Module description
Forget about the American Dream. This module explores the nightmarish and phantasmagorical hinterlands of the American project. It will cover that which is repressed, depraved, monstrous, grotesque, terrifying, disturbing, unsettling, marginal, and bizarre in its culture. Together we will seek to account for the existence of these horrors, through historicising, close reading, and conceptualising them via the contested histories of race, gender, sexuality, and class in the US. We will be looking at different genres and the troubled worlds contained within them. Students can expect to read in any given year works in the gothic, horror, noir and neo-noir, grotesque, racial melodrama, black comedy, crime, war, dystopian, science fiction, mystery traditions. There will be a particular emphasis on the claim that minoritarian histories make on these modes; and, to analyse a diverse set of texts, including films, poetry, graphic novels, theatre, music, and visual art, alongside novels, written from a variety of different social positions.
Assessment details
1 x Poster 500 words (30%) and 1 x 2,500 word essay (70%)
Educational aims & objectives
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To explore the nightmarish underworlds of American culture
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To account for the more troubling visions of American culture historically
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To develop a critical methodology that clarifies and sharpens understanding of the unsettling elements of American culture
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To read across a variety of genres of US writings that express particularly well the nightmarish elements of US culture
Learning outcomes
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To have developed a critical lexicon for analysing the repressed and troubling elements of American culture
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To have generated collectively a counter-canon of American writing and culture
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To have broadened the historical and political basis for understanding the development of American culture
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To have nurtured theoretical methods that most aptly capture the nightmarish elements of American culture