Module overview
Aims and Objectives
Learning Outcomes
Subject Specific Intellectual and Research Skills
Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:
- analyse the pressures and influences which shaped the construction of the American republic
- draw upon the different kinds of understanding generated by a range of literary and non-literary texts
- contrast different historical, political and theoretical models employed by eighteenth-century and modern writers when engaging with the American Revolution and the new nation
- make use of contemporary critical writing to inform your thinking about the issues raised in the module.
Knowledge and Understanding
Having successfully completed this module, you will be able to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of:
- the role of literature and the arts in this process
- the construction and experience of landscape
- the creation and development of the United States, from British colony to independent republic
- the key critical approaches, both historically-specific and trans-historical, that have been applied to the study of early US literature
- the role of gender in the construction of early American identities
- the distinctions between a range of literary, visual and historical sources
- the relation between race, nation, slavery and liberty in this early period of US history
Subject Specific Practical Skills
Having successfully completed this module you will be able to:
- read a variety of texts in an historically relevant way
- employ research skills and initiative in identifying additional relevant source material.
- use electronic sources and a variety of library holdings effectively
- develop analysis and discussion based on a range of sources, both published and electronic
Syllabus
Learning and Teaching
Teaching and learning methods
Type | Hours |
---|---|
Preparation for scheduled sessions | 110 |
Completion of assessment task | 82 |
Follow-up work | 24 |
Wider reading or practice | 24 |
Lecture | 24 |
Seminar | 24 |
Teaching | 12 |
Total study time | 300 |
Resources & Reading list
Textbooks
Warner, Michael (1992). The Letters of the Republic: Publication and the Public Sphere in Eighteenth-Century America. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP.
Paul Giles (2001). Transatlantic Insurrections: British Culture and the Formation of American Literature, 1760-1860. Philadelphia: Universiry of Pennsylvania Press.
Hewitt ,Elizabeth (2004). Correspondence and American literature, 1770-1865. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Carla Mulford, ed. Early American Writings. Oxford.
Shields, David S. (1990). Oracles of Empire: Poetry, Politics, and Commerce in British America, 1690-1750. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Wood , Gordon S. (2009). Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815. Oxford: OUP.
Samuels, Shirley (1996). Romances of the republic : women, the family, and violence in the literature of the early American nation. New York: Oxford University Press.
Warner, William (2013). Protocols of Liberty: Communication Innovation and the American Revolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Tennenhouse, Leonard (2007). The importance of feeling English: American literature and the British diaspora, 1750-1850. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Dorothy Z. Baker (2007). America's Gothic Fiction : The Legacy of Magnalia Christi Americana. Ohio State University Press.
Schweitzer, Ivy (2006). Perfecting friendship : politics and affiliation in early American literature. University of North Carolina Press.
Andrews, William L. et al (ed.). Journeys in New Worlds: Early American Women's Narratives. Univ. of Wisconsin Press.
Lawson-Peebles, Robert (1988). Landscape and written expression in revolutionary America : the world turned upside down. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Armstrong, Nancy, and Leonard Tennenhouse (1992). he imaginary puritan : literature, intellectual labor, and the origins of personal life. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Eberwein, Jane Donahue (ed.) (1986). Early American Poetry: Selections from Bradstreet, Taylor, Dwight, Frenea & Bryant. Univ. of Wisconsin Press.
Assessment
Assessment strategy
The assessed essay requires independent use of online and other archives to explore life in the early United States. You will choose your own selection of documents and images to provide a case study and analysis of American life, drawn from themes including cities (Boston, Philadelphia, New York), rural life and the frontier, the rhetoric of freedom, the experience of slavery, Revolution and Loyalism, scientific and geographical exploration, women’s lives, views from abroad. Written feedback on assignments will be accompanied by individual consultation.Summative
This is how we’ll formally assess what you have learned in this module.
Method | Percentage contribution |
---|---|
Essay | 50% |
Timed Assignment | 50% |
Referral
This is how we’ll assess you if you don’t meet the criteria to pass this module.
Method | Percentage contribution |
---|---|
Resubmit assessments | 100% |
Repeat Information
Repeat type: Internal & External