Varieties of Classic American Film, Television and Literature Since 1950

Code

AMCS3071

School

American and Canadian Studies

Level

3

Credits

20

Semesters

Spring UK

Summary

What is a film, television or literary classic? How has this term come under pressure and fractured over the past half century or so? This module will examine these questions by building on knowledge and study skills acquired by students in level 1 and level 2 classes that touch upon North American film, television and literature. It will do so by considering the concept of the mid and late twentieth century American classic in a variety of contrasting and overlapping contexts. These contexts will be elaborated on the basis of their formal, generic, period and/or cultural designations that will cover university and exam curricula reading lists, popular opinion and widespread critical consensus (such as the currently prevalent view, for instance, that the early twenty-first century constitutes a ‘golden age’ of US television). The overall aim will be to encourage students to scrutinise more assiduously both the aesthetic and social processes by which ‘classic’ categories and sub-categories have and continue to be constructed. The following represent a few examples of texts/ designations that might be explored: Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man and Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo as ‘canonized’ classics; Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird and Steve McQueen’s Twelve Years A Slave as ‘pedagogical’ classics; John Williams’ Butcher’s Crossing and Jonathan Nolan & Lisa Joy’s TV series  Westworld as classic modern westerns; Evan Connell’s novel Mrs Bridge and Kenneth Lonergan’s movie You Can Count On Me  as ‘minor’ classics; Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar and the recent TV adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale as feminist classics; Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections and Vince Gilligan’s Breaking Bad as critically lauded ‘contemporary classics’.

Target Students

Available for final-year SH and JH American and Canadian Studies students. Also available for Film and Television Studies students (in CMVS), History students and Liberal Arts students.

Classes

• One 2-hour seminar each week for 12 weeks
• One 3-hour screening each week for 6 weeks
• One 1-hour lecture each week for 6 weeks

The module will consist of a bi-weekly lecture (1h per week), weekly seminars (2h per week) and bi-weekly introduced screenings. The School of Cultures, Languages and Area Studies operates an attendance policy. The details of this policy can be found in the student handbook on Workspace and in module handbooks.

Assessment

• 30% Coursework 1: Coursework 1 - (1,500 word) essay
• 50% Coursework 2: Coursework 2 - (2,500 word) essay
• 20% Participation: Seminar participation

Assessed by end of spring semester

Educational Aims

Learning Outcomes

• Knowledge and understanding of key texts, ideas and genres;
• close analysis of primary source texts;
• knowledge and interpretation of historical and cultural contexts;
• engagement with overarching themes in American genre criticism;
• development of arguments and interpretations (both through oral contributions to seminars and written work in essays and exams).

Knowledge and understanding:
On completion of the module students should be able to:

• 1) understand and apply different critical approaches to cinematic, television and literary representations of American society across a broad time-span;
• 2) explain and interpret the historical and cultural factors that bear upon different texts and genres;
• 3) approach critical and interpretive questions in an interdisciplinary fashion;
• 4) demonstrate the ability to carry out research and to independently evaluate materials;
• 5) demonstrate the ability to make connections between this module and their larger understanding of American thought and culture;
• 6) construct clear, coherent and independent arguments on the page and in seminar.

Intellectual skills:

• Students will develop skills in close reading and analysis;
• contextualization and identification of key themes;
• the ability to present and refine their interpretations and arguments in both oral and written form (in seminars, the essay and exam).

In their efforts to think about the ways that Americans have represented and understood their nation, they will be expected to relate the intellectual, cultural and historical contexts of developments in American cultural forms (which will be offered in lectures) to a series of texts (which are prescribed reading for the seminar series). They will also be encouraged to make frequent interdisciplinary connections to their cross-disciplinary first and second year core modules (e.g. American Lit and Culture I and II, North American Regions).

Professional and transferable skills:

• This module will facilitate the development of multiple transferable skills, including but not limited to close reading, textual analysis and evaluation, verbal and written expression, critical thought, and the accurate exposition and evaluation of competing critical positions.
• The study of genre is particularly useful to the development of argumentative and interpretive attributes in the field of cultural criticism.

Conveners

• Dr Anthony Hutchison