Module ENGL2661: Early Modern America

Department: English Studies

ENGL2661: Early Modern America

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 literature generated by British contact with the Americas.
• To engage students with key questions and debates on the status of the Americas and their native inhabitants (eg, evangelism; The Black Legend; cannibalism; the gender of the New World).
• To encourage students to interrogate these questions through a range of literary genres (poetry; travel narratives; sermons).
• To encourage students to consider how these texts and questions relate to printed images of the New World and its inhabitants.
• To promote the use of scholarly databases (EEBO; ECCO; LION) as resources which allow students to pursue their research across a wide range of primary texts and thematic areas.

Content

• This module will first introduce the broad context of Old World/New World relations through primary documents detailing the biblical and eschatological status of the Americas and their inhabitants, as well as the anti-Catholic propaganda generated by the 'Black Legend' of Spanish genocide.
• It will then examine British attitudes in terms of their practical settlement, and their cultural and religious significance.
• It will draw on works by poets, preachers, travellers and settlers.
• It will encourage students to pay attention to the role of genre (eg, propagandist settlement tracts; autobiography; evangelising works).
• It will distinguish between the stage of early British contact and awareness; initial attempts at settlement; the period of later, stable settlement in and after the late seventeenth century. Topics to be discussed in seminars will include: gender; evangelism; monstrosity; cannibalism; and cultural hybridity (eg, the Pocahontas myth).

Learning Outcomes

• Upon successful completion of the module, students will have demonstrated:
• Knowledge of a diverse range of texts and attitudes about/to the New World.
• Knowledge of the historical and cultural context of early-modern contact with the New World.
• Engagement with the complex interplay of positive, negative, and ambivalent attitudes to the New World, with particular reference to religious factors.
• Engagement with the various critical approaches to this topic (eg, literary, historical, anthropological).
• An awareness of the special roles of different literary genres in shaping and colouring perceptions of the New World
• An awareness of the issues at stake in Protestant/Catholic religious controversy, and its historical bases.

• Upon successful completion of the module, students will have demonstrated:
• Critical skills in the close reading and analysis of texts and images
• An ability to analyse texts and images closely, using appropriate critical perspectives
• An ability to illustrate arguments through fine details of language and imagery
• A close engagement with the otherness of both the New World, and Old World attitudes to it
• An ability to work effectively and flexibly with primary databases
• A basic command of early-modern printing and referencing conventions (eg, signatures v page numbers)

• Upon successful completion of the module, students will have demonstrated:
• A capacity to analyse critically
• Complex and nuanced skills of expression and argument
• An ability to compare and contrast texts and images
• Competence in the planning and execution of essays
• A capacity to balance independent argument with appropriate critical perspectives
• Skills in critical reasoning
• An ability to handle information and argument in a critical manner
• Information-technology skills such as word-processing, database searching, 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; in this session students are entitled to show their seminar leader a list of points relevant to the essay and receive oral comment on these points. Student may also, if they wish, discuss their ideas for the second essay at this meeting.
• 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.
• Essays: 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 essay, students will have an individual consultation in which they will receive feedback on their essay plan.

■ 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