Listed below are all the modules the Department of American and Canadian Studies offers as part of its Second and Final Year degree programme.
Please note: due to study leave etc not every module is available every year. Please check with the Department to see what is running in a given year
American history from 1890
This module introduces intermediate students to some of the main themes in United States history from the 1890s to the present. By the end of the course, students will understand the significance of major events in the American past. They will also have a deeper understanding of the types and uses of evidence in US history and the way in which historians construct arguments from this evidence, and be able to respond to evidence themselves. Presentations, discussions and essay work will aid students in developing further skills in researching, evaluating interpretations and expressing original ideas.
Value: 20 credits
Twentieth century American literature and culture
This course introduces students to key elements of 20th and 21st century American culture. We will study different aspects of the American cultural, social, and built environment. This course is designed to build upon critical approaches to the study of American literature and history encountered in first year study and to introduce students to critical and conceptual frameworks used in the discipline of American cultural studies.
Value: 20 credits
Foundation of American history from 1890
This is a general introductory course on American history to the end of the nineteenth century and covers political, social, economic and cultural developments. Assessment is based on understanding the significance of issues in the American past. It does not test knowledge directly. However, substantiating opinions requires evidence in support, and that usually includes "facts." Brief primary-source documents provide examples of the kinds of evidence that historians use to support interpretations.
Value: 20 credits
Foundations of twentieth century American literature and culture
This course focuses on key elements of twentieth-century American culture. We will study different aspects of the American cultural, social, and built environment, applying critical and conceptual frameworks used in the discipline of American Studies.
The course begins with an introduction to the history and theories of American Studies. Through the study of architecture, film, and written texts, the course will explore topics including the construction of American subjectivity, the experience of race and citizenship, narratives of domestic and national identity, and postmodernity.
Value: 20 credits
American musicals: twentieth-century show business, 1910-1960
The course explores cultural themes in some of the most popular musicals on stage and screen from the 1920s to the 1950s. The emphasis is on the connections between commercial show business and the values of American society.
The emergence of a market for leisure pursuits had been one of the significant changes in American society in the nineteenth century; by the 1890s, more entertainments were provided for people than by them. By 1927, new technological means of reproducing sound and vision had made "live" shows with face-to-face contact with the performer, too expensive, and vaudeville, variety theatre with revues of comedy turns and visual sketches, almost disappeared. A key feature of the modern musical was the "integration" of song and dance so that they became an essential and intrinsic element in plot and characterisation of the "story." Nevertheless, even in the 1950s, Broadway musical theatre continued to be the main inspiration for the Hollywood musical film.
Part One pays particular attention to the 1920s and 1930s. The impresario Florenz Ziegfeld produced the most elaborate spectacles, typified by Glorifying the American Girl that had glamour but little continuous dramatic interest. Ziegfeld’s Show Boat was far more ambitious, with a convoluted plot of love lost and hints of racial prejudice. In Hollywood, Gold Diggers of 1933 was one of many similarly fanciful Depression shows that depicted "modern woman." Part Two explores the clash of rural/urban values in three theatre/film musicals—Oklahoma!, On The Town and West Side Story—notable for original combinations of comedy and drama, song and dance. South Pacific explored America’s relations with the wider world. Singin’ in the Rain considers the American Dream: from backstage obscurity to success.
Value: 10 credits
The foundations of African-American experience
The module will provide students with an introduction of the African-American experience from c.1850-1945. The module covers topics such as the slave narrative, resistance to slavery, the experience of the freedmen and the rise of Jim Crow, African-American leaders and campaigners such as Marcus Garvey, W.E.B. Du Bois and Ida B. Wells, the Harlem Renaissance and the experience of war.
Value: 10 credits
The African-American experience from 1945
This module offers students the opportunity to study the political, social and cultural experience of African-Americans since 1945. It includes the study of important events in the civil rights movement, such as the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Mississippi Freedom Summer, and the rise of Black power. The course allows student to critically assess the role of leaders such as Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, and the work of civil rights organizations such as the Student Nonviolence Co-ordinating committee. The course examines the impact of the civil rights movement, studying post-civil rights themes such as Black Poverty and access to justice. The course is delivered through ninety minute workshops, which include lecture and group work.
Value: 10 credits
North American Cinemas
The module will provide students with an introduction to the study of North American cinema, with emphasis upon its faceted tones and styles of filmmaking. The module is divided into two special topic areas, designed to offer a rigorous and thorough engagement with the themes and issues surrounding Hollywood cinema in its various guises. This course is designed to introduce students to a range of filmic forms and genres and to develop critical and evaluative approaches to film.
By the end of the course, students will achieve an understanding of the diversity of filmic expression in North America. They will be able to analyse filmic material in relation to authorial, ideological and narrational processes and contexts. They will also be able to analyse filmic material in a theoretically and critically informed manner, using guiding principles suggested by the special topic frameworks, as well as overarching themes such as aesthetics, narrative, genre and authorship.
Value: 10 credits
Filmmaking Practices
This course is designed to develop students’ critical appreciation of the diverse ways in which filmmakers employ and expressively handle common aesthetic features such as colour, lighting, setting, props, sound, framing and editing. Through a programme of weekly research seminars, a range of tones and styles of cinema are studied, with a strong emphasis on the practical choices facing filmmakers. The course provides an ideal foundation for students choosing Filmmaking Practices (B), but it can also be taken as a stand alone option for anyone wishing to examine filmmaking practices in greater depth and detail.
Value: 10 credits
CIA and international history since 1945 A & B
This course aspires to fill in a 'missing dimension' of US diplomatic history by considering the role of intelligence services in the development and implementation of foreign policy after World War II. Students will use primary documents and secondary sources to analyse both the theory and the practice of using intelligence services, particularly the Central Intelligence Agency, in Executive decision making.
By the end of the course, students will evaluate the functions of an 'intelligence agency', such as intelligence collection, analysis, covert action, and counter-espionage, and consider the evolving role of US intelligence services within the Executive Branch since 1945. Students will combine an appreciation of the structure and politics of US Government with recognition of the historical development of intelligence services under different Administrations. This will lead students to an awareness of and critical approach to current debates within the historiography of the US intelligence service.
Value: 10 credits
The Thriller: fiction, film, theory
This module provides an introduction to the theory and practice of the thriller genre (literature and film) in the USA. Following a brief study of the emergence of the thriller in the 19th and early 20th centuries, it examines the ways in which writers from marginalized groups in America have redirected and subverted the norms of the genre since the 1960s.
The course will enable students to recognise the key generic features of the thriller; understand and apply theories of popular culture to the thriller; discuss the ways in which the thriller genre has changed during the 20th century; read and critique individual works within a generic context.
Value: 10 credits
North American 1920s: literature & society
The module questions some conventional attitudes towards Canadian and American fiction in the 1920s and considers the relationship between social developments and formal experiments in the North American novel and short story.
The course includes assessment of Willa Cather’s ambivalent look at the past in A Lost Lady and Edith Wharton’s satirical methods in The Age of Innocence, with attention to critiques of consumerism. Hemingway’s In Our Time is examined both for its formal experiments in the short story and for its insights into post-War disillusion. Each American text is paired with a Canadian work of fiction that investigates similar themes. John Glassco satirizes the expatriate American community in Paris and offers a contrasting example (to Hemingway) of formal experimentation in Memoirs of Montparnasse. L.M. Montgomery’s Emily Climbs fictionalizes the author’s own experiences as a woman writer caught between Victorian family values and the allure of fame and economic independence. LMM herself—the J.K. Rowling of the early 20th century—offers us a fascinating case study of a celebrity writer whose fan-base and iconic characters have endured for nearly a century. Finally, we return to some of the pre-occupations of Cather’s novel via Martha Ostenso’s Wild Geese which employs various popular and literary genres in its exploration of a rapidly changing prairie society.
Value: 10 credits
The Beats and the aftermath
This module explores the relationship of Beat writing and the Beat writers to their cultural and social contexts. The Beat writers principally regarded as Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs and Gregory Corso but also embracing writers associated with the Beat, such as Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and other writers who were part of the Beats but generally neglected (like Joyce Johnson and Diane DiPrima). The module trhen considers a selection of writers who followed on from the Beats and were inspired by their experimentation, such as Charles Bukowski, Richard Brautigan and Thomas Pynchon.
A recent series of revisionist studies of 1950s’ and 1960s’ writings have shifted the emphasis away from analysing such writing in terms of these writers’ biographies and instead explored how the Beats and post-Beats interact with and critique not only their society and its cultures but also such concepts as authenticity and spontaneity, rather than seeing these last as unproblematically aspired to. Such re-estimates will be related to the turn against essentialist and exceptionalist readings of the Beats, and the implications of these direction changes will be assessed.
Value: 10 credits
Dissertation
The dissertation differs from other modules and poses a greater challenge—and greater opportunity for personal development and originality. University taught courses provide a syllabus and bibliography, and the assessment generally explores a major theme of the course, sometimes by further recommended reading, or examines comprehensive understanding. The dissertation has quite different objectives. The final-year project is the pinnacle of undergraduate education and illustrates skills acquired through years of university study in research conceived and executed independently.
Value: 40 credits
Audio-visual dissertation
Audio-visual submissions have been accepted for assessment since the mid-1990s, when they were set as part of the requirements for the History, Film and Television undergraduate course. The first audio-visual dissertation completing the requirements of the MphilB in History, Film and Television was submitted and passed. While the submission of an undergraduate audio-visual dissertation has technically been permitted in recent years, it is with the development of the LDU-supported programme for audio-visual training that the audio-visual dissertation has been established in the ACS syllabus.
The basic pattern for assessment of audio-visual submissions has not changed since 1996: 1) consideration of the content and techniques of the audio-visual text; 2) consideration of a supporting written defence critiquing both academic approach/content and technical execution of the documentary. At undergraduate level, the assessment weighting has tended to be 2:1 between the audio-visual submission and the supportive defence.
Value: 40 credits
The American renaissance: above, beneath and around
This course is designed to explore the outburst of writing activity that occurred in America in the decades leading up to the American Civil War (1861-65), during the war itself, and just afterwards. In particular, it will focus on the twenty-year period 1840 to 1860. This period is often designated the American Renaissance: that moment in American literary history when. American writing ‘came of age’ and found its distinctive ‘American’ voice. The classic critical study referred to when defining this period is F. O. Mathiessen’s The American Renaissance, a text which will provide a constant reference-point during the teaching of this module, both for its strengths and its weaknesses.
Value: 20 credits
Anti-Americanism: an examination
Since 11 September 2001, substantial discussion as to the motivations for the attacks has ensued. Some of the discussion has focused on the resentment and hatred toward the United States by many nations and their citizens around the world. Employing interdisciplinary methods, this class will examine anti-Americanism. Topics will include the historical roots of anti-Americanism, the Internet and anti-Americanism, feelings toward the United States in literature and film, globalisation and anti-Americanism, ideology and anti-Americanism, anti-anti-Americanism, anti-Americanism and US foreign policy, and the impact of the attacks of 11 September on attitudes toward the United States. The course will assist students in understanding the concept of anti-Americanism and the place of the United States in the world, in developing the ability to critically analyze the motivating factors for anti-Americanism in its various forms in the past and present, in discussing in an academic environment ideas surrounding the United States, and in improving writing, research and Internet skills.
Value: 20 credits
Cold war and film
This module aims to examine American films of the Cold War era c. 1945-65. The module will examine the political and economic context of the production of film, looking at issues such as political control via McCarthyism and HUAC. Students will then examine a series of films, in order to assess the extent to which film reflected or engaged with social, cultural and political debates of the time. The aim of the course is the enable the student to develop skills in both film theory and film history.
Value: 20 credits
Contemporary American fiction
This course offers a survey of recent American fiction, representing a diverse range of literary voices and concerns. This module is designed to engage with some of the key themes and developments that have emerged in American writing within the last twenty years. The contemporary focus of the course allows students to explore topics such as the transnational/ postnational narrative, literary responses to 9/11, issues of representation, and autobiographical voices, as well as addressing stylistic and formal innovation. The student will be able to recognise and engage with the dominant ideas in the late twentieth and early twenty first centuries and discuss the relationship between literature and society during the period.
Value: 20 credits
Death and the moving image
This module investigates the representation of death, and its surrounding debates, across a range of cinemas, genres and aesthetic practices, to position it within both a socio-cultural and critical context. Through consideration of the various forms and functions of the spectre of death, or of cinematic death itself, it explores their relationship to narrative, ideology and spectatorship.
Value: 20 credits
US foreign policy since 1945
In light of current events (and recent thoughts about the nature of US foreign policy), this course is always "in development". The focus will be on the influences upon and implementation of US foreign policy since 1945; however, students will be able to bring in themes such as the Anglo-American relationship and pre-1945 antecedents to US foreign policy as well as other political, economic, military, cultural, social, and ideological dimensions.
Students should also note that, with the introduction of the Semester 2 course on US Foreign Policy from 1991 to the "War on Terror", this course formally ends with the supposed close of the Cold War. This does not mean, however, that students cannot bring thoughts/issues about current US foreign policy into the historical examination of the development of that policy
Value: 20 credits
US foreign policy and terrorism
Since the attacks of 11 September 2001, the relationship between US Foreign Policy and terrorism has been a prime topic of worldwide debate. This discussion has centred not just on US Foreign Policy as a direct or indirect cause of terrorism, including acts against the United States itself, but also over the effectiveness and appropriateness of the US response to terrorism, both in the past and present. This module will provide a deeper understanding to this dialogue while supplying new insight into the current "War on Terror" through a thematic and historicized exploration of the subject. Topics to be covered will include: definitions of terrorism and its "root causes"; US foreign policy as a cause of terrorism; US responses to terrorism in different eras, including the 1970s and 1980s; cultural depictions of US foreign policy and terrorism; September 11 and the "War on Terror."
Value: 20 credits
US foreign policy in the Cold War
This course offers new approaches and insights on a familiar topic. It analyses the development of US foreign policy from 1945 to the 1990s by placing geopolitics and US strategy in bureaucratic, military, political, economic, cultural, and ideological contexts. Using both primary material and leading academic studies, including those by the course instructor, it opens up the "narrative" of America in the Cold War to suggest --- contrary to the words of the scholar John Lewis Gaddis --- that We Do Not Know yet many of the key interpretations of US policy and operations. While we not find the answers in 11 weeks, we'll make a good stab at it.
The course is linked to the current affairs website EAWorldView
Value: 20 credits
Reading and popular culture: contemporary book cultures in North America and UK
Why do you read? What or who made you into a reader?
We live in an era and a region of the world where less people are reading more books; where more books are published now than 20 years ago, yet educators and librarians fret that young people only play video-games, while the US government would rather Americans read To Kill A Mockingbird than watch Desperate Housewives. Why, in a digital age, does the reading of printed books and the existence of a ‘bookish culture’ still matter? Why do some people, including government agencies, think that reading ‘good’ books makes you a more moral human being or a better citizen? How do literary prizes, publishers and bookshops affect what and how you read – and what have these got to do with globalization? Why do people come together in book clubs and reading events to share their reading? In order to explore and understand both the material and ideological aspects of contemporary book cultures, this module focusses on the social location and cultural function of book reading in the 21st century. Drawing upon contemporary case studies from North America and the UK, the module also considers how and why ‘ordinary’ people read books, how the contemporary mass media frame reading as a form of popular culture and why these practices matter – politically, socially and culturally.
Value: 20 credits