ENG4545 – The American West
Schedule, syllabus and examination date
Course content
A quintessentially American geo-cultural place, the Trans-Mississippi West is a region which has been excessively mapped, regularly misunderstood, often maligned, contemptuously ignored, grossly simplified, ostentatiously caricatured, triumphantly glorified, and—as perplexing as it may be—(re)imagined in any combination thereof.
In short, the changing histories of the American West and their attendant multicultural lifeworlds?matter; they matter not only in historical but also in contemporary terms since the American West, as the fastest-growing region across most metrics, has been the bellwether of the nation’s future for a considerable time. Consequently, it deserves much more attention and indeed scrutiny.
Chiefly informed by New/Post-West and Global West schools of thought, this graduate course is geared toward (re)centering scholarly attention on the American West along hemispheric, historical, transnational, multicultural, gender-diverse, and intersectional lines.
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Topic for spring 2024: "We are all the descendants of the subjugated": Understanding the Contemporary West through New West(ern) historiography and popular remediations.
The American West continues to excite the popular imagination as well as the scholarly community both of which have long since transcended the geographical confines of the region. In the wake of pioneering New Western historians, such as Patricia N. Limerick, Richard White, William Cronon, and Philip J. Deloria to name but a few, we have witnessed a steadily growing body of revisionist historiographic work accumulate since the late 1980s. While these collective scholarly labors have done much to critique and deconstruct earlier historiographic paradigms (e.g. Frederick Jackson Turner’s "frontier thesis"), they have neither radically changed the public memory of the region’s history nor have they fully permeated the popular imagination. Even so, more and more popular (re)imaginings/(re)mediations of both historical and contemporary Western lifeworlds are catching up while, at the same time, others continue to peddle settler colonial legacies.
Students will be tasked with setting the scholarly output of New Western historians of the past thirty years into dialogue with turn-of-the-millennium and/or contemporary cultural production. Literary texts, visual and performance art, and mass-market audiovisual media will serve as our primary laboratory. We will use them to investigate how both the public memory of the region’s history as well as its attendant popular remediations continue to oscillate between perpetuating pernicious settler colonialist discourses while also increasingly challenging, indeed vanquishing the resilient frontier mythos of an earlier age.
Learning outcome
After completing this course, you
- will have developed a critical appreciation of the American West as a complex, multicultural region;
- will have intimately engaged with revisionist histories/historiography and a wider range of corresponding cultural production in different media;
- will be aware of the global traces and echoes of the Western mythos;
- will have developed more advanced reading/viewing, conceptualizing, and writing skills to conduct self-directed research within a Western Studies frame of reference;
- will be able to confidently dissect and assess primary as well as secondary sources with a view to making use of them for developing more comprehensive, graduate research projects.
Specific for spring 2024:
Upon having a) regularly attended and actively participated in the seminar, b) contributed 1-2 obligatory in-class "performances", and c) successfully compiled the examination portfolio, students will have developed a synoptic and critical understanding of historical as well as contemporary lifeworlds in the American West. Students will be knowledgeable in and conversant with New Western historiography while also having gained first-hand, practical experience at critically reading and contextualizing cultural artifacts/texts.
Admission to the course
Students who are admitted to study programmes at UiO must each semester?register which courses and exams they wish to sign up for?in Studentweb.
Students enrolled in other Master's Degree Programmes can, on application, be admitted to the course if this is cleared by their own study programme.
If you are not already enrolled as a student at UiO, please see our information about?admission requirements and procedures.
Recommended previous knowledge
Students should have a solid understanding of 19th?and 20th?century US history. Being familiar with and/or interested in the history and legacy of settler colonialism, ethnic and social injustice, imperialism, forced and/or free migration, extractive economies, and national mythography will be especially helpful.
Being committed to and feeling comfortable with historical and historiographic analysis as well as close (con)textual reading of a range of (mass) mediated cultural texts/artifacts will also be an asset for this course.
Teaching
Seminars, 2 hours per week for 10 weeks. 20 hours in all.
- Students will be required to contribute 1-2 in-class "performances" (e.g. explicator talks, student-led text dissections, research reports, or similar) which may be tackled individually, in pairs and/or in small groups.
- The in-class "performances" are, in part, tied to written deliverables (e.g. bibliographic work, an annotated bibliography, a trial thesis proposal, a text-/artifact-based reflection paper, a video essay, a podcast episode, a companion handout/one sheet, etc.) which, taken together, constitute the examination portfolio.?Read more here about rules concerning valid excuses and how to apply for postponements.?Information about?guidelines for obligatory activities.
- It is obligatory to show up for a minimum of 60% of the teaching. In this course you have to attend 6 of 10 seminars. The requirement is absolute.
The allowed absence limit will cover all absences, including illness. You will not be granted valid absences with documentation, even when the absence is due to something beyond your control.
If the course has in-person teaching, and you are signed up for an in-person seminar group, you are to attend the teaching in the location found in the schedule.
If the course has digital teaching, and you are signed up for a digital seminar group, you must attend via Zoom with your camera on.
In certain circumstances, i.e. serious or chronic illness, you could apply for?special needs accommodations.
The tasks/work packages that constitute the individual components of the examination portfolio will be specified in the course syllabus. The syllabus and course pragmatics will be clearly communicated and explained in the first regular session.
Examination
The exam form is a multi-part portfolio of approx. 12-14 pages (+/- 10%; note: a standard page consists of 2,300 characters). Any extant references and bibliography do not count toward the overall scope of the portfolio.
The specific topics/scope of the deliverables that make up the examination portfolio are to be developed by students themselves in consultation with the course lecturer. The course lecturer may also provide a range of pre-defined topic areas within which students will then develop and complete specific tasks.
Students are required to successfully complete the obligatory in-class performances in order to qualify for the final written component of the portfolio (e.g. a reflective research report).
Language of examination
The examination text is given in English, and you submit your response in English.
Grading scale
Grades are awarded on a scale from A to F, where A is the best grade and F?is a fail. Read more about?the grading system.
Resit an examination
A term paper or equivalent that is passed may not be resubmitted in revised form.
If you?withdraw from the exam?after the deadline, this will be counted as an examination attempt.
More about examinations at UiO
- Use of sources and citations
- Special exam arrangements due to individual needs
- Withdrawal from an exam
- Illness at exams / postponed exams
- Explanation of grades and appeals
- Resitting an exam
- Cheating/attempted cheating
You will find further guides and resources at the web page on examinations at UiO.