Code 22853
Level of study Second Year
Credit value 20
Semester 1
Other pre-requisites You must have completed at least one year of appropriate study in this discipline.
This course provides in-depth study of twentieth-century American culture, focusing on a range of modes of cultural production which a special emphasis on literature. It examines issues of race, class, ethnicity, gender, and nation. Topics covered include: the South, literary modernism; documentary records of the Depression; WW2 and the Cold War in literature and film. The course builds upon critical approaches to the study of American literature and history encountered in first year study and introduces key critical and conceptual frameworks used in the discipline of American Studies. Texts studied on this course vary from year to year but have recently included F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby; John Dos Passos, Manhattan Transfer; Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God; Jack Kerouac, On the Road.