English Literature: American Modern Literature (Taught)

The Masters in American Modern Literature focuses on the American Literature of the late nineteenth to the twenty-first century. The required courses range across fields and genres including art history, film, ecocriticism, sociology, urban studies, travel writing, and music, as well as providing a grounding in traditional and emerging narratives of modern American literary history.

WHY THIS PROGRAMME

The university offers superb archival resources in the Special Collections of our library, the Hunterian Art Gallery and Museum as well as the nearby Kelvingrove Museum.

• Literary analysis will be informed by Glasgow’s tradition of interdisciplinary approaches to American culture, drawing on film, music, philosophy, and art to help frame the development of American modern literature.

• You will be able to work with a team of internationally-renowned North Americanists to develop your research skills and pursue your own research interests in relation to American modern literature.

PROGRAMME STRUCTURE

You will take:

• Three core courses

• Three optional courses

The course themes: Cities, Institutions, Movements, Entertainments and Anthologies represent the efforts to see writers and canons in dynamic contexts. The course also promotes dialogue and effective comparisons between sessions, suggesting different routes that you may pursue in depth during your degree.

You will also produce a dissertation.

Semester 1:
English Literature Research Training Course
Modern American Literature 1
ONE OPTIONAL COURSE

Semester 2:
Modern American Literature 2
TWO OPTIONAL COURSES

Summer:
Modern American Literature Dissertation

The two semesters of coursework are followed by one term of supervised work towards a 15,000 word dissertation. The topic normally arises out of the work of the previous two semesters, but the choice is very much open to the student’s own initiative. Your supervisor helps you to develop the proposal and plan the most appropriate reading and methodology.

Optional Courses
The American Counterculture, 1945-75
American Fiction of the 1930s
Canadian Literature (PGT)
F. Scott Fitzgerald, Edith Wharton and Dialogues of American Literary Modernism
The Mind of the Contemporary American Novel

You may also take other courses within English Literature’s PGT offerings and, with the convenor’s permission, one course from elsewhere in the College of Arts & Humanities and the University.