american studies at sussex
TRANSCRIPT
American Studies at Sussex
Openminds
www.sussex.ac.uk/americanstudies
01
If you’ve ever wondered why the United States exerts such a dominant impact on the modern world or how that country’s remarkably diverse population has moulded such a vibrant society and culture, then American Studies is the degree for you.
The programme here at Sussex is genuinely multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary. We not only give our students a grounding in the single disciplines of American history and American literature but also encourage them to push beyond those boundaries to apply lessons learned from other disciplines such as politics, sociology and anthropology to their investigations of the United States and beyond. Make no mistake, American Studies is not an easy option. It requires you to think outside the box – to master a range of texts and to develop real flexibility of thought. By the time you come to the end of your degree you’ll be able to speak authoritatively about all aspects of the United States and comprehend the multiple meanings inherent in commonplace terms like ‘the special relationship’ and ‘the land of the free’.
American Studies has been a flagship programme at Sussex since the 1960s so there’s no better place to come. Our faculty is one of the strongest in the country. We have experts in a wide range of significant fields including slavery and race, nineteenth-century literature and culture, the American Civil War, the civil rights movement, labour protest, religious thought and experience, immigration, consumer culture, modern poetry and fiction, and even the New York punk scene. You’ll find your tutors to be friendly and approachable and, no less importantly, determined to ensure that you perform to the best of your abilities. At Sussex we pride ourselves on our commitment to academic excellence as measured in terms of the quality of both our scholarship and our teaching.
The year abroad in year three is the jewel in the Sussex crown. We have one of the largest North American exchange programmes of any university in this country. Our list of partners is not only long but also high in quality. If you come here you’ll spend your third year at a top-class college in the United States or Canada at a discounted rate well below that paid by a North American student. Studying in the United States for an entire academic year means that you can immerse yourself fully in contemporary American society as well as a plethora of study opportunities. This exciting experience will test your abilities to survive and thrive in a foreign culture, but the chances are high that you’ll come home vastly more confident than when you left, having had one of the most memorable years of your life.
Come to think of it, American Studies at Sussex offers you all manner of life-changing and life- enhancing possibilities. We’d be truly delighted to welcome you onto the programme.
Why American Studies at Sussex?Sussex is ranked among the top universities in the UK at which to study American Studies:
3rd in The Complete University Guide (2015),
5th in The Guardian University Guide (2015),
6th in The Times Good University Guide (2014).
•American Studies faculty at Sussex contributed to the top 10 rankings for English and History in the UK for the quality of their research outputs in REF 2014.
•We are among the UK’s leading research centres in the study of American literature and history.
•International faculty, including both American and European scholars, provide you with a range of critical perspectives.
•We have the most extensive Year Abroad schemes of any American Studies course in the UK.
Welcome to American Studies at Sussex
Course structure 0302 Undergraduate study
Major Joint majors MinorsYear 1
Core (60 credits)
Introduction to American Studies; Roots of America I and II; American Literature to 1890 I and II Choose from (60 credits)
Elective module; American Identities; American Historical Controversy; American Humor; The Look of America
Core (30 credits)
Roots of America I and II; American Literature to 1890 I and II
Core (15 credits)
American Identities Choose from (15 credits)
American Literature to 1890 II;Roots of America II
Year 2
Core (60 credits)
American Literature Since 1890: Parts I and II; African American Experience New Orleans or New York City Choose from (60 credits)
Elective module; Pulp Culture; American Cinema; 1861: The Coming of the Civil War; Transatlantic Rhetoric; Women in the Americas; 1831 Slave Revolts
Core (30 credits)
American Literature Since 1890 I and II; New Orleans or New York; African American Experience Choose from (30 credits)
American Cinema; Pulp Culture; 1861: The Coming of the Civil War; Transatlantic Rhetoric; Women in the Americas; 1831 Slave Revolts
Choose from (30 credits)
African American Experience;American Literature Since 1890 I and II; 1861: The Coming of the Civil War;
Year 3 – Year AbroadYear 4 - Both majors and joint majors
Choose from (120 credits)
America and the Middle East; Recent American Writing; The Civil Rights Movement; American Civil War in Historical Memory; History Special Dissertation; Special Author: John Ashbery; Special Author: Herman Melville; Hollywood: Industry and Imaginary; Immigrant America; Single Author Study; The Civil Rights Movement; Hollywood Comedian Comedy; Documentary America; The United States in the World; America in the 21st Century; Culture and Consumption
Choose from (60 credits)
America and the Middle East; Recent American Writing; The Civil Rights Movement; American Civil War in Historical Memory; History Special Dissertation; Special Author: John Ashbery; Special Author: Herman Melville; Hollywood: Industry and Imaginary; Immigrant America; Single Author Study; The Civil Rights Movement; Hollywood Comedian Comedy; Documentary America; The United States in the World; America in the 21st Century; Culture and Consumption
Law students only: Choose from (30 credits)
America in the 21st Century;Culture and Consumption; Documentary America
American Studies at Sussex offers you the opportunity to study American culture from a variety of perspectives. At Level 1 we provide you with a firm grounding in American literature and history from the early seventeenth century onwards, teach you how to engage critically with a range of different texts, and train you in multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches to the American past, present and future. At honours level you may specialise in an area of your choice but will combine your specialist study with core modules that explore the intellectual links between disciplines. So, you might combine the study of the novel in the 20th century with a module on New York or New Orleans; study both the history of slavery and the African American experience after 1900; or combine analysis of modern American culture with a module that examines America’s role in the wider world. This pattern, combining depth and diversity of intellectual interests, recognises that areas of knowledge are interdependent and mutually illuminating. In our modules, you learn to examine critically literary and historical texts, images, music and film, all the while sharpening your ability to communicate orally and in writing with your peers and tutors.
At the same time, at Sussex we believe that you should acquire a good basic training in the theories and ways of analysing a particular subject, and should learn how to apply these in practice. Therefore, when you choose American Studies at Sussex you get the best of both worlds: on one hand, you can choose to specialise within your major course, but on the other you will be expected to read widely from other subjects, and be able to undertake interdisciplinary and comparative work to complement your major.
Course specifications Single Honours American Studies (BA)
Joint Degrees American Studies and English (BA) American Studies and Film Studies (BA) American Studies and History (BA) American Studies and Politics (BA)
Major/Minor Degrees Law with American Studies – 3 years (LLB) Law with American Studies – 4 years (LLB) Psychology with American Studies (BSc)
Student perspective‘One of the best things about the course is the accessibility of online resources – with reading lists for the whole term available on Study Direct, as well as much of the reading itself, it’s easy to access materials and prepare thoroughly for lectures and seminars in advance. Sussex Direct is invaluable in terms of providing personalised information on module progress and study timetables. It’s also reassuring to know that our tutors are available during weekly office hours and contactable by email for essay guidance, help with understanding a specific topic, or just to answer general queries about the course. I’ve found that settling into the American Studies programme has been straightforward and enjoyable.’
Molly, Second year student
0504 What modules do I take?
Year 1
Major and joint major students take survey modules in American literature and history. History modules cover America’s beginnings through the 20th century. Literature modules cover America’s beginnings through the 19th century. The core modules serve as a comprehensive introduction to American Studies as
a distinctive academic discipline for both major and minor students. American Studies major students can also take interdisciplinary modules in American visual culture, American humor, American identities, and a module on a key American historical controversy such as the origins and demise of racial segregation.
Year 2
Major students take core survey modules in American literature from the late 19th century through the 20th century, the African-American experience, and interdisciplinary courses on the history, politics, and culture of New Orleans or New York City. Major and joint major students can additionally take modules
on a range of topics including the Women in the Americas, the American Civil War, Pulp Culture, Transatlantic Rhetoric, American Cinema, and American slave revolts. New modules will also be available.
Year 3
Individual study course on the year abroad.
Year 4
In the final year at Sussex, major students write a dissertation on a topic of their choice with one member of staff acting as their supervisor. Both major and joint majors choose between a range of modules including America & the Middle East; Recent American Writing; The Civil Rights Movement; the American Civil War in Historical Memory; Special Author: John Ashbery; Special Author: Herman Melville; Hollywood: Industry & Imaginary; Immigrant America; Single Author Study; The Civil Rights Movement; Hollywood Comedian Comedy; Documentary America; The United States in the World; America in the 21st Century; and Culture and Consumption. Minor students concentrate on their major subject in their final year and do not take American Studies modules, with the exception of
LLB Law with American Studies students who take one American Studies module.
The American Studies modules that students take are listed below. For details of individual modules please take a look at our student handbook on our website: www.sussex.ac.uk/americanstudies
Please note that modules may be subject to change or withdrawal.
Year Abroad in North America
Although the United States and the United Kingdom share the same language, American Studies majors need to understand and come to terms with the ‘foreign-ness’ of American life as well as to have an opportunity to study their subject on its home territory and acquire a closer knowledge of American society and its culture.
For these reasons, all American Studies majors and joint-degree majors spend their third year at a North American university that has been carefully selected for high academic standard, levels of pastoral and administrative support, and cultural and geographical environment. Your journey will be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to learn first-hand about the place you are studying and, perhaps more importantly, also the beginning of lifelong professional and personal attachments in America.
Sussex offers the most extensive and prestigious network of North American exchange universities in the United Kingdom. (For a full list of our partner institutions, please see the International Office’s Year Abroad pages). As an American Studies major, you will study at one of over forty US and Canadian campuses that together represent every facet of the American experience from the Atlantic coast to the shores of the Pacific. Some of our students study at the University of California campuses, including UC Berkeley; those interested in the American South can study at Tulane University in New Orleans or the University of North Carolina, while politics specialists might choose George Washington University in Washington, DC Whether you are interested in Native American culture, environmental history, or American modernist poetry, Sussex offers you a unique and unsurpassed experience while studying in North America that will, as returning students perennially attest, ‘change your life’.
Support and guidanceThe Year Abroad component is fully integrated into your module of study at Sussex. It counts. It is also fully supported by dedicated administrative and academic staff who will guide you through the process from the first day of your first year through to your final year. Even while you are abroad, the academic director of the Year Abroad, will provide you with advice and support, either at the end of a phone, or via email, so there is never any reason to feel ‘cut off’ if problems arise.
Funding of the Year Abroad courseStudents are understandably concerned about the cost of a year abroad in North America and, although you will need to pay for your airfare, visa and medical insurance, the most important aspect of cost to emphasise is this: Sussex students pay just fifteen percent of their tuition fees to Sussex for their year abroad and no tuition fees to the exchange university. Aside from these costs, the most important part of your preparation for your study abroad is securing your US visa. Students will have to demonstrate that they have sufficient funds available before the visa can be issued, and the amount of money varies according to which campus you attend. The Year Abroad staff will work with you from the very beginning to ensure that the application process is smooth and timely. More information and advice about the financial aspects of the year abroad are available on the Study Abroad web pages. Further information: For more information on the Year Abroad in North America, please see the web pages of the International and Study Abroad Office: www.sussex.ac.uk/International/america
0706 Partner institutions in North America
1. University of Alaska at Fairbanks
2. University of British Columbia, Vancouver
3. Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia
4. Washington University in Seattle
5. Reed College, Portland, Oregon
6. Oregon State University, Corvallis
7. University of Colorado, Boulder
8. University of California at Davis
9. University of California at Berkeley
10. University of California at Santa Cruz
11. University of California at Santa Barbara
12. Occidental College, Los Angeles
13. University of California at Los Angeles
14. University of California at Irvine
15. University of California at San Diego
16. Arizona State University, Tempe
17. University of Texas, Austin
18. The University of Arkansas, Little Rock
19. Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge
20. Tulane University, New Orleans
21. Spelman College, Atlanta
22. Georgia Tech., Atlanta
23. University of Miami, Coral Gables
24. Mercer University, Macon, Georgia
25. University of Georgia, Athens
26. University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
27. University of Pittsburgh
28. George Washington University, Washington DC
29. Brooklyn College, New York City
30. State University of New Jersey, Rutgers, New Brunswick
31. State University of New York, Stony Brook
32. Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, Massachusetts
33. University of Massachusetts, Amherst
34. University of Vermont, Burlington
35. Rensselaer Polytechnic Inst., Troy, New York
Exchange universities in USA and Canada
3433
32313029
26
28
27
24
25
3637383940414243
7
2
1
3
4
5
6
89
101112131415
16
35
23
2221201917 18
ArizonaNew Mexico
Texas
Oklahoma
KansasColorado
Utah
MontanaNorth Dakota
South Dakota
Nebraska
Minnesota
Iowa
Missouri
Arkansas
Mis
siss
ippi
Alab
ama
Loui
sian
a
Florida
Geo
rgia
Tennessee
Wis
cons
in
Illinois
Indi
ana Ohio
Mic
higa
n
Kentucky
New
Yor
k
Wyoming
Pennsylvania
Virginia
Carolina
North Carolina
South
New Jersey
Conn.R.I.
Mas
N.H.
Maine
VirginiaWest
Delaware
Maryland
Vt.
Washington
Oregon
Nevada
California
Idaho
Alaska C A N A D A
Mas
36. Pennsylvania State University, University Park
37. University of Rochester, New York
38. University of Toronto
39. University of Waterloo, Ontario
40. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
41. Purdue University, West Lafayette
42. Roosevelt University, Chicago
43. Washington University, St Louis
www.sussex.ac.uk/International/america/map.php
0908 What will I achieve?
As an American Studies student at Sussex, you will be supported to gain the following:
• knowledge of the US in the context of the Americas across a range of topics and historical periods
• an appreciation of the ways in which different fields of study combine to give a deeper understanding of American culture, history and society
• the educational, cultural and social experience of a year abroad
• the ability to recognise, represent and reflect on ideas and concepts from other cultures and periods, and to analyse texts within their historical, social and cultural context
• the skills you need to learn independently and to clearly communicate what you have learnt.
Those who specialise in literature and culture learn to analyse and reflect critically on a range of forms and genres, from poetry and the novel to film and other forms of popular culture. You will learn to understand the contexts in which literary texts and other forms of cultural expression are produced and received, as well as different theories and critical methods that we can use in our reading.
Those who specialise in history and politics gain knowledge and understanding of American history from colonial times through to the present day. You will learn to use different historical methods and develop awareness of historical specialisms (for example social, economic, gender, oral and intellectual history). Most of all, you will come to understand America’s past, but you will also be able to analyse historical processes that have given rise to the major political and social challenges facing today’s global society.
Career prospects American Studies graduates find employment in a wide range of fields including teaching, media and the civil service.
An American Studies degree gives its graduates an edge in the job market for two main reasons:
1. Having spent a period in North America during their four-year degree, they are seen by employers as more mature and independent-minded, as well as more flexible in new situations, than their peers.
2. The multidisciplinary nature of their degree increasingly appeals to employers, as American Studies graduates are regarded as more versatile and better able to adapt quickly to new information and approaches.
1110 American Studies faculty
Professor Robert Cook is Professor of American History. He specialises in the history of the United States in the Civil War era, Civil War memory and the civil rights movement. He is the author of several books including Troubled Commemoration: The American Civil War Centennial, 1961–1965 (LSU, 2007) which was a Lincoln Prize finalist in 2008, and Civil War Senator: William Pitt Fessenden and the Fight to Save the American Republic (LSU, 2011).
Dr. Sue Currell is Reader in American Literature and Chair of the British Association for American Studies. Her research interests include American literature, culture and modernism in the first half of the twentieth century as well as eugenics and popular culture and narratives of self help. Among her publications are The March of Spare Time: The Problem of Leisure in the Great Depression (Pennsylvania, 2005) and American Culture in the 1920s (Edinburgh, 2009).
Professor Richard Follett is Professor of American History. He has published widely on American slavery and emancipation, including the multiple-award winning The Sugar Masters: Planters and Slaves in Louisiana’s Cane World, 1820–1860 (LSU, 2005). He co-authored (with Eric Foner and Walter Johnson) Slavery’s Ghost: The Problem of Freedom in the Age of Emancipation (Johns Hopkins, 2011), edits the Routledge periodical Atlantic Studies, and additionally works on digital history (www.sussex.ac.uk/louisianasugar), Caribbean slavery, and Afro-Brazilian culture.
Dr. Doug Haynes is Lecturer in American Literature. His research areas are in European and American modernist, postmodernist and avant-garde writing and culture, particularly as they interface with Critical Theory. He has written in journals like Modern Fiction Studies, Critique, Textual Practice, The Modern Language Review, and Papers of Surrealism on thinkers and writers such as Nathanael West, André Breton, and Theodor Adorno as well as visual artists such as Louise Bourgeois and Mike Kelley. He is currently writing a book on Black Humour.
Dr. Daniel Kane is Reader in English and American Literature and serves as Director of the Center for American Studies. He works on modern and contemporary American poetry and avant-garde writing, film and culture. He has written extensively on poets affiliated with the New York schools. His books include ‘All Poets Welcome’: The Lower East Side Poetry Scene in the 1960s (California, 2003) and ‘We Saw the Light’: Conversations Between the New American Cinema and Poetry (Iowa, 2009). He is currently working on a study of the relationship between the New York punk scene and avant-garde poetry and poetics.
Dr. Maria Lauret is Reader in American Literature. A specialist in so-called ‘minority literatures’, she works at the intersection of race, ethnicity, gender, class and sexuality. Her publications include Liberating Literature: Feminist Fiction in America (Routledge, 1994), Beginning Ethnic American Literatures (Manchester, 2001) and Alice Walker (2nd edn., Macmillan, 2011). She has recently completed a book on immigrant autobiography, essays and fiction entitled Wonder Words, published by Bloomsbury Press in 2014.
Professor Clive Webb, Professor of Modern American History, is a specialist on white engagement with and resistance to the modern civil rights movement. He is the author of the prize-winning Fight against Fear: Southern Jews and Black Civil Rights (Georgia, 2001) and Rabble-Rousers: Militant Segregationists in the Postwar South (Georgia, 2010). He is also co-author of the popular textbook Race and the American South: From Slavery to Civil Rights (Edinburgh, 2007).
Dr. Adam Gilbert is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in History. His research interests lie at the intersection of history, philosophy, and literature, and address topics including the American war in Vietnam, moral history, the moral philosophy of war and violence, applied ethics, representations of war (particularly in poetry and film), and modern American literature. He is currently working on a three-year research project entitled ‘A Moral History of the American War in Vietnam’.
Dr. Tom Adam Davies is Lecturer in American History. His current research focuses primarily on the relationship between the black freedom struggle and liberal and conservative politics during the second half of the twentieth century. His essay Black power in action: the Bedford- Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation, Robert F. Kennedy, and the politics of the urban crisis appeared recently in the Journal of American History (Dec. 2013).
Dr. Tom Wright is a Lecturer in English and American literature and cultural history of the long nineteenth century. His areas of research include public speech, media history, rhetoric, travel, non-fiction, and transatlantic studies. He is author and editor of two books on public speaking in early America. The first is a collection of essays, The Cosmopolitan Lyceum: Lecture Culture and the Globe in Nineteenth-Century America (University of Massachusetts Press, 2013). The second is a monograph entitled Lecturing the Atlantic: Anglo-America on the Antebellum Platform (forthcoming) that explores antebellum lectures about Anglo-American identity by performers such as Frederick Douglass, William Makepeace Thackeray, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Lola Montez and John B. Gough. He is a founding member of The British Association of Nineteenth-Century Americanists (BrANCA)
Dr. Michael Jonik is Lecturer in English and American Studies. His research focuses on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century American and transatlantic literature, continental philosophy, and the history of science. He has published essays on Emerson, Thoreau, Melville, and Charles Olson. Currently, he is completing two book projects: Melville’s Uncemented Stones: Character, Impersonality, and the Politics of Singularity and A Natural History of the Mind: Science, Form, and Perception from Cotton Mather to William James. He is a founding member of The British Association of Nineteenth-Century Americanists (BrANCA).
Dr. Anne-Marie Angelo is Lecturer of the US in International History. Her research interests include studying the interactions between the US civil rights movement and racial formations outside the United States. Her dissertation, entitled ‘Any Name That Has Power’, examined the Black Panthers of Israel and the United Kingdom, groups who were inspired by the eponymous African-American movement. From 2008 to 2011, Dr. Angelo held the US Department of Education Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) fellowships in Arabic. As part of these fellowships, she lived in Cairo, Egypt from 2009 to 2011, including during the January 25 Revolution. Dr. Angelo’s publications include ‘The Black Panthers in London, 1967-1972: a diasporic struggle navigates the Black Atlantic’, which appeared in the Radical History Review (2009).
12
To apply for American Studies at Sussex, you need to make an application through UCAS. Please visit the online prospectus for details: www.sussex.ac.uk/study/ug
If you cannot access the internet, or have any questions regarding the admissions process, please use the following contact details:
Student Recruitment Services, Sussex House, University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton BN1 9RH, UK
T +44 (0)1273 876787 F +44 (0)1273 876677 E [email protected]
Further informationThe online prospectus will give you details such as tuition fees and admission requirements, as well as information on Open Days and how you can come and visit us.
The American Studies website also holds large amounts of information. You can find more details about the modules on offer, as well information on departmental events, ongoing research and faculty profiles. www.sussex.ac.uk/americanstudies
Our modules are subject to change, so please check the website for up to date information or contact us on the details opposite.
If you have questions or want to talk to an Admissions Tutor, please contact us on the details below:
School of History, Art History and Philosophy Arts A7 University of Sussex Falmer, Brighton BN1 9QN
T +44 (0)1273 678001 E [email protected]
www.sussex.ac.uk/hahp
How to apply
