Module ENGL2461: JEWISH AMERICAN FICTION (SPECIAL TOPIC)

Department: English Studies

ENGL2461: JEWISH AMERICAN FICTION (SPECIAL TOPIC)

Prerequisites

• Any Single or Joint Honours finalist student wishing to take this Special Topic module must have satisfactorily completed the required number of core modules. Combined Honours and Outside Honours students must have satisfactorily completed either two Level 1 core introductory modules, or at least one Level 1 core module and one further lecture based module in English at Level 2.

Corequisites

• None.

Excluded Combination of Modules

• None.

Aims

• To introduce students to the cultural, religious, social, and historical forces that have shaped the fiction (whether novel, novella, or short story) written by Jewish Americans since the early part of the twentieth century to the present, from among Henry Roth, Norman Mailer, Saul Bellow, Bernard Malamud, E.L. Doctorow, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Philip Roth, and Grace Paley.

Content

• This module will explore a range of representative fictional texts written by Jewish American Writers since the 1930's.
• The aim of the module is to study the literary forms and preoccupations of Jewish American Fiction immediately before and after the Second World War up until the close of the twentieth century.
• The approach will combine an emphasis on formal close reading with an understanding of the various cultural, religious, political, and intellectual contexts reflected in and shaping the fiction of this period.
• Attention will be given both to continuities in the novel tradition and experimental forms and new historical pressures arising from changes within Jewish and American culture before and after World War II (typically immigration, economic depression, and the Holocaust).
• Such historical forces have meant that the reality depicted in Jewish American Fiction of the twentieth century has increasingly become as much American as it is Jewish.

Learning Outcomes

• From this course students will demonstrate an appreciation of the contradictory tensions (usually between assimilation and marginality, old world and new world values, communal and individual identity, religious orthodoxy and secularism) that persist in Jewish American writings about either an anxiety over the loss of cultural identity or a divided sense of identity.
• Within this context, students will also show an awareness of how Jewish American writers have contributed to the wider development of literary forms and traditions in both American and Modern fiction.
• By the end of the module, the students will evidence a fuller knowledge of a number of literary texts, together with a greater understanding of issues of interpretation and reception as they affect the works of Jewish American authors.

• Students studying this module will develop:
• critical skills in the close reading and analysis of texts
• an ability to demonstrate knowledge of a range of texts and critical approaches
• informed awareness of formal and aesthetic dimensions of literature and ability to offer cogent analysis of their workings in specific texts
• sensitivity to generic conventions and to the shaping effects on communication of historical circumstances, and to the affective power of language
• an ability to articulate and substantiate an imaginative response to literature
• an ability to articulate knowledge and understanding of concepts and theories relating to literary studies
• skills of effective communication and argument
• awareness of conventions of scholarly presentation, and bibliographic skills including accurate citation of sources and consistent use of scholarly conventions of presentation
• command of a broad range of vocabulary and an appropriate critical terminology
• awareness of literature as a medium through which values are affirmed and debated

• Students studying this module will develop:
• a capacity to analyse critically
• an ability to acquire complex information of diverse kinds in a structured and systematic way involving the use of distinctive interpretative skills derived from the subject
• competence in the planning and execution of essays
• a capacity for independent thought and judgement, and ability to assess the critical ideas of others
• skills in critical reasoning
• an ability to handle information and argument in a critical manner
• information-technology skills such as word-processing and electronic data access information
• organisation and time-management skills

Modes of Teaching, Learning and Assessment and how these contribute to the learning outcomes of the module

• Seminars: encourage peer-group discussion, enable students to develop critical skills in the close reading and analysis of texts, and skills of effective communication and presentation; promote awareness of diversity of interpretation and methodology
• Consultation session: encourages students to reflect critically and independently on their work
• Independent but directed reading in preparation for seminars provides opportunity for students to enrich subject-specific knowledge and enhances their ability to develop appropriate subject-specific skills.
• Typically, directed learning may include assigning student(s) an issue, theme or topic that can be independently or collectively explored within a framework and/or with additional materials provided by the tutor. This may function as preparatory work for presenting their ideas or findings (sometimes electronically) to their peers and tutor in the context of a seminar.
• Coursework: tests the student's ability to argue, respond and interpret, and to demonstrate subject-specific knowledge and skills such as appreciation of the power of imagination in literary creation and the close reading and analysis of texts; they also test the ability to present word-processed work, observing scholarly conventions. In individual Special Topics, the essay may, where appropriate to the subject, take an alternative form, such as 'creative criticism'.
• Feedback: The written feedback that is provided after the first assessed essay allows students to reflect on examiners' comments, giving students the opportunity to improve their work for the second essay.

Teaching Methods and Learning Hours

Summative Assessment

Formative Assessment:

Before the first assessed essay, students have an individual 15-minute consultation session, in which they are permitted to show their seminar leaders a sheet of points relevant to the essay and to receive oral comment on these points. Students may also, if they wish, discuss their ideas for the second essay at this meeting.

■ Attendance at all activities marked with this symbol will be monitored. Students who fail to attend these activities, or to complete the summative or formative assessment specified above, will be subject to the procedures defined in the University's General Regulation V, and may be required to leave the University