Παρουσίαση/Προβολή

(ENL542) -  Σταματίνα Δημακοπούλου

Περιγραφή Μαθήματος

This course offers a critical introduction to significant developments in the history of American literature through a focus on political and intellectual contexts, as well as on the cultural movements that informed these developments. The history of the United States is marked by the expropriation of its native inhabitants, the slave plantation economy, the Civil War, the rise of the US as a global power in the 20^th century, the Great Depression, the Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War, and more recently the end of the Cold War and the challenges of a globalised world order.

In the first part of the course, we will examine the consolidation of an American national identity and the growth of literature in the middle of the 19^th century. We will focus on the emergence of the slave narrative, the troubling history of slavery, and the antinomies of the American democratic ideal. The second part of the course will begin with a consideration of shifts in gender relations and authorship in the American Gilded Age, and move onto the tensions between the onset of an industrial modernity and regionalist cultures. We will then move to the postwar period through the study of two writers whose work probes gendered, racial, or ethnic identity, sexuality, structures of power and representation.

Assessment

Attending students:

• Two in class-exercises (30%)
• A translation of a passage of your choice from any of the studied texts (up to 500 words): (15%) [individual project or collective work in groups of up to three students (1.500 words)]
• Final Exam (55%)

Non-attending students will be assessed through a final exam weighted at 100%

NOTE ABOUT THE IN-CLASS EXERCISES AND THE FINAL EXAM: You will be asked to provide a critical commentary of a specific passage focusing on specific themes. You are expected to be able to build an argument in an appropriate academic register and critical vocabulary.  Exam essays that are based on paraphrase and/or reproduce class notes and handouts verbatim will receive a Fail.

Aims and Objectives:

• A critical understanding of the literature of the United States in relation to its cultural and historical contexts from the mid-19^th century onwards.
• Describe and critically interpret literary texts on the level of language, style, narrative structures, subject-matter, narrative voice etc
• Understand the process of close reading literary texts: close reading involves ‘slow’ attentive, focused analysis of a wide range of aspects of a literary text, beyond descriptive accounts of the plot, and thinking about the multiple, diverse meanings of a given passage

Ημερομηνία δημιουργίας

Τρίτη 12 Ιανουαρίου 2021