North American Literature II

Code:

MEAAM016

Acronym:

LNA2

Instance: 2009/2010 - 2S

Active?	Yes
Responsible unit:	Department of Anglo-American Studies
Course/CS Responsible:	Masters in Anglo-American Studies

Cycles of Study/Courses

Acronym	No. of Students	Study Plan	Curricular Years	Credits UCN	Credits ECTS	Contact hours	Total Time
MEAA	11	Study Plan since 2007/2008	1	-	9	80	243

Teaching language

English

Objectives

This programme seeks to examine the work of some of the most influential American novelists of the 19th- and 20th centuries. It will further aim to stimulate a critical understanding of cultural and aesthetic manifestations that over the years have become engraved on the spaces and memory of the United States of America. Another aim will be the possibility of reading those novelists as integrated in the dynamics of significant moments of American fiction and as major figures who write about some of the most important places (real or imaginary) in American Literature

Program

Authors to be studied include Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, and Ralph Ellison. Their work and their sense of place will be approached from a range of theoretical and critical standpoints, as well as from the perspective enabled by a specific mythical and cultural tradition and by close consideration of the writers’ achievements - from the re-creation of the symbolic dimensions of the Mississippi territory ( Mark Twain) to its conversion into an aprocryphal county in the modernist writing of William Faulkner. European locales will be discussed as a relevant context for American modernism (Ernest Hemingway),and New York will be analyzed as the destination and place where Afro-Americans developed their unique identity in the first decades of the twentieth century.(Ralph Ellison).

Mandatory literature

Ralph Ellison; Invisible Man, Penguin, 2001 [1952]
Ernest Hemingway; The Sun Also Rises, Penguin, 1992 [1926]
William Faulkner; The Sound and the Fury, Norton, 1994 [1929]
Mark Twain; Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Norton, 1998 [1885]

Teaching methods and learning activities

Fifteen weekly sessions on a seminar basis

keywords

Humanities > Literature > Literary criticism
Humanities > Literature > American literature

Evaluation Type

Distributed evaluation without final exam

Assessment Components

Description	Type	Time (hours)	Weight (%)	End date
Attendance (estimated)	Participação presencial	45,00
	Trabalho escrito	163,00
	Total:	-	0,00

Amount of time allocated to each course unit

Description	Type	Time (hours)	End date
	Estudo autónomo	35
	Total:	35,00

Eligibility for exams

Students must attend 75% of all seminar sessions

Calculation formula of final grade

Students will obtain a 'pass' or a 'fail' based on the following evaluation components:

-Active participation in seminars;
- A written essay to be discussed at the end of the semester.

Examinations or Special Assignments

Not applicable

Special assessment (TE, DA, ...)

Not applicable

Classification improvement

Not applicable