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Disunited States: Contemporary American Literature, 1970s-Present

Module description

Disunited States surveys the field of US literature from the 1970s to the present, a period in which themes of national fragmentation and decline repeatedly interact with narratives of regeneration and American greatness. You will analyse how literary texts – including novels, short stories, poetry, and nonfiction – illuminate and complicate articulations of a beleaguered country, making connections between literature and its social, economic, and political contexts over the last fifty years. As such, the module analyses literary texts that speak to significant moments of national turbulence and political transformation, from the end of the Cold War to 9/11, from Hurricane Katrina to the opioid crisis, from Black Lives Matter to reactions against social justice movements. You may encounter writers such as Alice Walker, Don DeLillo, Jesmyn Ward, Saul Williams, Joseph O’Neill, Claudia Rankine, and Percival Everett.

Module aims - intentions of the module

This module aims to:

• Provide you with a sophisticated ability to analyse contemporary American literature in its historical contexts over the last fifty years. During this period US political rhetoric and social commentary has often sounded warnings of collapse and espoused hopes of regeneration, from Jimmy Carter’s “Crisis of Confidence” speech to Ronald Reagan’s "it's morning again in America" and beyond.
• Analyse how contemporary American literature dramatizes the neoliberal self as fractured and insecure, in relation to the construction of the human subject as homo oeconomicus, “economic man” as “entrepreneur of himself” (Foucault).
• Examine how the production of contemporary American literature takes place through literary institutions undergoing radical transformations.
• Show the close connections between contemporary American literature and critical theory.
• Set the study of contemporary American literature in dialogue with other media, such as television, comics, and popular music.

Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)

ILO: Module-specific skills

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

• 1. Demonstrate an advanced and autonomous ability to analyse US literature published during and since the 1970s, relating its concerns and modes of expression to historical contexts.
• 2. Apply, at an advanced level, current debates in literary studies to US literature published during and since the 1970s.

ILO: Discipline-specific skills

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

• 3. Demonstrate an advanced ability to digest, select, and organise interdisciplinary material and to trace the development of scholarly debates across disciplinary boundaries.
• 4. Demonstrate an advanced and precise ability to work from the detail of literary texts, with a full appreciation of their formal aspects.

ILO: Personal and key skills

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

• 5. Demonstrate advanced research and bibliographic skills (including information retrieval and analysis), an advanced and intellectually mature capacity to construct a coherent, substantiated argument, and to write clear and correct prose.
• 6. Demonstrate an advanced and intellectually mature capacity to question assumptions, to distinguish between fact and opinion, and to critically reflect on your own learning process.

Syllabus plan

The syllabus will follow a broadly chronological narrative. As we move through the module, topics to be covered may include:

• The legacy of the Vietnam War
• Publishing institutions
• Postmodernism
• Neoliberalism
• Literary responses to 9/11
• Literature’s relationship with other media
• Social justice movements
• Urban experience

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

Details of learning activities and teaching methods

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 50%) 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 50%.

Indicative learning resources - Basic reading

• Foley, Abram. The Editor Function: Literary Publishing in Postwar America. U of Minnesota P, 2021.
• Halliwell, Martin. Voices of Mental Health: Medicine, Politics, and American Culture, 1970–2000. Rutgers UP, 2017.
• Hungerford, Amy. Postmodern Belief: American Literature and Religion since 1960. Princeton UP, 2010.
• McClanahan, Annie. Dead Pledges: Debt, Crisis, and Twenty-First-Century Culture. Stanford UP, 2016.
• McGurl, Mark. The Program Era: Postwar Fiction and the Rise of Creative Writing. Harvard UP, 2009.
• Ngai, Sianne. Theory of the Gimmick: Aesthetic Judgment and Capitalist Form. The Belknap Press of Harvard UP, 2020.
• Sharpe, Christina. In the Wake: On Blackness and Being. Duke UP, 2016.
• Sinykin, Dan. Big Fiction: How Conglomeration Changed the Publishing Industry and American Literature. Columbia UP, 2023.

Indicative learning resources - Web based and electronic resources

• Post45 – https://post45.org/

Indicative learning resources - Other resources

• Periodicals including:
  • American Literary History
  • American Literature
  • American Quarterly
  • European Journal of American Culture
  • European Journal of American Studies
  • Journal of American Studies

Key words search

American Literature; American Studies; Contemporary Literature; Contemporary Novel; US Politics