Course Details in 2026/27 Session

Module Title	LH American Frontiers: Nation and Identity in the Nineteenth Century
School	Eng, Drama, & Creative Studies
Department	English Literature
Module Code	09 29639
Module Lead	Jimmy Packham
Level	Honours Level
Credits	20
Semester	Semester 1
Pre-requisites
Co-requisites
Restrictions	None
Contact Hours	Lecture-10 hours Seminar-20 hours Guided independent study-170 hours Total: 200 hours
Exclusions
Description	The violent encounters and conflicts of the American frontier remain an enduring image of a nation in the process of self-definition. This volatile, unstable space reflects a country that, throughout the nineteenth century, continued to grapple with unresolved questions and anxieties about nationhood, national identity, and who was (and who was not) an ‘American’. This module offers students the opportunity to interrogate these questions and anxieties, while exploring the idea that nineteenth-century American literature was itself self-consciously concerned with what an American might be. We will approach this topic by considering the various different frontiers, thresholds and boundaries with which America contended and which shaped the nation throughout the century. Alongside the western frontier of popular imagination, we’ll also think about America’s oceanic frontier, the boundaries between the northern and southern states across which civil war played out, the domestic threshold, and the moment of transition into the twentieth century. We’ll also approach these terms imaginatively, and explore America’s engagement with literary boundaries, as it sought new generic and poetic forms to capture, shape, and give expression to an American voice. Finally, the individual’s body itself becomes a threshold and site of conflict – defined, for instance, by its colour, its sex, or its tattoos. America is a nation that has always reflected on its boundaries – points of definition that are yet porous and unstable. It is at these various thresholds, and in the encounters that took place across them, that we find various kinds of America emerge.
Learning Outcomes	By the end of the module students should be able to: Demonstrate a detailed knowledge of key nineteenth-century texts, and the ways in which these texts attempt to simultaneously express and establish an American identity. Show evidence of a broad understanding of America as an emergent world power, and of the cultural interactions and historical contexts that go some way to shaping its literature. Demonstrate familiarity with important philosophical and theoretical ideas emerging in America at this time, and an ability to apply these ideas in effective and constructive ways to the literature of the period. Demonstrate the ability to perceive specific tropes, traits and genres of the period; the knowledge to comprehend their significance; and the ability, with the appropriate vocabulary, to perform detailed and perceptive analysis of specific, and specifically American, literary forms.
Assessment	29639-01 : 4,000 Word Essay : Coursework (100%)
Assessment Methods & Exceptions	Assessments: 1 x 4,000 essay Reassessment: As above in extenuating circumstances
Other
Reading List