Course overview

This degree allows you to combine your interest with reading, writing and the use of language with an interest in the Americas. Through taking English in combination with American Studies, you will develop skills in analysis across a range of disciplines and in-depth knowledge of North America and South America in a regional and global context. The programme will also help you develop key skills which, allied with intellectual and academic development, will provide a sound preparation for the world of work or further study.

English and American Studies at Portsmouth offers a lively multidisciplinary programme which includes core material with a wide variety of options. This allows you to determine the distinctiveness of your pattern of study, and the basic design of the course enables you to study both of your chosen subjects in equal amounts. At the end of the first year, you will know more about the choices available and which aspects of the course you wish to pursue. You will be able to choose to continue with both English and American Studies in equal amounts (and graduate with BA English and American Studies) or you can choose to study either subject as your major (and graduate with English with American Studies or American Studies with English).

On this course you will also have the opportunity to spend a period abroad at one of our link universities in the USA or Mexico.

It is likely that you will enjoy reading as well as writing, and will feel enthusiastic about discussing literature or theatre with other students. You should take pleasure from approaching a subject or an issue from different perspectives. This might mean viewing a range of films to see what they tell us about US or Latin American societies.  It might involve following coverage of current political events or economic developments in newspapers and magazines. You will want to discuss your own ideas about what you read and watch but you will also be interested to hear views other than your own, and to question your own ideas sometimes. You will need a certain amount of independence and self-motivation, or at least be prepared to develop these skills.

Placements

Students on this programme are eligible to apply for an internship through the Brockport Washington Intern Program, offering work experience and learning opportunities in the heart of the American political process. For more information contact Lee Sartain.

This course also allows you to take the Learning From Experience (LiFE) option, which lets you earn credits toward your degree for work / research placements, volunteer roles or internships undertaken alongside your studies.  The option gives you the opportunity to enhance your employability skills, to reflect on the ways in which you've done so, and to learn to express this to potential employers.

Further information

For further details on all courses offered by the School, visit the website of the School of Languages and Area Studies (SLAS). If you are interested in this course and would like further information please contact us (details below). You can also view a virtual tour of the School.

Course content

American Studies at Portsmouth is pan-American in its approach and will require you to think critically about the Americas as a region rather than narrowly focus on theUnited States. The combination of core units and a wide range of options provide opportunities for you to learn about North America, Central America and South America through their literature, film, politics, history, sociology, geography and economics. Your programme will be made up of core and optional elements with an opportunity to specialise in either North or Latin America (or combine both!) as the course progresses. In English, you will look at a variety of texts and topics that introduce literary genre and technique, literary history, literary forms and context, as well as different critical approaches to the study of literature.

First year

In the first year you will study introductory units to the various disciplines that you will cover on the course, such as North American History, Culture and Society, and Politics and Economy in the Americas which will offer you a chance to acquire a coherent understanding of the Americas as a whole.  On the English literature side, you will develop your awareness of literary technique and literary history, thus providing you with a solid foundation for advanced literary study in years two and three.

Second and third year

In the second and third years of study there will be a range of options that will allow you to pursue your own particular interests. Options may vary from year to year but are likely to include units on literature, cultural studies; history and politics; sociology, economics and geography. These include on the American side, Civil Rights USA, US Foreign Policy, Race and Slavery, Transitional Justice and Human Rights in Latin America, African American History and Culture, Colonial Latin America, American Civil War or The Latin American City. On the English side: Writing America: Poetry and Fiction before 1900; Writing America; Magical Realism; American Literature 1900-1945; Literary Detectives; Post-war American Writing; Postmodernism and Fiction; Literature, Style and Change: 1890-1930; Women and Writing: 1890 – 1940; and War and Modern Memory.

Through the course, you will have an opportunity to study in-depth critical and theoretical approaches to a wide range of subjects. A large part of the final year is given over to the preparation of a dissertation, which is a major piece of independent work on a topic of your own choice. The dissertation can be on an American Studies or an English topic, or combine the two.

An attractive feature of the course at Portsmouth is that students can develop their language skills ab initio, from GCSE or post-A Level. Optional language units offered include Spanish, French and Portuguese. Here are outlines of some of the course units to give you a flavour of the kinds of things you may study, depending on the options you choose:

Year 1

Introduction to North American History

This course covers the history of North America and the United States from the first English settlements in the early-seventeenth century to the present day. The course focuses on aspects of cultural, social, political, economic, and religious history.  Topics covered include the American Revolution, Slavery, Civil War, Reconstruction, racial segregation, early-American imperialism, the New Deal, the Civil Rights Movement, and the rise of the New Right.

Politics and Economics in theAmericas

This course provides students with a hands-on introduction to the socio-economic reality of the region. Using a variety of case studies and media related sources drawn from across the region (Canada, the US, Mexico, Honduras, Argentina and Guatemala) students encounter a variety of economic tools embedded in real life examples. The problem is - as in the real world - making optimal decisions when information is at a premium.

Culture and Society in the Americas

This unit provides students with a framework of appreciating United States and Latin American issues through cultural expression which is how most people relate to historical and political forces in society.  Topics covered include the Frontier in American and Latin American History, Sport and Society, Music and Protest, Conspiracy Culture, Art and Landscape, and television.

Introduction to Literary History: Authorship

Authorship offers an introduction to literary history and criticism which focuses on key moments from the Renaissance to contemporary fiction. In particular, we explore the sonnet, the development of the novel, the rise of Romanticism and the impact of race and gender on authorship. We assess the ways in which the concept of creativity changes over time, but also recognise that some questions, especially those relating to representation, occur from classical to contemporary times.

Popular Fiction

This unit introduces students to concepts of cultural differentiation, mass literary-culture and critical theories of the popular through texts from three major genres of popular fiction: the romance, the spy/gangster thriller and science fiction. Structured so that students are given the chance to apply critical ideas to texts they may already be very familiar with, the unit outlines aspects of canon-formation and the text as commodity, and also familiarises students at a basic level with postmodernist culture and theories of cultural value.

Contemporary Literature: Text in the City

This course focuses on contemporary British, American and Postcolonial literatures. Throughout the unit we draw on the idea and representation of the modern city as a focus for our studies. This focus, in turn, allows us to examine issues of crucial importance to contemporary writers: we look, for example, at the aesthetics associated with the post-modern metropolis, as well as the broader experience of contemporary urbanised living. The cities in question includeNew York,London, and ‘Bombay’, and the writers include Ian McEwan, Don Delillo, and Anita Desai.

Textual and Critical Skills

This unit is designed to develop students’ skills in textual analysis, enabling them to better recognise and comment upon key features of literary form, style and technique. Students will also be encouraged to consider connections between texts and cultural, historical, literary, and theoretical contexts.

Year 2

Race and Slavery in theAmericas

This course examines the history of race and slavery in theAmericasin comparative perspective from the sixteenth century to the nineteenth century. Focusing on the United States, the Caribbean, and Brazil, the course explores topics including the origins and development of American slave societies, slave culture, resistance, and emancipation, and how slavery is portrayed in various countries.

US Foreign Policy

This unit examines the rise of the United States as a superpower from 1898 up to the present.  Major issues covered include early imperialist impulses, the world wars, American isolationism, the Cold War, the Vietnam conflict, post-Cold War policy, and the War on Terror.  Case studies are undertaken such as human rights and foreign policy, and the Cuban Missile Crisis.

American Civil War

This unit examines the making of a modern United States through the civil war of 1861-65 and the reconstruction of the nation.  Topics covered will include Reconstruction during and after the civil war, neo-slavery, and the rise of American capitalism.

US Politics

This unit relates to the American political system and relates it to contemporary issues in the US.  American institutions are examined, such as the presidency, Congress, and political parties, and related to contentious issues in US society, such as healthcare, the media, abortion, and the death penalty.

Writing America: Poetry and Fiction before 1900

This course will introduce students to the most influential nineteenth-century American writers, reading their fiction and/or poetry in the context of the literary, social and political forces that influenced them. It will examine the emergent sense of an American national and literary identity, and address such themes as the frontier, civil war, religion, democracy,Europe, gender relations, race and slavery, the south, and individualism.

Magical Realism

This course examines the development of a literary term and its application to some of the most innovative and politically charged contemporary literature. The ideas of genre, fiction and reality will be examined in relation to texts by writers such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez (in translation), Toni Morrison and Salman Rushdie. Issues of gender and postcolonialism and the relationship of fiction to history will be considered.

Writing the Nineteenth Century

This core unit aims to introduce students to a wide range of nineteenth century texts that illustrate the social and cultural foundations of modernity in this period. The course is divided into five parts, each carrying contextual headings: Urbanization; Art and Poetry; Gender and Sexuality; Death and Decadence; and Empire. This approach is designed to provide a structural framework within which the literature studied may be read and discussed.

American Literature 1900-1945

This unit will focus on early twentieth-century American literature. It will examine the intellectual, cultural, social and political factors influencing writers: industrial expansion, economic recession, materialism, consumerism, urbanity, social reform movements, communism, fascism, the Depression and the two world wars. It will explore key literary movements such as naturalism, regionalism, American modernism and the Harlem Renaissance; it will discuss changing attitudes towards religion, race, gender, sexuality, and class and how these are played out in the literature of the city, literature written by women, African-American literature and transatlantic literature.

Literary Detectives

This unit explores the genre of detective fiction from its origins to the present day. The unit aims to account for the emergence and evolution of the detective genre at particular points in history, analyse its structural properties and consider classic examples of the genre over the last 150 years, especially ‘originary’ texts by Poe, Conan Doyle, and Christie and examples of the ‘metaphysical’ detective story (e.g. Borges, Auster, etc.). It also explores ways in which the detective genre foregrounds the act of literary interpretation leading to questions of what literature actually is and what literary criticism is (and ought to be).

Year 3

The Civil Rights Movement in the USA

This unit explores the African American rights movement during the twentieth century from Booker T. Washington and Martin Luther King to the election of Barack Obama in 2008.  The unit will also explore the impact the movement has had on other rights movements in theUSsuch as women's rights, gay rights, indigenous rights and Hispanic rights.

Transitional Justice and Human Rights inLatin America

Latin Americahas both embraced and rejected neo-liberalism, the dominant development paradigm advocated by the international financial institutions. This course seeks to explain why by analysing recent events - whether it be economic collapse (Argentina), the expansion of drug trafficking (Colombia), a political impasse (the Fox administration in Mexico), the destitution - and rapid return - of a President (Venezuela) or extensive street protests (Bolivia). Given the contemporary nature of the course, the lecture programme changes from year to year.

African American History and Culture

The course sets out to analyse African American civil rights protest in the twentieth century through a cultural analysis. This will go beyond traditional civil rights history programmes to examine black literature, music, sport, poetry, comedy, and religion as being central to cultural protest. Areas studied will cover the Harlem Renaissance, black music (jazz, spirituals, blues, rap), radio, television and cinema representation, and the rhetoric of rights in black religion and politics and the movement in popular memory.

Post-war American Writing

This course introduces the study of American fiction post-1945. A variety of literary styles and forms will be studied, and students will be given the chance to analyse film adaptations of key texts (film adaptations will also be discussed in lectures). Theoretical approaches will also be explored, and the literary impact of modernism, postmodernism, ethnicity, gender, sexuality and the values of the Sixties’ counter-cultures will be addressed as part of the unit. Students will also be encouraged to develop an awareness of key political events such as the Cold War, Vietnam, socio-political movements such as feminism and Native-American self-determination, Civil Rights, Gay Rights, Reagan-omics and America’s current global policy. The course considers texts by writers such as Allen Ginsberg, Arthur Miller, N Scott Momaday, Toni Morrison and Tony Kushner.

European Literary Decadence

This option aims to explore a variety of French, German, and British writing of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century with a view to tracing influential lines of development and demonstrating the importance of Decadence as a European phenomenon.

Postmodernism and Fiction

This unit is a critical survey of key texts and writers to have been associated with postmodernism over the past few decades: e.g. Beckett, Nabokov, Coover, Borges, B. S. Johnson, etc. To an extent these writers will be considered in the light of some of the major theories about ‘the postmodern’ in society and culture. However, one of the unit’s distinctive features is that it approaches postmodernism as a particular problem within literary history. This means that it is especially suited to those students with an interest in literary theory and a knowledge of narrative form, 19th century fiction, and literary history in general.

Literature, Style and Change: 1890-1930

This unit focuses on the dynamic and vibrant exploration of artistic and literary values which took place as the twentieth century dawned. In particular, it assesses the contribution made to this moment by important writers and critics like T.S. Eliot, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf, and places their works in a rapidly-changing cultural context, marked by war and democratic change. We will explore whether the work of these writers marks the end of nineteenth-century values, or offers a more complex re-writing of them.

Tracing Borders, Pushing Boundaries: Women and Writing – 1890 - 1940

This unit interrogates the ways in which texts by women writers shaped and responded to the rapidly changing cultural framework of the early twentieth century. We will focus on the work of writers like Rebecca West, Djuna Barnes, Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Townsend Warner, and explore the ways in which they utilise the innovative literary modes of their day, and question our understanding of war, of the human relation to the natural world, and the re-interrogation of gender bounds in particular.

War and Modern Memory

This unit is concerned with the way in which war is reconstructed through cultural texts for contemporary audiences. Why is our culture - particularly British culture - so preoccupied with war? How is war used (rewritten and recreated) through various cultural texts in order to construct national identity? Why should collective memory and its institutional forms be problematic? Who decides what is remembered and what forgotten? Topics on the unit include: the Blitz versus area bombardment ofGermany; the Holocaust and its politics of memory; the role of mythmaking for national identity; the potential of visual forms of memory: monuments or photographs; trauma and second-generation issues. Students should be prepared to engage with a wide variety of literary and visual material, both documentary and fictional. Non-English texts will be read in translation.

Teaching and assessment

We aim to provide a varied, challenging and stimulating learning environment. But most of all we want you to become an independent learner so that you will continue to learn beyond your time at the University.

You will have relatively few formal lectures as most of our teaching is done in smaller groups and we encourage you to work together in groups or small teams. Our assessment methods are varied too, incorporating some formal examinations but also case studies, projects and presentations.

Our staff are highly motivated and research active, ensuring that you are taught by specialists in their subjects.

Career prospects

Our students have the opportunity to study abroad in the first semester of their final year, either in the United States or Mexico, or to undertake an internship in Washington DC where they can develop their personal as well as professional skills. Often opportunities open up to students when abroad that they would not otherwise have imagined.

Your time at University of Portsmouth will help you to develop a wide range of skills in analysis, criticism and argument. Students on these programmes often have a worldview and study experience abroad, which makes them flexible and adaptable and highly employable. During your course, you will have the opportunity to develop a range of capabilities that are valued by prospective employers. You will have many opportunities to develop transferable key skills such as:

• communication
• research
• time management
• team working
• problem solving

These transferable skills are used in a wide range of career opportunities across the private, public and voluntary sectors. Allied with intellectual and academic development, these skills will provide a sound preparation for the world of work or further study.

Facilities and features

The School is located in Park Building, just behind the Guildhall in the centre of the city. Park Building houses two very large modern lecture theatres, a number of smaller lecture theatres and seminar rooms, three computer suites, three language laboratories, the Learning Resource Centre and a cafeteria. All teaching for language courses takes place in this building.

You will also have access to the University Library, which has recently undergone an £11 million extension, housing more study rooms, IT spaces, a new café and space for an extra 60,000 volumes.

For more details about the School of Languages and Area Studies and its facilities, visit www.port.ac.uk/slas.

Entry requirements

View all the entry requirements for BA (Hons) English and American Studies for the academic year 2013/14 (opens in new window).