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Empire of Liberty: American Literature of the Long Nineteenth Century

Module description

This module explores key literary texts of the United States during the long nineteenth century. You will study a broad range of major contributions – including poetry, the novel, the short story, slave narratives, and autobiography – as well as the intersections of literature with broader contextual issues, such as literary nationalism, the literature of slavery and the American Civil War, the Gilded Age, and the emergence of modernism.

You will learn how the turbulent social and political development of the US during this time is reflected through literature, considering contexts such as the constitution of the democratic state, the fraught history of ethnic and race relations, the changing gender politics of US society, and how transnational models of culture have affected our understanding of the US literary canon.

Module aims - intentions of the module

• To consider major artistic forms and styles such as the American gothic, poetry, the tale and the short story,  the autobiography, the slave narrative, the American novel, and the emergence of modernism

Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)

ILO: Module-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 1. Demonstrate an informed appreciation of specific American authors and texts of the long nineteenth century
• 2. Demonstrate an informed appreciation of the literary history of the United States, and how this relates to systems of global and transnational dialogue and cultural exchange
• 3. Demonstrate an informed appreciation of the relation between American literature and important related historical and intellectual developments
• 4. Demonstrate an understanding of the development of specific literary genres, forms, and themes in American literature

ILO: Discipline-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 5. Demonstrate an ability to analyse the literature of a different national culture and historical period, and to relate its concerns - and its forms and modes of expression - to its historical context
• 6. Demonstrate an ability to interrelate texts and discourses specific to their own discipline with issues in the wider context of cultural and intellectual history
• 7. Demonstrate an ability to understand and analyse relevant theoretical ideas, and to apply these ideas to literary texts

ILO: Personal and key skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 8. Through seminar work, demonstrate communication skills, and an ability to work both individually and in groups
• 9. Through essay-writing and exams, demonstrate appropriate research and (if applicable) bibliographic skills, a capacity to construct a coherent, substantiated argument and a capacity to write clear and correct prose
• 10. Through research for seminars, essays and exams, demonstrate proficiency in information retrieval and analysis

Syllabus plan

Whilst the content may vary from year to year, it is envisioned that it will cover some or all of the following topics:

• Political and Literary Nationalism
• Settler Colonialism
• Slave Narratives
• African American Literature
• Writing the American Self
• Literature of the Gilded Era
• Literature of the American Civil War
• Race, Nation, Region
• The Beginnings of Modernism
• U.S. Nativism
• Native American Voices

Learning activities and teaching methods (given in hours of study time)

Details of learning activities and teaching methods

Formative assessment

Summative assessment (% of credit)

Details of summative assessment

Details of re-assessment (where required by referral or deferral)

Re-assessment notes

Deferral – if you miss an assessment for certificated reasons judged acceptable by the Mitigation Committee, you will normally be either deferred in the assessment or an extension may be granted. The mark given for a re-assessment taken as a result of deferral will not be capped and will be treated as it would be if it were your first attempt at the assessment.

Referral – if you have failed the module overall (i.e. a final overall module mark of less than 40%) you will be required to submit a further assessment as necessary. If you are successful on referral, your overall module mark will be capped at 40%.

Indicative learning resources - Basic reading

Primary reading will cover some of the following:

• Poems of Emily Dickinson
• Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845) and Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861)
• Charles Brockden Brown, Wieland: or, The Transformation: An American Tale (1798)
• Louisa May Alcott, Little Women (1868)
• Walt Whitman, Complete Poetry and Collected Prose (1892)
• Henry James, Roderick Hudson (1875)
• Phillis Whealtey, Poems on Various Subjects Religious and Moral (1773)
• Herman Melville, Bartleby the Scrivener and Benito Cereno (1856)
• Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884)
• Paul Lawrence Dunbar, We Wear the Mask (1896)

Other primary texts will be available on ELE.

Selected secondary texts (all available as ebooks at Exeter library):

• Cohen, Matt, ed. The New Walt Whitman Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2020)
• Giles, Paul. Transatlantic Insurrections: British Culture and the Formation of American Literature, 1730-1860. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 2001.
• Luciano, Dana and Ivy G Wilson, eds. Unsettled States: Nineteenth Century Literary Studies.New York and London: New York UP, 2014.
• Murison, Justine S. The Politics of Anxiety in Nineteenth-Century American Literature.  Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2011.
• Wester, Maisha L. African American Gothic: Screams from Shadowed Place.Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2012.

Indicative learning resources - Web based and electronic resources

• ELE – https://vle.exeter.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=11193

Key words search

American Literature, the Long Nineteenth Century