural theory to contemporary North American literature and culture.
4. demonstrate independence and autonomy in critically assessing very recent texts and critical theories, about which very little scholarly commentary yet exists.

ILO: Discipline-specific skills

5. demonstrate a sophisticated and intellectually mature ability to analyse the literature and culture of the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries and to relate its concerns and its modes of expression to its historical and other contexts.
6. demonstrate an advanced and autonomous ability to interrelate texts and discourses specific to their own discipline with issues in the wider context of cultural and intellectual history.
7. demonstrate an advanced and autonomous ability to understand and analyse relevant theoretical ideas, and to apply these ideas to literary texts.
8. demonstrate an advanced and precise ability to work from the detail of literary texts, with a full appreciation of their formal aspects.
9. demonstrate an advanced ability to digest, select, and organise interdisciplinary material and to trace the development of debate across disciplinary boundaries.

ILO: Personal and key skills

10. through seminar work and group presentations, demonstrate advanced communication skills, and an ability to work both individually and in groups.
11. through essay-writing and other assignments, demonstrate advanced research and bibliographic skills, an advanced and intellectually mature capacity to construct a coherent, substantiated argument and to write clear and correct prose.
12. through research for seminars and essays, demonstrate proficiency in information retrieval and analysis.
13. through research and writing, demonstrate a capacity to make critical use of secondary material, to question assumptions, and to reflect on their own learning process.

Syllabus plan

The module will run approximately as follows:

· Introductions

· Founding Mythologies of Space and Place: Regeneration Through Violence?

· Writing the West Coast: Popular Fictions of California in the 1970s

· Beyond the Border: Indigenous Writing from the U.S. and Canada

· Canadian and U.S. Regionalisms: Prairie Country and Appalachia

· Mapping the National Past: Louis Riel and Canadian History

· Cultural Capitals I: New York

· Cultural Capitals II: Toronto

· Prize-giving, Prestige and the Global Literary Marketplace: International Booker Prize Winners

· Adapting Mythologies

Learning activities and teaching methods (given in hours of study time)

Scheduled Learning and Teaching Activities	Guided independent study	Placement / study abroad
22	278	0

Details of learning activities and teaching methods

Category	Hours of study time	Description
Scheduled Learning and Teaching Activities	22	11 x 2-hour seminars
Guided independent study	100	seminar preparation (independent)
Guided independent study	178	reading, research and essay preparation

Formative assessment

Form of assessment	Size of the assessment (eg length / duration)	ILOs assessed	Feedback method
Seminar presentation	5-10mins	1-10, 12	Tutorial feedback via tutorial

Summative assessment (% of credit)

Coursework	Written exams	Practical exams
100	0	0

Details of summative assessment

Form of assessment	% of credit	Size of the assessment (eg length / duration)	ILOs assessed	Feedback method
Research Report	25	2500 words	1-9, 11-13	Written feedback plus tutorial follow-up
Essay	75	5000 words	1-9, 11-13	Written feedback plus tutorial follow-up
	0
	0
	0
	0

Details of re-assessment (where required by referral or deferral)

Original form of assessment	Form of re-assessment	ILOs re-assessed	Timescale for re-assessment
Research Report	Research Report	1-9, 11-13	Referral/deferral period
Essay	Essay	1-9, 11-13	Referral/deferral period

Indicative learning resources - Basic reading

Basic reading:

Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian (1985)

Margaret Laurence, The Diviners (1974)

Chester Brown, Louis Riel (2003)

Alice Munro, Lives of Girls and Women (1971)

Module pack containing selected poems, short stories and essays

Students will also watch the film Taxi Driver (1976) on the module

Module has an active ELE page?

Yes

Indicative learning resources - Web based and electronic resources

British Journal of Canadian Studies, Comparative American Studies, Comparative Literature, Canadian Literature, ARIEL, American Literary History, American Quarterly, Modern Fiction Studies, American Literature, Journal of American Studies, Journal of Postcolonial Writing, Canadian Review of American Studies

Indicative learning resources - Other resources

Selected secondary sources available in the library:

Adams, Rachel. Continental Divides: Remapping the Cultures of North America. Chicago: U of Chicago

P, 2009.

Annesley, James. Fictions of Globalization: Consumption, the Market and the Contemporary American

Novel. London: Continuum, 2006.

Bilton, Alan. An Introduction to Contemporary American Fiction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2002.

Brauner, David. Contemporary American Fiction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2010.

Crane, Kylie. Mythsof wilderness in contemporary narratives: Environmental postcolonialism in Australia

and Canada. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.

Howells, Coral Ann. Margaret Atwood. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.

Kamboureli, Smaro. Scandalous Bodies : Diasporic Literature in English Canada. Oxford: Oxford UP,

2000.

McWilliams, Ellen. Margaret Atwood and the Female Bildungsroman. Farnham: Ashgate, 2009.

Monk, Nicholas, ed. Intertextual and interdisciplinary approaches to Cormac McCarthy : borders and

crossings. New York: Routledge, 2011.

Roberts, Gillian, Prizing literature: The Celebration and Circulation of National Culture. Toronto: Toronto

UP, 2011

Sadowski-Smith, Claudia. Border Fictions : Globalization, Empire, and Writing at the Boundaries of the

United States. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2008.

Shostak, Deborah, ed. Philip Roth : American Pastoral, The Human Stain, The Plot Against America.

New York : Continuum, 2011

Siemerling, Winfried. The New North American Studies : Culture, Writing and the Politics of Re/cognition.

London: Routledge, 2005.

Available as distance learning?

Origin date

01/03/2014

Last revision date

30/06/2014

Key words search

American literature, Canada, North America, space, borders, Wild West, prairie, colonial

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