Academic management

1. What is an American? ‘American’ identities
2. Internal Colonization, Slavery and Immigration: Representation and Self-Representation
3. The Politics and Poetics of Religion
4. American Dreams and Nightmares: from Prosperity to National Traumas
5. Nature and the Environment

Different types of sessions are designed in order for students to get to know relevant literary and socio-cultural aspects of American literature as well as the ways in which those aspects have been inscribed in the texts analyzed in this course:

1. Introductory classes (CEX, 28), for theoretical and contextual aspects.
2. Practical classes (PLA, 28), designed for students to develop the competencies required at this level through their active participation, both individually and in groups, as well as orally or in writing. Essentially, they will be carried out through the research, analysis and presentation of literary texts and other complementary materials, written and/or visual, dealing from multiple perspectives with the topics derived from the Contents section (see above).
3. Some of the practical sessions will be dedicated to the development of writing strategies. They will take place on the first days of the academic year, at the end of October and at the beginning of December.

The number of sessions may be altered depending on their distribution on the University of Oviedo official academic calendar.

Important Note: Exceptionally, and if the sanitary conditions would so require, some online teaching activities might be included. In that case, the students would be duly informed. 

Assessment

The assessment system will consider and evaluate the student’s knowledge and competencies at the end of the course. It comprises the following calls and parts:

Ordinary call:

Model A. Continuous assessment: For those students who come to class regularly (min. 80% of the sessions)

It will consist of four parts:

1. Final exam in English (40%): It will take place on the official date accorded by the Center and will include all the contents seen in class throughout the semester.
2. Oral presentation (20%): Each student will video-record a presentation (20%) on a topic agreed upon with the lecturer before September 30, 2022, and which must be submitted at the end of November. 
3. Essay (20%):  The essay must be a 1,500-word written text, including references and footnotes, on the same topic as the oral presentation. Submission of the complete written essay must be done both in print (sanitary conditions permitting) and through Urkund: 

eal.uniovi@analysis.urkund.com, PLA 111 

fernandezmmarta.uniovi@analysis.urkund.com, PLA 112

carol.uniovi@analysis.urkund.com, PLA 211 and 221

      4. Other activities (20%): Exercises, quizzes, text analysis/commentary, and other coursework, done in the classroom or as homework, with or without prior notice.  

* For more information about assessment, see Important note below

Assessment Model B. For students who don’t go to class regularly (i.e., when they miss more than 20% of the classes) or for those who choose this option for other reasons.

It comprises the following parts:

1. Final exam in English (40%): It will take place on the official date accorded by the Center and will include all the contents seen in class throughout the semester. The exam is the same as that of Assessment Model A but without optionality.
2. Oral presentation (20%): Each student will video-record a presentation (20%) on a topic agreed upon with the lecturer before September 30, 2022. Submission will be due at the end of November. 
3. Questionnaire (15%): It includes 10 questions about the course readings.
4. Essay (25%): The essay must be a 3,000-word written text, including references and footnotes, on the same topic as the oral presentation. Submission of the complete written essay must be done both in print (sanitary conditions permitting) and through Urkund: eal.uniovi@analysis.urkund.com, PLA 111; fernandezmmarta.uniovi@analysis.urkund.com, PLA 112; carol.uniovi@analysis.urkund.com, PLA 211 and 221. Deadline for submission, December 9, 2022. 

* Important note for students following both Assessment Model A and Model B

• In their essay, students must cite/reference at least three academic sources (excluding primary sources). Course instructors will not grade papers that fail to cite those three sources both in the main text and in the Works Cited section.
• Students will be expected to follow the instructions given in the document “Paper Instructions”, which is available on the Virtual Campus, when formatting their paper and using other academic conventions. Should students fail to comply with all or part of these instructions, they will be penalized and therefore given a lower grade.
• Instructors will consider the following aspects in their assessment: command of the subject matter, structure and coherence of the essay, depth of analysis, writing skills, bibliography used and correctness in following academic conventions in regards to referencing and quoting.
• If they so decide, instructors may carry out an interview with the student about their essay.
• Both a print (sanitary conditions permitting) and an electronic version of the essay (through Urkund) must be submitted on or before December 9, 2022.

• DATES:

              - September: Selection of topic and written notification to the lecturer

              - October: Preparation (reading of primary and secondary sources, tutorials, etc.)

              - November: Oral presentation and elaboration of written essay.

              - December: Deadline for submission (9th, 2022).

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Special assessment circumstances (evaluación diferenciada concedida): Students under ‘special assessment circumstances’ (evaluación diferenciada; see Article #7 in the University Assessment Regulations) will be expected to follow Model B.

Extraordinary assessment periods (convocatoria extraordinaria): During the extraordinary assessment periods students will always be expected to follow Model B. Exceptionally, Model A students who have passed both the essay and the oral presentation may ask for their grades to be kept in May or June calls (they must do this in written form and before the exam date). 

IMPORTANT NOTE about assessment:

Under articles #24 and #25 of the University of Oviedo Assessment Regulations, the fraudulent use of sources and/or the partial or complete plagiarism in academic assignments will be penalized with a Fail grade in the course (suspenso = 0 in the final results).

Linguistic and discursive skills (use of English, both in oral and written form), as well as originality in class proposals and individual assignments, will be considered part of the course assessment process, either in a positive or in a negative sense. 

Note: Exceptionally, and if the sanitary conditions would so require, some online assessment methods might be included. In that case, the students would be duly informed. 

8. Resources, bibliography, and supplementary materials

Compulsory study material:

The whole selection of texts, scholarly articles, and graphic and/or audiovisual items provided or recommended throughout the semester.

NOTE: The rest of compulsory materials will be provided via Virtual Campus and or by the lecturers. It will include poems, short stories, plays, and excerpts from several literary works. They will all be considered class and study material and, hence, will also be part of the assessment process.

Basic bibliography 

Students will have to get hold of a copy of The Great Gatsby, by Francis S. Fitzgerald, and The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison, the two compulsory novels that will be read in the course. The rest of compulsory reading materials (poems, short stories, plays, and extracts) will be provided through the Virtual Campus or directly by the lectures to be analyzed in class or by the student, and will therefore be part of the material to be assessed at the end of the semester.

Complementary bibliography:

Bates, Milton J. 1996. The Wars We Took to Vietnam: Cultural Conflict and Storytelling. Berkeley: U of California P.

Baym, Nina, ed. 2003. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. New York: Norton.

Berkowitz, Gerald M. 1992. American Drama of the Twentieth Century. London and New York: Longman.

Bigsby, Christopher. 2000. Modern American Drama, 1945-2000. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.

Bragard, Véronique, Christopher Dony and Warren Rosenberg. 2011. Portraying 9/11. Essays on Representations in Comics, Literature, Film and Theatre. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland.

Cullen, Jim. 2004. The American Dream: A Short History of an Idea that Shaped a Nation. Oxford: Oxford UP.

Elliot, Emory, coord. 1991. Historia de la literatura norteamericana. Madrid: Cátedra.

Gray, Richard. 2011. After the Fall: American Literature since 9/11. Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell.

Kenneth, Millard. 2000. Contemporary American Fiction. An Introduction to American Fiction since 1970. Oxford: Oxford UP.

Lauter, Paul, ed. 2006. The Heath Anthology of American Literature. Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin.

Melling, Philip H. 1990. Vietnam in American Literature. Boston: Twayne.

Neal, Arthur G. 2005. National Trauma and Collective Memory: Major Events in the American Century (2nd ed.). Armonk: M.E. Sharpe. 

Perkins, George, and Barbara Perkins. 1994. The American Tradition in Literature. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Phillips, Dana. 1999. “Ecocriticism, Literary Theory, and the Truth of Ecology”. New Literary History 30 (3): 577-602.

Ruland, Richard, and Malcolm Bradbury. 1992. From Puritanism to Postmodernism. A History of American Literature. New York: Penguin.

Walker, Marshall. 1988. The Literature of the United States of America. Houndmills: MacMillan.