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top 10 in the uk for research quality

Take your interest in History across the pond!

American Studies is the perfect course if you want to learn more about the history, literature, politics, film, art and popular culture of the United States. Whether your interests lie in the Civil War or the War on Terror, Walt Whitman or Walt Disney, this course will help you to develop your critical and imaginative skills in the context of the American experience and its global significance.

If you want to gain an in-depth understanding of US society and how it has come to exert such a powerful influence on the modern world, Northumbria is the university for you. We have one of the largest concentrations of US specialists working outside North America. We also offer opportunities to spend a semester or a whole year at at one of our partner institutions located throughout the US, from New York to California.

The cornerstones of American Studies are History and English, meaning our graduates have excellent employment prospects similar to students from those disciplines. Possible careers after successful completion of the course include journalism, publishing, teaching and government service.

Why choose Northumbria to study American Studies? 

Top Department: Northumbria University is ranked 10th in the UK for American Studies (Complete University Guide, Subject League Table 2023).

Research Powerhouse: 90% of our research publications are internationally excellent and world-leading (REF, 2021).

top 10 in the uk for research quality

Take your interest in History across the pond!

American Studies is the perfect course if you want to learn more about the history, literature, politics, film, art and popular culture of the United States. Whether your interests lie in the Civil War or the War on Terror, Walt Whitman or Walt Disney, this course will help you to develop your critical and imaginative skills in the context of the American experience and its global significance.

If you want to gain an in-depth understanding of US society and how it has come to exert such a powerful influence on the modern world, Northumbria is the university for you. We have one of the largest concentrations of US specialists working outside North America. We also offer opportunities to spend a semester or a whole year at at one of our partner institutions located throughout the US, from New York to California.

The cornerstones of American Studies are History and English, meaning our graduates have excellent employment prospects similar to students from those disciplines. Possible careers after successful completion of the course include journalism, publishing, teaching and government service.

Why choose Northumbria to study American Studies? 

Top Department: Northumbria University is ranked 10th in the UK for American Studies (Complete University Guide, Subject League Table 2023).

Research Powerhouse: 90% of our research publications are internationally excellent and world-leading (REF, 2021).

Course Information

UCAS Code
T700

Level of Study
Undergraduate

Mode of Study
3 years full-time or 4 years with a placement (sandwich)/study abroad

Department
Humanities

Location
City Campus, Northumbria University

City
Newcastle

Start
September 2023 or September 2024

Fee Information

Module Information

News / Humanities

Find out what our Humanities students and staff are taking part in and achieving.

To get inspired check out our gallery below of our humanities students social posts to find out what it’s like to be part of the Northumbria community.

Humanities at Northumbria University

Discover more about what you will learn on the course, more about our academics research interests, and hear from our alumni's by watching our videos.

Department / Humanities

Our Department of Humanities includes the subject areas of History, English Literature, English Language and Linguistics, Creative Writing and American Studies.

Book an Open Day / Experience American Studies BA (Hons)

Visit an Open Day to get an insight into what it's like to study American Studies BA (Hons). Speak to staff and students from the course and get a tour of the facilities.

Entry Requirements 2023/24

Standard Entry

120 UCAS Tariff points

From a combination of acceptable Level 3 qualifications which may include: A-level, T Level, BTEC Diplomas/Extended Diplomas, Scottish and Irish Highers, Access to HE Diplomas, or the International Baccalaureate.

Find out how many points your qualifications are worth by using the UCAS Tariff calculator: www.ucas.com/ucas/tariff-calculator

Subject Requirements:

There are no specific subject requirements for this course.

GCSE Requirements:

Applicants will need Maths and English Language at minimum grade 4/C, or an equivalent.

Additional Requirements:

There are no additional requirements for this course.

International Qualifications:

We welcome applicants with a range of qualifications which may not match those shown above.

If you have qualifications from outside the UK, find out what you need by visiting www.northumbria.ac.uk/yourcountry

English Language Requirements:

International applicants should have a minimum overall IELTS (Academic) score of 6.0 with 5.5 in each component (or an approved equivalent*).

*The university accepts a large number of UK and International Qualifications in place of IELTS. You can find details of acceptable tests and the required grades in our English Language section: www.northumbria.ac.uk/englishqualifications

Entry Requirements 2024/25

Standard Entry

120 UCAS Tariff points

From a combination of acceptable Level 3 qualifications which may include: A-level, T Level, BTEC Diplomas/Extended Diplomas, Scottish and Irish Highers, Access to HE Diplomas, or the International Baccalaureate.

Find out how many points your qualifications are worth by using the UCAS Tariff calculator: www.ucas.com/ucas/tariff-calculator

Subject Requirements:

There are no specific subject requirements for this course.

GCSE Requirements:

Applicants will need Maths and English Language at minimum grade 4/C, or an equivalent.

Additional Requirements:

There are no additional requirements for this course.

International Qualifications:

We welcome applicants with a range of qualifications which may not match those shown above.

If you have qualifications from outside the UK, find out what you need by visiting www.northumbria.ac.uk/yourcountry

English Language Requirements:

International applicants should have a minimum overall IELTS (Academic) score of 6.0 with 5.5 in each component (or an approved equivalent*).

*The university accepts a large number of UK and International Qualifications in place of IELTS. You can find details of acceptable tests and the required grades in our English Language section: www.northumbria.ac.uk/englishqualifications

Fees and Funding 2023/24 Entry

UK Fee in Year 1: £9,250

* The maximum tuition fee that we are permitted to charge for UK students is set by government. Tuition fees may increase in each subsequent academic year of your course, these are subject to government regulations and in line with inflation.


EU Fee in Year 1: £17,500

International Fee in Year 1: £17,500


Please see the main Funding Pages for 23/24 scholarship information.



ADDITIONAL COSTS

There are no Additional Costs

Fees and Funding 2024/25 Entry

UK Fee in Year 1*: £9,250

* The maximum tuition fee that we are permitted to charge for UK students is set by government. Tuition fees may increase in each subsequent academic year of your course, these are subject to government regulations and in line with inflation.



EU Fee in Year 1: **TBC


International Fee in Year 1: TBC


Scholarships for 24/25 are currently being announced.  Please keep checking the main Funding Pages which will be updated throughout the cycle.

 


ADDITIONAL COSTS

TBC

If you’d like to receive the latest updates from Northumbria about our courses, events, finance & funding then enter your details below.

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How to Apply

Please use the Apply Now button at the top of this page to submit your application.

Certain applications may need to be submitted via an external application system, such as UCAS, Lawcabs or DfE Apply.

The Apply Now button will redirect you to the relevant website if this is the case.

You can find further application advice, such as what to include in your application and what happens after you apply, on our Admissions Hub Admissions | Northumbria University



Modules

Module information is indicative and is reviewed annually therefore may be subject to change. Applicants will be informed if there are any changes.

AM4001 -

Introduction to American Studies (Core,20 Credits)

This module offers a practical and historical introduction to American Studies as a distinct, multifaceted, and evolving discipline, while also allowing you to acquire and practice key learning, research, and communication skills which will be of use throughout your university career and beyond. The module is content driven, with readings and themes drawn from across the entire range of American history, literature, politics, and popular culture, but particular emphasis will be placed on helping you to understand and master the basic tools and protocols of academic scholarship, thereby helping you to make the transition from school to university level work.
The skills which this module will help you to develop will include finding, reading and evaluating various kinds of primary and secondary sources; understanding the ways in which scholarship advances through constructive criticism and debate; correct referencing; finding an effective academic writing style; making oral presentations; and designing, researching and writing an independent research project.

More information

AM4002 -

Contemporary America (Core,20 Credits)

This module will introduce you to key aspects of contemporary US culture, history, and politics. Chronologically the course focuses on the period from 1992 to the present; in disciplinary terms it embraces economics, film, history, international relations, literature, music, performance, politics, sexuality, and visual culture; thematically, the module emphasizes the importance of racial, ethnic, gender, class and religious identities, consumerism and globalization, domestic and international configurations of US political, social, economic, and cultural power, and the politics of cultural representation in the media and popular culture. Adopting a variegated, multi- and interdisciplinary approach, the module enable you to combine an enhanced empirical knowledge of the contemporary US to useful interpretive frameworks such as postmodernism, queer theory, and globalization theory. The module is organized around a mixture of broad thematic surveys (e.g. Major Trends in Contemporary US Literature) and narrower case studies (e.g. The Challenges of Post-9/11 Literature).

More information

EL4003 -

Representing the US: From Slavery to Terrorism (Core,20 Credits)

This module focusses on US literature, film and television and it asks you to think about US culture at large; it will introduce you to a range of significant US texts from the nineteenth century to the present. You will make connections between diverse texts ranging from writings of slaves in the nineteenth century to fiction that responds to the trauma of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. You will enjoy US literature, film and television across a range of periods – work from the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries will be covered – and you will examine fiction, poetry, drama, film, and television in relation to the idea of a national literary canon and in the context of social and political change, from the Civil War to the War on Terror. As a survey module, it encourages you to examine how key works engage with questions of identity, slavery, the American Dream, trauma, freedom, and national security.

More information

EL4006 -

Concepts in Criticism and Culture (Core,20 Credits)

This module introduces you to key critical concepts in literary studies and asks how those concepts may be applied to the study of less canonical forms of writing and other media.

You will be introduced to theoretical and critical material, addressing key issues about literature and culture such as:
• how is the literary canon is constructed
• how might our gender, race or class background affect how we value and understand literature and popular culture

During the module you will be encouraged to evaluate the significance of debates about authorship, identity and literary value. You will be asked to read a range of key academic essays, discussing them in relation to a range of examples from popular culture as well as literature. You will be asked to think about the values attached to these different forms of cultural production. The module aims to foster your skills in close textual analysis, informed by key theoretical perspectives and independent reflective practice.

More information

HI4005 -

From Sea to Shining Sea: US History from 1776 to 2008 (Core,20 Credits)

This module will provide you with an overview of the social, political and cultural development of the United States from revolutionary period to the present day. Within a broad chronological framework, this module will introduce you to key themes within modern American history: race, gender, ethnicity, class, regionalism, the media, and foreign policy. Topics include the American Constitution, Jacksonian America, the antebellum and Civil War period, Reconstruction, the New Deal, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Cold War. You will have the opportunity to consider the major controversies in American history, key concepts, and the nation’s transformation from a colony to a superpower.

More information

HI4007 -

Making History (Core,20 Credits)

History is not only characterised by knowledge and understanding of past developments, but also by a broad range of skills and methods that are directly applicable to academic research. Within this wider context, this module will give you a firm grounding in the skills and methods needed for the study of history, introducing you to a range of source materials from a broad chronological spectrum. In so doing, the module explores traditions in criticism and explains the ways in which sources can be read and utilised. The module is structured along five ‘core skills’ blocks (Writing History, Handling Sources, Approaches to History, Researching & Interpreting History, and Feedback and Careers) which progress logically from each other and provide students with ample opportunities to engage with how historians make history. The first block introduces you to how to study and write history through an analysis of the historian’s key skills. The block also develops skills in three areas: (1) writing history; (2) reading history (3) researching history. The second block examines key approaches to historical sources. In addition to allowing you to demonstrate the skills gained in block one, the block concentrates on how to find primary sources, how to read them, and how to deploy them in written work. Block three considers key conceptual approaches to the past, including race, class and gender. Block four draws the skills you have learnt in a concentrated study of a single secondary source book. . The final block introduces you to careers in and beyond History, and asks you to reflect on your progress over the year. You will develop a critical capacity to scrutinize sources and interpretations of the past.

More information

YC5001 -

Academic Language Skills for Humanities and Social Sciences (Core – for International and EU students only,0 Credits)

Academic skills when studying away from your home country can differ due to cultural and language differences in teaching and assessment practices. This module is designed to support your transition in the use and practice of technical language and subject specific skills around assessments and teaching provision in your chosen subject. The overall aim of this module is to develop your abilities to read and study effectively for academic purposes; to develop your skills in analysing and using source material in seminars and academic writing and to develop your use and application of language and communications skills to a higher level.

The topics you will cover on the module include:

• Understanding assignment briefs and exam questions.
• Developing academic writing skills, including citation, paraphrasing, and summarising.
• Practising ‘critical reading’ and ‘critical writing’
• Planning and structuring academic assignments (e.g. essays, reports and presentations).
• Avoiding academic misconduct and gaining credit by using academic sources and referencing effectively.
• Listening skills for lectures.
• Speaking in seminar presentations.
• Presenting your ideas
• Giving discipline-related academic presentations, experiencing peer observation, and receiving formative feedback.
• Speed reading techniques.
• Developing self-reflection skills.

More information

AD5011 -

Humanities Study Abroad (60 credit) (Optional,60 Credits)

The Study Abroad module is a semester based 60 credit module which is available on degree courses which facilitate study abroad within the programme. You will undertake a semester abroad at a partner university equivalent to 60 UK credits. This gives you access to modules from your discipline taught in a different learning culture and so broadens your overall experience of learning. The course of study abroad will be constructed to meet the learning outcomes for the programme for the semester in question, dependent on suitable modules from the partner and will be recorded for an individual student on the learning agreement signed by the host University, the student, and the home University (Northumbria). The module will be assessed by conversion of graded marks from the host University and, where appropriate, complementary activities as agreed between the student and module tutor.

Learning outcomes on the year-long modules on which the student is unable to attend the home institution must be met at the host institution, and marks from the host are incorporated into the module as part of the overall assessment.

More information

AM5002 -

American Studies Extended Essay (Core,20 Credits)

The American Studies Extended Essay is designed as an opportunity for you to apply and build on the skills you have acquired in Level Four core modules and prepare yourself for the demands of the American Studies Dissertation in Level Six. It is an exercise in independent research and is intended to be a piece of work that utilises an interdisciplinary approach to a selection of primary and secondary sources. Extended Essay topics will be developed in conjunction with an appropriate subject specialist.

More information

AM5003 -

The American West (Core,20 Credits)

Ever watched a Western film? Heard about the American frontier? Wondered how westward expansion helped redefine the United States? This is the module for you. It focuses on the American West in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, inviting you to consider its culture, history, politics, and society. Key themes include race, the Western movie genre, western literature, the frontier’s impact on the West and America in a wider sense, and the environment, all of which will be examined through different theoretical and methodological approaches.

Learning about the different ways in which we can see, understand and explain the West will provide you with a better range of tools to form your own understanding and explanation of what we can observe in the world today. For example, considering Western movies will encourage you to think afresh about American violence, civilization, and gender. Analysis of the frontier will develop your understanding of American progress, masculinity, and racism. Thinking about the western environment will prompt you to reassess the relationship between our natural environment and society.

At a theoretical level, this team-taught module will introduce you to the concept of ‘place’ within a framework informed by the multi- and inter-disciplinary approaches of American Studies. In this, it should challenge you to consider the way that History interacts with, for example, Film or Literature, and surprise you by encouraging you to rethink your prior assumptions about the American Experience. You’ll never think about America in the same way again, we promise.

More information

EL5007 -

Literature and Identity (Optional,20 Credits)

On this module you will explore the concept of identity in relation to literary texts across a range of periods and genres. The module will address the relationship between identity formation and narration, drawing on approaches that might include narrative theory and psychoanalysis. You will be encouraged to consider how literary texts participate in the representation and production of gendered, racial, national, sexual, post-colonial and other identities. The module will extend your understanding of literary theory and its application to literary texts and prepare you for the study of theory-based modules at Level 6.

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EL5008 -

Tragedy (Optional,20 Credits)

What was or is tragedy? When and why did tragic drama begin to be written and performed? How have later writers of tragedy built on or surpassed early forms of tragedy? What did or does tragedy tell us about the world we live in? This module addresses these questions, with a survey of tragic drama from the classical past, through the early modern period, to the twentieth century. You will learn to contextualise each tragedy in relation to the conflicts and strains of the period in which it was made and consumed, while also thinking about the relations between writing, gender, religion, and politics, issues of literary influence, and the function of art in times of crisis, past and present.

Building on your work correlating Shakespearean tragedy and modern drama at Level 4 (Titus Andronicus and Blasted), and prefiguring your extended writing work for the dissertation and on drama-based modules such as Marlowe in Context at Level 6, this module will develop your understanding of the dramatic genre of tragedy. This will involve looking at tragedy’s earliest forms, the early modern revival and revision of such forms, and modern reworkings of the genre and its concerns.

More information

EL5009 -

Literature and Adaptation (Optional,20 Credits)

This module explores adaptations of literary texts in modern culture. It focuses on the ways in which classic texts are retold and appropriated in a variety of popular genres, media, and formats. The module thus builds on the knowledge and skills developed at Level 4, particularly those concerning the notion of canonicity and the relations between ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture.

The module introduces you to the current theories of adaptation and teaches you the knowledge and skills necessary for critical analysis of adaptations. It also provides you with the terminology and skills needed for the study of film and other media, as well as non-canonical (popular) literary genres.

More information

HI5006 -

Slavery, Sectionalism and Manifest Destiny (Optional,20 Credits)

In this module you will assess the importance of slavery and Manifest Destiny in the rise of American sectionalism from the end of the American War of Independence (1783) to 1850. This sectionalism created a political, social, and cultural atmosphere in the US which laid the basis for the crises of the 1850s and the Civil War. Slavery was the major issue which the Founders left unsolved in the aftermath of independence from Great Britain. As a result, it continued to divide the United States through the early republic and antebellum periods. Manifest Destiny was supposed to bring the sections together by uniting them in a quest to expand the United States westward. Ironically, Manifest Destiny exasperated the slavery issue and divisions between the North and the South. You will also study historiography of this period throughout the semester and you will be expected to become familiar with it. Students are expected to study relevant primary documents. This module will build specifically on the basic information learned in the early sections of the level-4 From Sea to Shining Sea. It will equip you to think critically about academic literature, primary sources, and historical interpretation.

More information

HI5009 -

Your Graduate Future (Optional,20 Credits)

This module aims to ensure that you will be equipped with employability-related skills appropriate to graduates of History and associated degrees. The module adapts to your interests, whether you choose to pursue postgraduate study, enter the job market seeking graduate level employment, or establish your own enterprise. One of the purposes of Your Graduate Future is to raise your awareness of the wide range of possibilities, and to equip you with the knowledge, the skills and the experiences that may enable you to respond effectively to future opportunities. In semester 1 you will attend lectures and participate in seminars that will present the intricacies of contemporary job seeking in different sectors. These will include guest lectures. You will then work with a group of your peers on an outward-looking project that will enable you to display your specific skills, to establish and nurture internal and external contacts, and to express your interests in a public outcome of your choice. In semester 2, you will develop your CV and further explore your evolving skillsets by means of engaging on your choice of work experience, volunteering, enterprise planning or a placement abroad. These will take the shape of supported independent activities. Assessment consists of a group project with a public outcome, an individual report reflecting on the scholarly basis of your project and your assessment of the process, and a placement report (at the end of semester 2).

More information

HI5039 -

At Home in America: Society, Politics and Environment in the Home, 1860 to the present (Optional,20 Credits)

This module will consider the wider social, political and environmental factors that shaped where, how, and in what type of home Americans have lived since 1860. Within the module, you will look at the forces that transformed and challenged the boundaries of the American home---from debates about poverty and social welfare, to economic policies surrounding homeownership, the mechanisms of racial segregation, new sex and gender roles as well as the rise of domestic consumption and its impact on the environment. The module will introduce you to a range of American homes, from the suburban and model homes of the American dream to the tenement flats, trailer parks and make-shift homes of ‘skid row’ – which tell a different story about what it means to be ‘at home in America’.

The module will complicate definitions and understandings of the American home---revealing its contested meanings, construction, and lived experience across different races, genders and classes. In asking these questions the module shall probe how far being ‘at home in America’ has depended upon changing understandings of the home, and its relationship to American identity. Through the module, you will learn about developments in politics and policy as well as broader social, cultural and environmental transformations since 1860. The module will open you up to a broad range of material in American history, from key social policies such as the Federal Housing Act, to broader social changes including the gender revolution accelerated by new domestic technologies, for instance the washing machine. The module will be broadly chronological, but subjects will also be approached though key themes that span decades.

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HI5040 -

Dictatorship and Development: Central America, 1912-1996 (Optional,20 Credits)

The tiny countries of Central America form a narrow land bridge between the continents of North and South America. For centuries a quiet

backwater, the region gained international importance in the twentieth century, thanks to the United States’ growing interest in its ‘backyard’ to

the south.

In this module, you will explore Central America’s tumultuous twentieth century via a variety of primary sources. You will use US military

archives to explore the US occupation of Nicaragua from 1912 to 1933, and discover how historians have used oral history to rescue

memories of the El Salvadoran massacre of 1932. In the second half of the course, you will look at how ideas about development intersected

with U.S. informal empire in the region, using CIA and State Department documents to uncover the roots of the civil wars which wracked the

isthmus in the 1980s. Finally, you will learn about the controversy surrounding Rigoberta Menchú’s memoir of the Guatemalan civil war, and

consider how historians navigate conflicting documents and imperfect, contested memories to create credible accounts of past events.

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HI5052 -

History/Film: Using Popular Film as Historical Evidence (Optional,20 Credits)

We know you like films, and we know that you like using them as historical evidence. But are you aware that you need a very particular skill set in order to analyse and write about films properly? If you weren’t but are interested in finding out more, and particularly if you are thinking of using film in your final-year dissertation, then this is the module for you.

This team-taught module invites you to consider a variety of popular film genres, with a specific view towards considering their value to the historian, both as sources about the past AND sources from the past. Key genres that we’ll examine include documentaries, historical dramas, biopics, science fiction, and more. The module tutors will provide you with leading-edge theoretical and methodological approaches through which you will learn how to analyse cinema as a historian.

Learning about the ways in which we might dissect a film will provide you with a range of tools that you can bring to bear on the world around you. For example, you will be able to demonstrate how popular film reflects and attempts to shape popular opinion about key political issues of the time, and how the semiotics of film enable us to move beyond simply responding to film’s plot or its cast.

As this suggests, the module requires you to develop additional analytic skills to those that you would wield when analysing textual documents. It will enable you to move beyond issues pertaining to a film’s factual accuracy (or lack thereof) to consider its emotional truths, its ideological standpoints, the ways in which the filmmakers attempt to convey and disguise political messages, and the way in which audiences are able to absorb, reject, or transform these messages as they see fit. Naturally, it will encourage you to consider the complicated relationship between the past, film, history, Film Studies, and the discipline of History itself. It might even do more…

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HI5054 -

Field Notes: Politics and Policy Making in Place (Optional,20 Credits)

“Field Notes” will take you out of the classroom to immerse you in the major issues facing the contemporary world. The North East is a region alive with controversy and contested spaces which speak to larger challenges facing the nation and the global community in the 21st century. Landscapes throughout the region, from the coast to the Northumberland National Park, Newcastle city centre to the banks of the River Tyne, are inscribed with complex histories which intersect with, and inform, ongoing battles over how to manage, protect, and develop these spaces for a future informed by severe social and economic challenges and the upheaval caused by climate change. You will be taken to four different local sites that are at the centre of these larger environmental-social-political and economic battles and learn how to unravel the complex dynamics that underpin these spaces (from the choices made by policy makers at the local, national, and global level, to the role of communities, activist groups, and other stakeholders in shaping these places). You will be asked to conduct further research on one case study to develop a “Site Report” (drawing on independent archival and secondary research) which will be presented to the group at a final briefing event. Through the module, therefore, you will be taught how to understand the dynamics of place and policy making and most importantly how to apply historical research to contemporary social issues that impact our world today.

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IR5010 -

Foreign Policy Analysis (Optional,20 Credits)

You will learn about the most significant issues and challenges of our times in the domain of foreign policy. While grounded in IR theory, you will be introduced to foreign policy analysis (FPA)-specific frameworks and levels of analysis such as to systems of governance, decision making structures and models, leadership analysis, the role of the media, public opinion and special interest groups. Empirically, you will learn about the foreign policy of key actors in the international system towards a region or set of issues such as, for example, US and China foreign policy.

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ML5001 -

Unilang - Languages for all - Level 5 Placeholder (Optional,20 Credits)

The 20-credit yearlong Unilang modules (stages 1 – 5 depending on language) aim to encourage a positive attitude to language learning and to develop and practise the four language skills of speaking, listening, reading and writing introducing the basic/increasingly complex grammatical structures and vocabulary of the spoken and written language (depending on stage) and developing your ability to respond appropriately in the foreign language in spoken and written form in simple and increasingly complex everyday situations.

These modules also introduce you to the country and the culture of the country. In doing this, Unilang modules are intended to encourage and support international mobility; to enhance employability at home and abroad; to improve communication skills in the foreign language as well as English; to improve cultural awareness and, at the higher stages, to encourage access to foreign sources.

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MP5022 -

Cultural Identities on Screen (Optional,20 Credits)

The module will focus on the televisual representation and articulation of cultural identities in Britain and the US. We will look at how gender, ethnicity, national and regional identities are constructed through an examination of different genres and areas of screen media, such as drama, comedy and current affairs. We will explore issues such as class, gender and racial stereotypes, visibility of minority groups and integration. Throughout the course we will also consider the function of television, considering what its role might be in the construction of cultural identities.

More information

YC5001 -

Academic Language Skills for Humanities and Social Sciences (Core – for International and EU students only,0 Credits)

Academic skills when studying away from your home country can differ due to cultural and language differences in teaching and assessment practices. This module is designed to support your transition in the use and practice of technical language and subject specific skills around assessments and teaching provision in your chosen subject. The overall aim of this module is to develop your abilities to read and study effectively for academic purposes; to develop your skills in analysing and using source material in seminars and academic writing and to develop your use and application of language and communications skills to a higher level.

The topics you will cover on the module include:

• Understanding assignment briefs and exam questions.
• Developing academic writing skills, including citation, paraphrasing, and summarising.
• Practising ‘critical reading’ and ‘critical writing’
• Planning and structuring academic assignments (e.g. essays, reports and presentations).
• Avoiding academic misconduct and gaining credit by using academic sources and referencing effectively.
• Listening skills for lectures.
• Speaking in seminar presentations.
• Presenting your ideas
• Giving discipline-related academic presentations, experiencing peer observation, and receiving formative feedback.
• Speed reading techniques.
• Developing self-reflection skills.

More information

AD5009 -

Humanities Work Placement Year (Optional,120 Credits)

The Work Placement Year module is a 120 credit year-long module available on degree courses which include a work placement year, taken as an additional year of study at level 5 and before level 6 (the length of the placement(s) will be determined by your programme but it can be no less than 30 weeks. You will undertake a guided work placement at a host organisation. This is a Pass/Fail module and so does not contribute to classification. When taken and passed, however, the Placement Year is recognised in your transcript as a 120 credit Work Placement Module and on your degree certificate in the format – “Degree title (with Work Placement Year)”. The learning and teaching on your placement will be recorded in the work placement agreement signed by the placement provider, the student, and the University.

Note: Subject to placement clearance; this is a competitive process and a place on the module cannot be guaranteed.

More information

AD5010 -

Humanities Study Abroad Year (Optional,120 Credits)

The Study Abroad Year module is a full year 120 credit module which is available on degree courses which include a study abroad year which is taken as an additional year of study at level 5 and before level 6. You will undertake a year abroad at a partner university equivalent to 120 UK credits. This gives you access to modules from your discipline taught in a different learning culture and so broadens your overall experience of learning. The course of study abroad will be dependent on the partner and will be recorded for an individual student on the learning agreement signed by the host University, the student, and the home University (Northumbria). Your study abroad year will be assessed on a pass/fail basis. It will not count towards your final degree classification but, if you pass, it is recognised in your transcript as a 120 credit Study Abroad Module and on your degree certificate in the format – “Degree title (with Study Abroad Year)”.

Note: Subject to placement clearance; this is a competitive process and a place on the module cannot be guaranteed.

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AT5004 -

Year in International Business (This is made up of modules studied in Newcastle (Semester 1) & Amsterdam (Semester 2) (Optional,120 Credits)

The programme comprises of six modules consisting of 20-credits each. They are delivered by means of lectures, seminars, and where appropriate business clinic workshop.
Each of the modules is presented and delivered according to a Teaching and Learning Plan and is supported through its suite of module-based e-learning portals. The e-learning portals will encompass various standard interventions in line with Faculty and University expectations. These include Panopto recordings of lectures, electronic reading lists and Electronic Marking and Assessment (EMA) submission.

Research provides an essential pillar to the teaching of the programme, with a research-led approach being adopted within various modules with directed reading towards various research outputs. As this is a programme delivered at Level 5, research papers and professional industry-produced reports play a part in the delivery of the module sessions, and as such, research tutored interventions play a part. The group-based assessments will provide instruction on how to undertake research in a team-setting and therefore demonstrates research-oriented approaches, whilst the individual research activity gives you experience of enquiry-based approaches to research and engagement with a number of real-world issues for which you will provide research-informed solutions.

The modules are outlined below:

Semester 1 - Newcastle
HR9513 (20 credits) People, Management & Organisation
SM9513 (20 credits) Introduction to Entrepreneurship
AF5022 (20 credits) Financial Decision Making

Semester 2 – Amsterdam
AT5011 (20 credits) International Business Consultancy Project
AT5012 (20 credits) Global Business Environment
AT5000 (20 credits) Digital Business

In semester 1, students will learn in an environment aligned to that of business students on full time programmes. A mixture of large group and small group sessions will take place. In semester 2, in accordance with the experiential learning pedagogical approach in the Business Clinic operated at Newcastle Business School, the International Business Consultancy Project will involve students working in groups, facilitated by academics but also independently and amongst their peers in collaborative project work to provide real business consultancy. Assessment has been developed in accordance with Northumbria’s Assessment for Learning principles including a broad mix of assessment appropriate to the learning outcomes being assessed and with opportunities for formative feedback.

A student who passes all modules will have these recorded on their transcript and HEAR record.

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AT5007 -

Year in International Multidisciplinary Innovation (4 modules studied in Amsterdam (Semester 1) & Newcastle (Semester 2) (Optional,120 Credits)

What will I learn on this module?

This overarching module descriptor covers the Year in International Multidisciplinary Innovation which is made up of 4 modules that the students will study in Amsterdam (semester 1) and Newcastle (semester 2).

This additional year of studies has been designed to develop students’ creative thinking and practical problem-solving skills in the context of design thinking approaches, all of which will significantly development academic and research skills and so strengthen employability on graduation. This year of study enhances your employability by unlocking and developing your creative problem-solving skills, knowledge, and expertise to make you more employment and industry-ready when you graduate through in multidisciplinary teams throughout your year of study in Amsterdam and Newcastle to creatively tackle and solve real-world challenges.
Semester 1 in Amsterdam comprises of two 20-credit modules aimed at students new to design thinking which also equips them for a semester in Newcastle, working in creative teams on a series of real-world projects that enhance creative thinking skills and attributes and multidisciplinary working practices. The modules studied in Semester 1, Innovative Design Practices and Tools and Multidisciplinary Exploration and Value Creation provide students with analytical design-inspired tools that enable students to examine real-world case studies that require multidisciplinary professional team-based responses and solution formation and implementation. In Semester 2, students will move to Newcastle to study two modules at Northumbria University. The first module, Design-Inspired Research Methods enables students to critically investigate key social, cultural, and technological challenges that modern urban spaces, cities, and professions. The final module, Creative Cities, enables students to engage in the creative comparative research of problems, challenges and potential innovative developments between Amsterdam and Newcastle (in terms of mobility, sustainable practices, energy provision, smart and digital technologies, urban design, or the role of cultural and humanities-oriented institutions).

The modules are outlined below:

Semester 1
AT5005 Innovative Design Practices and Tools (20 credits)
AT5006 Multidisciplinary Exploration and Value Creation (40 credits)

Semester 2
DE5012 Design-Inspired Research Methods (20 credits)
DE5013 Creative Cities (40 credits)

In semester 1, students will learn in a creative environment in the Amsterdam campus dedicated to full time programmes. A mixture of large group and small group sessions will take place in sessions and workshops that bring together AUAS and Northumbria students and staff. The focus of the teaching and learning is on creative interdisciplinary team activities that develop creative thinking and address real-world issues and problems. In semester 2, students engage in comparative city-based research to identify differing challenges facing Amsterdam and Newcastle. Students will approach a range of real-world issues from the perspective of their academic discipline and work with students from other perspectives to see how differing knowledges and skillsets can combine to address challenges in innovative and creative ways. These can include cultural institutions, design, technology, IT, and engineering, architecture, history, and the social sciences. Therefore, the programme is relevant for students from a range academic disciplines who will work together to stress how differing disciplines combine to provide solutions to challenges. Assessment has been developed in accordance with Northumbria’s Assessment for Learning principles including a broad mix of assessment appropriate to the learning outcomes being assessed and with opportunities for formative feedback.

A student who passes all modules will, on successful completion of their undergraduate programme of study, have these recorded on their transcript and HEAR record.

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AM6001 -

Dissertation (Core,40 Credits)

The American Studies dissertation is the most substantial piece of work you will produce during your undergraduate career. It will enable you to apply the skills you acquired at earlier levels to a discrete body of primary sources related to an identifiable area of scholarly enquiry. Dissertation topics will normally be chosen from an area you have studied before or are studying at Level 6 and be supervised by an appropriate tutor. Whereas the American Studies Extended Essay at Level 5 is explicitly interdisciplinary, Dissertations may utilise a single-disciplinary approach to the chosen subject, in line with each student’s developing interests and disciplinary inclinations.

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AM6004 -

States of Nature: Environments and Peoples in the Americas (Core,20 Credits)

Focusing on North and South America, this module examines the interaction between humans and the environment throughout history. We will discuss the ways in which various peoples experienced their environment: how they attempted to change it, how they were limited by it, and how they thought about nature. In doing so, we will consider historical change at several levels:

1. Material and ecological: the physical changes that humans in the American have wrought over the past 10,000 years.

2. Social and political: the connection between peoples’ use of the environment and the way in which American societies developed.

3. Intellectual and ideological: how individuals and societies have understood nature at various points throughout history and how this understanding has shaped their actions.

You will find out about the relationship between humans and nature in the period before European expansion in the Americas and, following on from this, you will consider the ecological impact of European colonialism. The module content covers human activities such as farming and mining, but also the impact of floods, hurricanes and climate change. You will consider the spread of cities, the role of their hinterlands and the creation of national parks. In the final sections of the module, you will examine the manifold impacts of consumer culture (including waste and pollution) as well as the rise of environmentalist movements that were critical of humans’ ecological footprint.

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EL6004 -

Vamps and Virgins: Gothic Sexualities (Optional,20 Credits)

From Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Christabel (1816) to Alan Ball’s True Blood (2008-), this module invites you to explore the dark, shadowy world of the Gothic in relation to a diverse range of literary texts and modern media. Combining the study of familiar canonical fictions with new and challenging material, we will train our focus on the enigmatic figure of the vampire, examining its various transitions and developments through the lens of critical and cultural theory.

Through an analysis of the Gothic, the module aims to develop your critical thinking, as well as your existing knowledge of literature, film, and television dating from 1816 to the present day. In doing so, it will encourage you to reflect on and interrogate the complex ways in which Gothic texts engage with, and intervene in, broader cultural debates about gender and sexuality.

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EL6018 -

The Black Atlantic: Literature, Slavery and Race (Optional,20 Credits)

This module will introduce you to a range of texts which have been created out of, or about, the experience of African peoples in the diaspora from the seventeenth century to the present. It will encourage you to relate your understanding of the texts to the cultural and historical background from which they developed. Following on from level four core modules this module will develop your understanding of the concept of the ‘Atlantic World’ and theories of local, national and global cultures as well as theories of race and postcolonial theory. You will be encouraged to recognise the activity of the slave trade as the beginning point of the Atlantic World as an imagined space that challenges national and chronological boundaries and speaks of the powerful and enduring legacies of slavery.

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EL6047 -

Twenty First Century Literature: Writing in the Present (Optional,20 Credits)

From Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) and its popular television adaptation (2017) to Yorgos Lanthimos’ film The Lobster (2015), this module invites you to explore a wide and diverse range of novels, short stories and other media in order to promote and analyse the study of contemporary theoretical debates on gender, love, the body and sexuality.

Through the theoretical lens of feminism, psychoanalysis, queer theory and postmodernism, the module aims to develop your critical thinking and your existing knowledge of literature, film and television, from 1985 to the present day. It will encourage you to explore the complex issues raised by diverse critical theory and close analysis of a range of late twentieth and twenty-first century literature, film and television adaptation. By doing so, you will reflect on the ways that twenty-first literature and other media engages with, interrogates and often offers alternative narratives on present debates about gender, love, the body and sexuality.

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HI6004 -

The African American Freedom Struggle Since 1945 (Optional,20 Credits)

In this seminar-based module you will study the roots, trajectory, and legacies of the African American Freedom Struggle since 1945. Although the primary focus will be on the movement for racial justice in the US South between roughly 1954 and 1968, that history will be placed in longer chronological and broader national and international contexts. More specifically you will study the grass-roots activities of African Americans engaged in various forms of resistance and protest alongside the histories of the major civil rights groups – the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). You will interrogate their tactics, examine their often fraught relationships with each other, and assess their achievements and failures in the face of widespread resistance to racial change. You will examine the contributions of the extraordinary ordinary people at the heart of the struggle, as well as those of nationally prominent leaders such as Martin Luther King. In this module you will also analyse the relationship between the civil rights movement and the federal government, address the role of the media and popular culture in shaping both the history and popular understandings of the post-war Freedom Struggle, and examine the international coordinates and impact of the struggles.

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HI6006 -

The Black Panther Party (Optional,20 Credits)

The module examines the history and significance of the Black Panther Party (BPP), a radical protest group formed in Oakland, California in 1966. It locates the BPP within its intellectual, political, geographical, and social context, giving students the opportunity to engage with important texts that influenced the BPP while also considering the BPP’s contribution to ideas about political struggle. The module details the history of the BPP from formation until its decline into irrelevance in the late 1970s, spending considerable time focusing on key individuals such as Huey P. Newton and Eldridge Cleaver, the FBI repression which resulted in the deaths of numerous BPP members, gender relations in the Party, and the BPP’s political and intellectual development. Students may start the module thinking that the BPP simply represented a violent response to African American oppression dominated by guns, leather jackets and Afro haircuts but they will end the module with a nuanced understanding of the profound contribution of the BPP to American history.

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HI6030 -

Law and Order USA: Police, Prisons, and Protest in Modern America (Optional,20 Credits)

This module will explore the history of ‘law and order’ politics (broadly defined) in the United States since 1900. You will learn about the creation of the law enforcement and judicial state at the federal, state, and local level (including, for instance, the establishment of the FBI and the rise of the carceral state), and the social movements that resisted and challenged that state. The module will cover such diverse topics as Prohibition, the Stonewall riot and the early LGBTQ movement, the prison reform and prisoners’ rights movements, the War on Drugs, anti-death penalty activism, and Black Lives Matter. This module will deal with fundamental questions of order and justice, how they have been contested in American society, and how they have intersected with issues of race, class, and gender.

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HI6040 -

Nicaragua in Revolution, 1979-1990 (Optional,20 Credits)

In July 1979 a broad-based opposition movement led by a small group of young guerrillas - the ‘Sandinistas’ - overthrew the Somoza dictatorship which had ruled Nicaragua for 43 years. The euphoria of triumph quickly soured, as the new Sandinista government faced division at home and aggression from overseas, in the form of a US-funded proxy conflict, known as the ‘Contra War’. In this module, you will learn how ordinary Nicaraguans experienced the revolutionary decade by working with a wide range of sources, including memoirs, poetry, and murals. You will draw on testimonios and oral histories to critically evaluate the impact of the revolution’s programmes in education, agrarian reform, and women’s rights; and you will explore the Contra War in the context of the wider Cold War struggle between the Soviet Union and the United States. Finally, you will use your detailed knowledge of the period to assess the relative importance of a number of factors, including US aggression and Sandinista failings, which together caused the eventual defeat of the revolution.

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HI6043 -

Creatures of Empire: an Animal History of British Colonialism (Optional,20 Credits)

In every empire, including the British case, non-human animals have been a crucial presence. Domesticated creatures, such as cows, pigs and sheep, accompanied European colonisers and assisted in the – often violent – processes that led to land clearances, changed environments, indigenous dispossession, and the spread of European settlement. This module seeks to give you a sense of the complicated and contested place of animals in empire. For some human colonisers, the hunting, killing, stuffing and exhibition of wild animals symbolised the European’s command of nature, and helped justify the whole imperial endeavour. But animals could also make trouble for empires: efforts to reproduce prized species and breeds did not always work; many animals spread disease; the growth of pest populations was a constant source of anxiety; and imported species could bring environmental changes that endangered both indigenous and European settlement.

This module considers this complicated interweaving of human and non-human histories in the British empire story, from the early modern settlements of seventeenth-century New England to the colonies of indirect rule in twentieth-century Africa. The first week will introduce you to the methodologies of animal history, and what an animal history of empire requires and might reveal. Thereafter, each week considers a species and a regional case study (e.g., rabbits/Australia; cows/southern Africa; tigers/British India). This simple structure introduces learners to themes as various as imperial masculinity and violence (hunting), ecological and social crises (epizootics), colonial community and family life (pet ownership), colonial urban history (pest control), imperial cultures in the metropole (taxidermy) and colonial national identity (animals as symbols). Importantly, the module is not exclusively structured around British and European viewpoints and actions: episodes such as the Xhosa cattle killing in 1850s southern Africa, to take one example, allows for a consideration of the differences and similarities in European and indigenous human-animal relationships.

You will learn about the relationship between empire, ecological degradation, and conservation through key themes such as ‘ecological imperialism’, ‘green imperialism’ and ‘animal agency’. Finally, this module will help you to historically contextualise current debates about human-animal relationships and the imperial roots of our ecological crisis; you may also recognise that the British empire experience provides examples and lessons that might help us rethink contemporary anthropocentric attitudes, and to develop healthier alternatives.

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IR6007 -

Politics of Oil and Global Warming (Optional,20 Credits)

Two of the most important problems facing humanity are climate change and energy security. In terms of solutions, a number of very different approaches have been suggested that range from the technological to the radical; how we address and solve these problems is therefore political. This module highlights how energy and resource intensive the average Western way of life is and what this means for climate change and energy security; explores the debate about peak oil (i.e. the point at which cheap and easily accessible oil starts to run out) and considers its political implications; investigates how Western foreign policy has been influenced by the desire to access, if not control, energy sources (e.g. Middle Eastern oil); evaluates the debate about climate change and how politicians have, and could, respond; and assesses the debate about energy policy and how politicians have, and could, respond to the twin demands of tackling global warming while ‘keeping the lights on’.

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MI6005 -

Popular Music on Film and Television (Optional,20 Credits)

This module is concerned with popular music culture and its relationship to film, an area much neglected in academic film studies, television studies and popular music studies. As such, it seeks to address this absence by looking at a number of key junctures where popular music culture, the cinema and television inter-relate, exploring debates about gender representation, authorship, genre and music in performance, as well as how the films studied relate to context of their production and reception. The module, therefore, covers topics such as the following in a largely chronological fashion. An indicative syllabus is as follows:
1. Early moments: The significance of the early Elvis Films: King Creole
2. Punk rock on film: The Great Rock n’ Roll Swindle
3. The revisionist musical: Von Trier, Lhurmann et al
4. Popular Music and national identity: The Commitments
5. Popular Music and ‘Race’ representation: 8 Mile
6. Gender play: Velvet Goldmine, In Bed with Madonna
7. The popular music / rock documentary
8. Dance and the male body: Saturday Night Fever
9. The concert film" from Wadleigh's Woodstock to Godard's One plus One.
10. Critical approaches to music video: Corbijn, Cunningham et al.
11. Nostalgia and the popular musical biopic: Control

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MI6007 -

Cult Film and Television (Optional,20 Credits)

You will learn to understand how the term ‘cult’ has been applied to film and television programmes in different ways, and how the concept has developed across history. The module will enable you to critically examine the ways that cult has been theorised both in relation to films and television programmes, and some of the key differences between cult television and cult film. You will understand how cult can be applied to both films, the reception of films, as well as how it has increasingly infiltrated marketing discourses. Case studies on the module include midnight movies, authorship and cult, fandom, telefantasy, censorship and controversy, exploitation cinema and global cult cinema.

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MI6010 -

Adaptations on Film and TV (Optional,20 Credits)

In ‘Adaptations on Film and TV’ you will examine the practical and theoretical debates around the translation of a variety of texts into films and television programmes. A broad-range of case studies is covered, from adaptations of ‘high art’ such as Shakespeare and literary fiction, to the conversion of popular fiction, comic-books and supposedly ‘unfilmable’ sources. As well as considering issues of authorship and originality, you will consider the complex relationship between film, television and other media forms, from music and video-gaming to theme-park rides. Films and programmes under discussion are likely to include examples such as Adaptation, William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet, Sherlock, Doom, The Walking Dead, Band of Brothers, Star Trek amongst others.

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MI6022 -

The Modern Horror Film (Optional,20 Credits)

The modern period in horror cinema is generally seen as beginning in 1968 with the release of Night of the Living Dead. This module explores the wide range of horror films produced since that date, primarily in the US but also considering the development and influence of horror film production in Italy, Japan and the UK. Through this exploration, the module will identify key themes, formats and cycles, and engages with the relation of the horror genre to changes in the film industry and to broader social and historical change. It also explores the aesthetic innovations and challenges offered by a range of forms of horror, and the creative ways in which the genre has experimented with film form and style. In taking the module, you will acquire an understanding of the critical and cultural issues raised by this important area of American and global culture and you will develop your own critical and analytic insights into a range of iconic horror films produced between 1968 and the present.

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YC6001 -

Academic Language Skills for Humanities & Social Sciences (Core – for International and EU students only,0 Credits)

Academic skills when studying away from your home country can differ due to cultural and language differences in teaching and assessment practices. This module is designed to support your transition in the use and practice of technical language and subject specific skills around assessments and teaching provision in your chosen subject. The overall aim of this module is to develop your abilities to read and study effectively for academic purposes; to develop your skills in analysing and using source material in seminars and academic writing and to develop your use and application of language and communications skills to a higher level.

The topics you will cover on the module include:

• Understanding assignment briefs and exam questions.
• Developing academic writing skills, including citation, paraphrasing, and summarising.
• Practising ‘critical reading’ and ‘critical writing’
• Planning and structuring academic assignments (e.g. essays, reports and presentations).
• Dissertation writing requirements
• Research Skills
• Ethical considerations
• Understanding research limitations
• Avoiding academic misconduct and gaining credit by using academic sources and referencing effectively.
• Listening skills for lectures.
• Speaking in seminar presentations.
• Presenting your ideas
• Giving discipline-related academic presentations, experiencing peer observation, and receiving formative feedback.
• Speed reading techniques.
• Developing self-reflection skills.

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Modules

Module information is indicative and is reviewed annually therefore may be subject to change. Applicants will be informed if there are any changes.

AM4001 -

Introduction to American Studies (Core,20 Credits)

This module offers a practical and historical introduction to American Studies as a distinct, multifaceted, and evolving discipline, while also allowing you to acquire and practice key learning, research, and communication skills which will be of use throughout your university career and beyond. The module is content driven, with readings and themes drawn from across the entire range of American history, literature, politics, and popular culture, but particular emphasis will be placed on helping you to understand and master the basic tools and protocols of academic scholarship, thereby helping you to make the transition from school to university level work.
The skills which this module will help you to develop will include finding, reading and evaluating various kinds of primary and secondary sources; understanding the ways in which scholarship advances through constructive criticism and debate; correct referencing; finding an effective academic writing style; making oral presentations; and designing, researching and writing an independent research project.

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AM4002 -

Contemporary America (Core,20 Credits)

This module will introduce you to key aspects of contemporary US culture, history, and politics. Chronologically the course focuses on the period from 1992 to the present; in disciplinary terms it embraces economics, film, history, international relations, literature, music, performance, politics, sexuality, and visual culture; thematically, the module emphasizes the importance of racial, ethnic, gender, class and religious identities, consumerism and globalization, domestic and international configurations of US political, social, economic, and cultural power, and the politics of cultural representation in the media and popular culture. Adopting a variegated, multi- and interdisciplinary approach, the module enable you to combine an enhanced empirical knowledge of the contemporary US to useful interpretive frameworks such as postmodernism, queer theory, and globalization theory. The module is organized around a mixture of broad thematic surveys (e.g. Major Trends in Contemporary US Literature) and narrower case studies (e.g. The Challenges of Post-9/11 Literature).

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EL4003 -

Representing the US: From Slavery to Terrorism (Core,20 Credits)

This module focusses on US literature, film and television and it asks you to think about US culture at large; it will introduce you to a range of significant US texts from the nineteenth century to the present. You will make connections between diverse texts ranging from writings of slaves in the nineteenth century to fiction that responds to the trauma of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. You will enjoy US literature, film and television across a range of periods – work from the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries will be covered – and you will examine fiction, poetry, drama, film, and television in relation to the idea of a national literary canon and in the context of social and political change, from the Civil War to the War on Terror. As a survey module, it encourages you to examine how key works engage with questions of identity, slavery, the American Dream, trauma, freedom, and national security.

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EL4006 -

Concepts in Criticism and Culture (Core,20 Credits)

This module introduces you to key critical concepts in literary studies and asks how those concepts may be applied to the study of less canonical forms of writing and other media.

You will be introduced to theoretical and critical material, addressing key issues about literature and culture such as:
• how is the literary canon is constructed
• how might our gender, race or class background affect how we value and understand literature and popular culture

During the module you will be encouraged to evaluate the significance of debates about authorship, identity and literary value. You will be asked to read a range of key academic essays, discussing them in relation to a range of examples from popular culture as well as literature. You will be asked to think about the values attached to these different forms of cultural production. The module aims to foster your skills in close textual analysis, informed by key theoretical perspectives and independent reflective practice.

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HI4005 -

From Sea to Shining Sea: US History from 1776 to 2008 (Core,20 Credits)

This module will provide you with an overview of the social, political and cultural development of the United States from revolutionary period to the present day. Within a broad chronological framework, this module will introduce you to key themes within modern American history: race, gender, ethnicity, class, regionalism, the media, and foreign policy. Topics include the American Constitution, Jacksonian America, the antebellum and Civil War period, Reconstruction, the New Deal, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Cold War. You will have the opportunity to consider the major controversies in American history, key concepts, and the nation’s transformation from a colony to a superpower.

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HI4007 -

Making History (Core,20 Credits)

History is not only characterised by knowledge and understanding of past developments, but also by a broad range of skills and methods that are directly applicable to academic research. Within this wider context, this module will give you a firm grounding in the skills and methods needed for the study of history, introducing you to a range of source materials from a broad chronological spectrum. In so doing, the module explores traditions in criticism and explains the ways in which sources can be read and utilised. The module is structured along five ‘core skills’ blocks (Writing History, Handling Sources, Approaches to History, Researching & Interpreting History, and Feedback and Careers) which progress logically from each other and provide students with ample opportunities to engage with how historians make history. The first block introduces you to how to study and write history through an analysis of the historian’s key skills. The block also develops skills in three areas: (1) writing history; (2) reading history (3) researching history. The second block examines key approaches to historical sources. In addition to allowing you to demonstrate the skills gained in block one, the block concentrates on how to find primary sources, how to read them, and how to deploy them in written work. Block three considers key conceptual approaches to the past, including race, class and gender. Block four draws the skills you have learnt in a concentrated study of a single secondary source book. . The final block introduces you to careers in and beyond History, and asks you to reflect on your progress over the year. You will develop a critical capacity to scrutinize sources and interpretations of the past.

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YC5001 -

Academic Language Skills for Humanities and Social Sciences (Core – for International and EU students only,0 Credits)

Academic skills when studying away from your home country can differ due to cultural and language differences in teaching and assessment practices. This module is designed to support your transition in the use and practice of technical language and subject specific skills around assessments and teaching provision in your chosen subject. The overall aim of this module is to develop your abilities to read and study effectively for academic purposes; to develop your skills in analysing and using source material in seminars and academic writing and to develop your use and application of language and communications skills to a higher level.

The topics you will cover on the module include:

• Understanding assignment briefs and exam questions.
• Developing academic writing skills, including citation, paraphrasing, and summarising.
• Practising ‘critical reading’ and ‘critical writing’
• Planning and structuring academic assignments (e.g. essays, reports and presentations).
• Avoiding academic misconduct and gaining credit by using academic sources and referencing effectively.
• Listening skills for lectures.
• Speaking in seminar presentations.
• Presenting your ideas
• Giving discipline-related academic presentations, experiencing peer observation, and receiving formative feedback.
• Speed reading techniques.
• Developing self-reflection skills.

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AD5011 -

Humanities Study Abroad (60 credit) (Optional,60 Credits)

The Study Abroad module is a semester based 60 credit module which is available on degree courses which facilitate study abroad within the programme. You will undertake a semester abroad at a partner university equivalent to 60 UK credits. This gives you access to modules from your discipline taught in a different learning culture and so broadens your overall experience of learning. The course of study abroad will be constructed to meet the learning outcomes for the programme for the semester in question, dependent on suitable modules from the partner and will be recorded for an individual student on the learning agreement signed by the host University, the student, and the home University (Northumbria). The module will be assessed by conversion of graded marks from the host University and, where appropriate, complementary activities as agreed between the student and module tutor.

Learning outcomes on the year-long modules on which the student is unable to attend the home institution must be met at the host institution, and marks from the host are incorporated into the module as part of the overall assessment.

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AM5002 -

American Studies Extended Essay (Core,20 Credits)

The American Studies Extended Essay is designed as an opportunity for you to apply and build on the skills you have acquired in Level Four core modules and prepare yourself for the demands of the American Studies Dissertation in Level Six. It is an exercise in independent research and is intended to be a piece of work that utilises an interdisciplinary approach to a selection of primary and secondary sources. Extended Essay topics will be developed in conjunction with an appropriate subject specialist.

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AM5003 -

The American West (Core,20 Credits)

Ever watched a Western film? Heard about the American frontier? Wondered how westward expansion helped redefine the United States? This is the module for you. It focuses on the American West in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, inviting you to consider its culture, history, politics, and society. Key themes include race, the Western movie genre, western literature, the frontier’s impact on the West and America in a wider sense, and the environment, all of which will be examined through different theoretical and methodological approaches.

Learning about the different ways in which we can see, understand and explain the West will provide you with a better range of tools to form your own understanding and explanation of what we can observe in the world today. For example, considering Western movies will encourage you to think afresh about American violence, civilization, and gender. Analysis of the frontier will develop your understanding of American progress, masculinity, and racism. Thinking about the western environment will prompt you to reassess the relationship between our natural environment and society.

At a theoretical level, this team-taught module will introduce you to the concept of ‘place’ within a framework informed by the multi- and inter-disciplinary approaches of American Studies. In this, it should challenge you to consider the way that History interacts with, for example, Film or Literature, and surprise you by encouraging you to rethink your prior assumptions about the American Experience. You’ll never think about America in the same way again, we promise.

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EL5007 -

Literature and Identity (Optional,20 Credits)

On this module you will explore the concept of identity in relation to literary texts across a range of periods and genres. The module will address the relationship between identity formation and narration, drawing on approaches that might include narrative theory and psychoanalysis. You will be encouraged to consider how literary texts participate in the representation and production of gendered, racial, national, sexual, post-colonial and other identities. The module will extend your understanding of literary theory and its application to literary texts and prepare you for the study of theory-based modules at Level 6.

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EL5008 -

Tragedy (Optional,20 Credits)

What was or is tragedy? When and why did tragic drama begin to be written and performed? How have later writers of tragedy built on or surpassed early forms of tragedy? What did or does tragedy tell us about the world we live in? This module addresses these questions, with a survey of tragic drama from the classical past, through the early modern period, to the twentieth century. You will learn to contextualise each tragedy in relation to the conflicts and strains of the period in which it was made and consumed, while also thinking about the relations between writing, gender, religion, and politics, issues of literary influence, and the function of art in times of crisis, past and present.

Building on your work correlating Shakespearean tragedy and modern drama at Level 4 (Titus Andronicus and Blasted), and prefiguring your extended writing work for the dissertation and on drama-based modules such as Marlowe in Context at Level 6, this module will develop your understanding of the dramatic genre of tragedy. This will involve looking at tragedy’s earliest forms, the early modern revival and revision of such forms, and modern reworkings of the genre and its concerns.

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EL5009 -

Literature and Adaptation (Optional,20 Credits)

This module explores adaptations of literary texts in modern culture. It focuses on the ways in which classic texts are retold and appropriated in a variety of popular genres, media, and formats. The module thus builds on the knowledge and skills developed at Level 4, particularly those concerning the notion of canonicity and the relations between ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture.

The module introduces you to the current theories of adaptation and teaches you the knowledge and skills necessary for critical analysis of adaptations. It also provides you with the terminology and skills needed for the study of film and other media, as well as non-canonical (popular) literary genres.

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HI5006 -

Slavery, Sectionalism and Manifest Destiny (Optional,20 Credits)

In this module you will assess the importance of slavery and Manifest Destiny in the rise of American sectionalism from the end of the American War of Independence (1783) to 1850. This sectionalism created a political, social, and cultural atmosphere in the US which laid the basis for the crises of the 1850s and the Civil War. Slavery was the major issue which the Founders left unsolved in the aftermath of independence from Great Britain. As a result, it continued to divide the United States through the early republic and antebellum periods. Manifest Destiny was supposed to bring the sections together by uniting them in a quest to expand the United States westward. Ironically, Manifest Destiny exasperated the slavery issue and divisions between the North and the South. You will also study historiography of this period throughout the semester and you will be expected to become familiar with it. Students are expected to study relevant primary documents. This module will build specifically on the basic information learned in the early sections of the level-4 From Sea to Shining Sea. It will equip you to think critically about academic literature, primary sources, and historical interpretation.

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HI5009 -

Your Graduate Future (Optional,20 Credits)

This module aims to ensure that you will be equipped with employability-related skills appropriate to graduates of History and associated degrees. The module adapts to your interests, whether you choose to pursue postgraduate study, enter the job market seeking graduate level employment, or establish your own enterprise. One of the purposes of Your Graduate Future is to raise your awareness of the wide range of possibilities, and to equip you with the knowledge, the skills and the experiences that may enable you to respond effectively to future opportunities. In semester 1 you will attend lectures and participate in seminars that will present the intricacies of contemporary job seeking in different sectors. These will include guest lectures. You will then work with a group of your peers on an outward-looking project that will enable you to display your specific skills, to establish and nurture internal and external contacts, and to express your interests in a public outcome of your choice. In semester 2, you will develop your CV and further explore your evolving skillsets by means of engaging on your choice of work experience, volunteering, enterprise planning or a placement abroad. These will take the shape of supported independent activities. Assessment consists of a group project with a public outcome, an individual report reflecting on the scholarly basis of your project and your assessment of the process, and a placement report (at the end of semester 2).

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HI5039 -

At Home in America: Society, Politics and Environment in the Home, 1860 to the present (Optional,20 Credits)

This module will consider the wider social, political and environmental factors that shaped where, how, and in what type of home Americans have lived since 1860. Within the module, you will look at the forces that transformed and challenged the boundaries of the American home---from debates about poverty and social welfare, to economic policies surrounding homeownership, the mechanisms of racial segregation, new sex and gender roles as well as the rise of domestic consumption and its impact on the environment. The module will introduce you to a range of American homes, from the suburban and model homes of the American dream to the tenement flats, trailer parks and make-shift homes of ‘skid row’ – which tell a different story about what it means to be ‘at home in America’.

The module will complicate definitions and understandings of the American home---revealing its contested meanings, construction, and lived experience across different races, genders and classes. In asking these questions the module shall probe how far being ‘at home in America’ has depended upon changing understandings of the home, and its relationship to American identity. Through the module, you will learn about developments in politics and policy as well as broader social, cultural and environmental transformations since 1860. The module will open you up to a broad range of material in American history, from key social policies such as the Federal Housing Act, to broader social changes including the gender revolution accelerated by new domestic technologies, for instance the washing machine. The module will be broadly chronological, but subjects will also be approached though key themes that span decades.

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HI5040 -

Dictatorship and Development: Central America, 1912-1996 (Optional,20 Credits)

The tiny countries of Central America form a narrow land bridge between the continents of North and South America. For centuries a quiet

backwater, the region gained international importance in the twentieth century, thanks to the United States’ growing interest in its ‘backyard’ to

the south.

In this module, you will explore Central America’s tumultuous twentieth century via a variety of primary sources. You will use US military

archives to explore the US occupation of Nicaragua from 1912 to 1933, and discover how historians have used oral history to rescue

memories of the El Salvadoran massacre of 1932. In the second half of the course, you will look at how ideas about development intersected

with U.S. informal empire in the region, using CIA and State Department documents to uncover the roots of the civil wars which wracked the

isthmus in the 1980s. Finally, you will learn about the controversy surrounding Rigoberta Menchú’s memoir of the Guatemalan civil war, and

consider how historians navigate conflicting documents and imperfect, contested memories to create credible accounts of past events.

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HI5052 -

History/Film: Using Popular Film as Historical Evidence (Optional,20 Credits)

We know you like films, and we know that you like using them as historical evidence. But are you aware that you need a very particular skill set in order to analyse and write about films properly? If you weren’t but are interested in finding out more, and particularly if you are thinking of using film in your final-year dissertation, then this is the module for you.

This team-taught module invites you to consider a variety of popular film genres, with a specific view towards considering their value to the historian, both as sources about the past AND sources from the past. Key genres that we’ll examine include documentaries, historical dramas, biopics, science fiction, and more. The module tutors will provide you with leading-edge theoretical and methodological approaches through which you will learn how to analyse cinema as a historian.

Learning about the ways in which we might dissect a film will provide you with a range of tools that you can bring to bear on the world around you. For example, you will be able to demonstrate how popular film reflects and attempts to shape popular opinion about key political issues of the time, and how the semiotics of film enable us to move beyond simply responding to film’s plot or its cast.

As this suggests, the module requires you to develop additional analytic skills to those that you would wield when analysing textual documents. It will enable you to move beyond issues pertaining to a film’s factual accuracy (or lack thereof) to consider its emotional truths, its ideological standpoints, the ways in which the filmmakers attempt to convey and disguise political messages, and the way in which audiences are able to absorb, reject, or transform these messages as they see fit. Naturally, it will encourage you to consider the complicated relationship between the past, film, history, Film Studies, and the discipline of History itself. It might even do more…

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HI5054 -

Field Notes: Politics and Policy Making in Place (Optional,20 Credits)

“Field Notes” will take you out of the classroom to immerse you in the major issues facing the contemporary world. The North East is a region alive with controversy and contested spaces which speak to larger challenges facing the nation and the global community in the 21st century. Landscapes throughout the region, from the coast to the Northumberland National Park, Newcastle city centre to the banks of the River Tyne, are inscribed with complex histories which intersect with, and inform, ongoing battles over how to manage, protect, and develop these spaces for a future informed by severe social and economic challenges and the upheaval caused by climate change. You will be taken to four different local sites that are at the centre of these larger environmental-social-political and economic battles and learn how to unravel the complex dynamics that underpin these spaces (from the choices made by policy makers at the local, national, and global level, to the role of communities, activist groups, and other stakeholders in shaping these places). You will be asked to conduct further research on one case study to develop a “Site Report” (drawing on independent archival and secondary research) which will be presented to the group at a final briefing event. Through the module, therefore, you will be taught how to understand the dynamics of place and policy making and most importantly how to apply historical research to contemporary social issues that impact our world today.

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IR5010 -

Foreign Policy Analysis (Optional,20 Credits)

You will learn about the most significant issues and challenges of our times in the domain of foreign policy. While grounded in IR theory, you will be introduced to foreign policy analysis (FPA)-specific frameworks and levels of analysis such as to systems of governance, decision making structures and models, leadership analysis, the role of the media, public opinion and special interest groups. Empirically, you will learn about the foreign policy of key actors in the international system towards a region or set of issues such as, for example, US and China foreign policy.

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ML5001 -

Unilang - Languages for all - Level 5 Placeholder (Optional,20 Credits)

The 20-credit yearlong Unilang modules (stages 1 – 5 depending on language) aim to encourage a positive attitude to language learning and to develop and practise the four language skills of speaking, listening, reading and writing introducing the basic/increasingly complex grammatical structures and vocabulary of the spoken and written language (depending on stage) and developing your ability to respond appropriately in the foreign language in spoken and written form in simple and increasingly complex everyday situations.

These modules also introduce you to the country and the culture of the country. In doing this, Unilang modules are intended to encourage and support international mobility; to enhance employability at home and abroad; to improve communication skills in the foreign language as well as English; to improve cultural awareness and, at the higher stages, to encourage access to foreign sources.

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MP5022 -

Cultural Identities on Screen (Optional,20 Credits)

The module will focus on the televisual representation and articulation of cultural identities in Britain and the US. We will look at how gender, ethnicity, national and regional identities are constructed through an examination of different genres and areas of screen media, such as drama, comedy and current affairs. We will explore issues such as class, gender and racial stereotypes, visibility of minority groups and integration. Throughout the course we will also consider the function of television, considering what its role might be in the construction of cultural identities.

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YC5001 -

Academic Language Skills for Humanities and Social Sciences (Core – for International and EU students only,0 Credits)

Academic skills when studying away from your home country can differ due to cultural and language differences in teaching and assessment practices. This module is designed to support your transition in the use and practice of technical language and subject specific skills around assessments and teaching provision in your chosen subject. The overall aim of this module is to develop your abilities to read and study effectively for academic purposes; to develop your skills in analysing and using source material in seminars and academic writing and to develop your use and application of language and communications skills to a higher level.

The topics you will cover on the module include:

• Understanding assignment briefs and exam questions.
• Developing academic writing skills, including citation, paraphrasing, and summarising.
• Practising ‘critical reading’ and ‘critical writing’
• Planning and structuring academic assignments (e.g. essays, reports and presentations).
• Avoiding academic misconduct and gaining credit by using academic sources and referencing effectively.
• Listening skills for lectures.
• Speaking in seminar presentations.
• Presenting your ideas
• Giving discipline-related academic presentations, experiencing peer observation, and receiving formative feedback.
• Speed reading techniques.
• Developing self-reflection skills.

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AD5009 -

Humanities Work Placement Year (Optional,120 Credits)

The Work Placement Year module is a 120 credit year-long module available on degree courses which include a work placement year, taken as an additional year of study at level 5 and before level 6 (the length of the placement(s) will be determined by your programme but it can be no less than 30 weeks. You will undertake a guided work placement at a host organisation. This is a Pass/Fail module and so does not contribute to classification. When taken and passed, however, the Placement Year is recognised in your transcript as a 120 credit Work Placement Module and on your degree certificate in the format – “Degree title (with Work Placement Year)”. The learning and teaching on your placement will be recorded in the work placement agreement signed by the placement provider, the student, and the University.

Note: Subject to placement clearance; this is a competitive process and a place on the module cannot be guaranteed.

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AD5010 -

Humanities Study Abroad Year (Optional,120 Credits)

The Study Abroad Year module is a full year 120 credit module which is available on degree courses which include a study abroad year which is taken as an additional year of study at level 5 and before level 6. You will undertake a year abroad at a partner university equivalent to 120 UK credits. This gives you access to modules from your discipline taught in a different learning culture and so broadens your overall experience of learning. The course of study abroad will be dependent on the partner and will be recorded for an individual student on the learning agreement signed by the host University, the student, and the home University (Northumbria). Your study abroad year will be assessed on a pass/fail basis. It will not count towards your final degree classification but, if you pass, it is recognised in your transcript as a 120 credit Study Abroad Module and on your degree certificate in the format – “Degree title (with Study Abroad Year)”.

Note: Subject to placement clearance; this is a competitive process and a place on the module cannot be guaranteed.

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AT5004 -

Year in International Business (This is made up of modules studied in Newcastle (Semester 1) & Amsterdam (Semester 2) (Optional,120 Credits)

The programme comprises of six modules consisting of 20-credits each. They are delivered by means of lectures, seminars, and where appropriate business clinic workshop.
Each of the modules is presented and delivered according to a Teaching and Learning Plan and is supported through its suite of module-based e-learning portals. The e-learning portals will encompass various standard interventions in line with Faculty and University expectations. These include Panopto recordings of lectures, electronic reading lists and Electronic Marking and Assessment (EMA) submission.

Research provides an essential pillar to the teaching of the programme, with a research-led approach being adopted within various modules with directed reading towards various research outputs. As this is a programme delivered at Level 5, research papers and professional industry-produced reports play a part in the delivery of the module sessions, and as such, research tutored interventions play a part. The group-based assessments will provide instruction on how to undertake research in a team-setting and therefore demonstrates research-oriented approaches, whilst the individual research activity gives you experience of enquiry-based approaches to research and engagement with a number of real-world issues for which you will provide research-informed solutions.

The modules are outlined below:

Semester 1 - Newcastle
HR9513 (20 credits) People, Management & Organisation
SM9513 (20 credits) Introduction to Entrepreneurship
AF5022 (20 credits) Financial Decision Making

Semester 2 – Amsterdam
AT5011 (20 credits) International Business Consultancy Project
AT5012 (20 credits) Global Business Environment
AT5000 (20 credits) Digital Business

In semester 1, students will learn in an environment aligned to that of business students on full time programmes. A mixture of large group and small group sessions will take place. In semester 2, in accordance with the experiential learning pedagogical approach in the Business Clinic operated at Newcastle Business School, the International Business Consultancy Project will involve students working in groups, facilitated by academics but also independently and amongst their peers in collaborative project work to provide real business consultancy. Assessment has been developed in accordance with Northumbria’s Assessment for Learning principles including a broad mix of assessment appropriate to the learning outcomes being assessed and with opportunities for formative feedback.

A student who passes all modules will have these recorded on their transcript and HEAR record.

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AT5007 -

Year in International Multidisciplinary Innovation (4 modules studied in Amsterdam (Semester 1) & Newcastle (Semester 2) (Optional,120 Credits)

What will I learn on this module?

This overarching module descriptor covers the Year in International Multidisciplinary Innovation which is made up of 4 modules that the students will study in Amsterdam (semester 1) and Newcastle (semester 2).

This additional year of studies has been designed to develop students’ creative thinking and practical problem-solving skills in the context of design thinking approaches, all of which will significantly development academic and research skills and so strengthen employability on graduation. This year of study enhances your employability by unlocking and developing your creative problem-solving skills, knowledge, and expertise to make you more employment and industry-ready when you graduate through in multidisciplinary teams throughout your year of study in Amsterdam and Newcastle to creatively tackle and solve real-world challenges.
Semester 1 in Amsterdam comprises of two 20-credit modules aimed at students new to design thinking which also equips them for a semester in Newcastle, working in creative teams on a series of real-world projects that enhance creative thinking skills and attributes and multidisciplinary working practices. The modules studied in Semester 1, Innovative Design Practices and Tools and Multidisciplinary Exploration and Value Creation provide students with analytical design-inspired tools that enable students to examine real-world case studies that require multidisciplinary professional team-based responses and solution formation and implementation. In Semester 2, students will move to Newcastle to study two modules at Northumbria University. The first module, Design-Inspired Research Methods enables students to critically investigate key social, cultural, and technological challenges that modern urban spaces, cities, and professions. The final module, Creative Cities, enables students to engage in the creative comparative research of problems, challenges and potential innovative developments between Amsterdam and Newcastle (in terms of mobility, sustainable practices, energy provision, smart and digital technologies, urban design, or the role of cultural and humanities-oriented institutions).

The modules are outlined below:

Semester 1
AT5005 Innovative Design Practices and Tools (20 credits)
AT5006 Multidisciplinary Exploration and Value Creation (40 credits)

Semester 2
DE5012 Design-Inspired Research Methods (20 credits)
DE5013 Creative Cities (40 credits)

In semester 1, students will learn in a creative environment in the Amsterdam campus dedicated to full time programmes. A mixture of large group and small group sessions will take place in sessions and workshops that bring together AUAS and Northumbria students and staff. The focus of the teaching and learning is on creative interdisciplinary team activities that develop creative thinking and address real-world issues and problems. In semester 2, students engage in comparative city-based research to identify differing challenges facing Amsterdam and Newcastle. Students will approach a range of real-world issues from the perspective of their academic discipline and work with students from other perspectives to see how differing knowledges and skillsets can combine to address challenges in innovative and creative ways. These can include cultural institutions, design, technology, IT, and engineering, architecture, history, and the social sciences. Therefore, the programme is relevant for students from a range academic disciplines who will work together to stress how differing disciplines combine to provide solutions to challenges. Assessment has been developed in accordance with Northumbria’s Assessment for Learning principles including a broad mix of assessment appropriate to the learning outcomes being assessed and with opportunities for formative feedback.

A student who passes all modules will, on successful completion of their undergraduate programme of study, have these recorded on their transcript and HEAR record.

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AM6001 -

Dissertation (Core,40 Credits)

The American Studies dissertation is the most substantial piece of work you will produce during your undergraduate career. It will enable you to apply the skills you acquired at earlier levels to a discrete body of primary sources related to an identifiable area of scholarly enquiry. Dissertation topics will normally be chosen from an area you have studied before or are studying at Level 6 and be supervised by an appropriate tutor. Whereas the American Studies Extended Essay at Level 5 is explicitly interdisciplinary, Dissertations may utilise a single-disciplinary approach to the chosen subject, in line with each student’s developing interests and disciplinary inclinations.

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AM6004 -

States of Nature: Environments and Peoples in the Americas (Core,20 Credits)

Focusing on North and South America, this module examines the interaction between humans and the environment throughout history. We will discuss the ways in which various peoples experienced their environment: how they attempted to change it, how they were limited by it, and how they thought about nature. In doing so, we will consider historical change at several levels:

1. Material and ecological: the physical changes that humans in the American have wrought over the past 10,000 years.

2. Social and political: the connection between peoples’ use of the environment and the way in which American societies developed.

3. Intellectual and ideological: how individuals and societies have understood nature at various points throughout history and how this understanding has shaped their actions.

You will find out about the relationship between humans and nature in the period before European expansion in the Americas and, following on from this, you will consider the ecological impact of European colonialism. The module content covers human activities such as farming and mining, but also the impact of floods, hurricanes and climate change. You will consider the spread of cities, the role of their hinterlands and the creation of national parks. In the final sections of the module, you will examine the manifold impacts of consumer culture (including waste and pollution) as well as the rise of environmentalist movements that were critical of humans’ ecological footprint.

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EL6004 -

Vamps and Virgins: Gothic Sexualities (Optional,20 Credits)

From Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Christabel (1816) to Alan Ball’s True Blood (2008-), this module invites you to explore the dark, shadowy world of the Gothic in relation to a diverse range of literary texts and modern media. Combining the study of familiar canonical fictions with new and challenging material, we will train our focus on the enigmatic figure of the vampire, examining its various transitions and developments through the lens of critical and cultural theory.

Through an analysis of the Gothic, the module aims to develop your critical thinking, as well as your existing knowledge of literature, film, and television dating from 1816 to the present day. In doing so, it will encourage you to reflect on and interrogate the complex ways in which Gothic texts engage with, and intervene in, broader cultural debates about gender and sexuality.

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EL6018 -

The Black Atlantic: Literature, Slavery and Race (Optional,20 Credits)

This module will introduce you to a range of texts which have been created out of, or about, the experience of African peoples in the diaspora from the seventeenth century to the present. It will encourage you to relate your understanding of the texts to the cultural and historical background from which they developed. Following on from level four core modules this module will develop your understanding of the concept of the ‘Atlantic World’ and theories of local, national and global cultures as well as theories of race and postcolonial theory. You will be encouraged to recognise the activity of the slave trade as the beginning point of the Atlantic World as an imagined space that challenges national and chronological boundaries and speaks of the powerful and enduring legacies of slavery.

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EL6047 -

Twenty First Century Literature: Writing in the Present (Optional,20 Credits)

From Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) and its popular television adaptation (2017) to Yorgos Lanthimos’ film The Lobster (2015), this module invites you to explore a wide and diverse range of novels, short stories and other media in order to promote and analyse the study of contemporary theoretical debates on gender, love, the body and sexuality.

Through the theoretical lens of feminism, psychoanalysis, queer theory and postmodernism, the module aims to develop your critical thinking and your existing knowledge of literature, film and television, from 1985 to the present day. It will encourage you to explore the complex issues raised by diverse critical theory and close analysis of a range of late twentieth and twenty-first century literature, film and television adaptation. By doing so, you will reflect on the ways that twenty-first literature and other media engages with, interrogates and often offers alternative narratives on present debates about gender, love, the body and sexuality.

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HI6004 -

The African American Freedom Struggle Since 1945 (Optional,20 Credits)

In this seminar-based module you will study the roots, trajectory, and legacies of the African American Freedom Struggle since 1945. Although the primary focus will be on the movement for racial justice in the US South between roughly 1954 and 1968, that history will be placed in longer chronological and broader national and international contexts. More specifically you will study the grass-roots activities of African Americans engaged in various forms of resistance and protest alongside the histories of the major civil rights groups – the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). You will interrogate their tactics, examine their often fraught relationships with each other, and assess their achievements and failures in the face of widespread resistance to racial change. You will examine the contributions of the extraordinary ordinary people at the heart of the struggle, as well as those of nationally prominent leaders such as Martin Luther King. In this module you will also analyse the relationship between the civil rights movement and the federal government, address the role of the media and popular culture in shaping both the history and popular understandings of the post-war Freedom Struggle, and examine the international coordinates and impact of the struggles.

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HI6006 -

The Black Panther Party (Optional,20 Credits)

The module examines the history and significance of the Black Panther Party (BPP), a radical protest group formed in Oakland, California in 1966. It locates the BPP within its intellectual, political, geographical, and social context, giving students the opportunity to engage with important texts that influenced the BPP while also considering the BPP’s contribution to ideas about political struggle. The module details the history of the BPP from formation until its decline into irrelevance in the late 1970s, spending considerable time focusing on key individuals such as Huey P. Newton and Eldridge Cleaver, the FBI repression which resulted in the deaths of numerous BPP members, gender relations in the Party, and the BPP’s political and intellectual development. Students may start the module thinking that the BPP simply represented a violent response to African American oppression dominated by guns, leather jackets and Afro haircuts but they will end the module with a nuanced understanding of the profound contribution of the BPP to American history.

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HI6030 -

Law and Order USA: Police, Prisons, and Protest in Modern America (Optional,20 Credits)

This module will explore the history of ‘law and order’ politics (broadly defined) in the United States since 1900. You will learn about the creation of the law enforcement and judicial state at the federal, state, and local level (including, for instance, the establishment of the FBI and the rise of the carceral state), and the social movements that resisted and challenged that state. The module will cover such diverse topics as Prohibition, the Stonewall riot and the early LGBTQ movement, the prison reform and prisoners’ rights movements, the War on Drugs, anti-death penalty activism, and Black Lives Matter. This module will deal with fundamental questions of order and justice, how they have been contested in American society, and how they have intersected with issues of race, class, and gender.

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HI6040 -

Nicaragua in Revolution, 1979-1990 (Optional,20 Credits)

In July 1979 a broad-based opposition movement led by a small group of young guerrillas - the ‘Sandinistas’ - overthrew the Somoza dictatorship which had ruled Nicaragua for 43 years. The euphoria of triumph quickly soured, as the new Sandinista government faced division at home and aggression from overseas, in the form of a US-funded proxy conflict, known as the ‘Contra War’. In this module, you will learn how ordinary Nicaraguans experienced the revolutionary decade by working with a wide range of sources, including memoirs, poetry, and murals. You will draw on testimonios and oral histories to critically evaluate the impact of the revolution’s programmes in education, agrarian reform, and women’s rights; and you will explore the Contra War in the context of the wider Cold War struggle between the Soviet Union and the United States. Finally, you will use your detailed knowledge of the period to assess the relative importance of a number of factors, including US aggression and Sandinista failings, which together caused the eventual defeat of the revolution.

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HI6043 -

Creatures of Empire: an Animal History of British Colonialism (Optional,20 Credits)

In every empire, including the British case, non-human animals have been a crucial presence. Domesticated creatures, such as cows, pigs and sheep, accompanied European colonisers and assisted in the – often violent – processes that led to land clearances, changed environments, indigenous dispossession, and the spread of European settlement. This module seeks to give you a sense of the complicated and contested place of animals in empire. For some human colonisers, the hunting, killing, stuffing and exhibition of wild animals symbolised the European’s command of nature, and helped justify the whole imperial endeavour. But animals could also make trouble for empires: efforts to reproduce prized species and breeds did not always work; many animals spread disease; the growth of pest populations was a constant source of anxiety; and imported species could bring environmental changes that endangered both indigenous and European settlement.

This module considers this complicated interweaving of human and non-human histories in the British empire story, from the early modern settlements of seventeenth-century New England to the colonies of indirect rule in twentieth-century Africa. The first week will introduce you to the methodologies of animal history, and what an animal history of empire requires and might reveal. Thereafter, each week considers a species and a regional case study (e.g., rabbits/Australia; cows/southern Africa; tigers/British India). This simple structure introduces learners to themes as various as imperial masculinity and violence (hunting), ecological and social crises (epizootics), colonial community and family life (pet ownership), colonial urban history (pest control), imperial cultures in the metropole (taxidermy) and colonial national identity (animals as symbols). Importantly, the module is not exclusively structured around British and European viewpoints and actions: episodes such as the Xhosa cattle killing in 1850s southern Africa, to take one example, allows for a consideration of the differences and similarities in European and indigenous human-animal relationships.

You will learn about the relationship between empire, ecological degradation, and conservation through key themes such as ‘ecological imperialism’, ‘green imperialism’ and ‘animal agency’. Finally, this module will help you to historically contextualise current debates about human-animal relationships and the imperial roots of our ecological crisis; you may also recognise that the British empire experience provides examples and lessons that might help us rethink contemporary anthropocentric attitudes, and to develop healthier alternatives.

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IR6007 -

Politics of Oil and Global Warming (Optional,20 Credits)

Two of the most important problems facing humanity are climate change and energy security. In terms of solutions, a number of very different approaches have been suggested that range from the technological to the radical; how we address and solve these problems is therefore political. This module highlights how energy and resource intensive the average Western way of life is and what this means for climate change and energy security; explores the debate about peak oil (i.e. the point at which cheap and easily accessible oil starts to run out) and considers its political implications; investigates how Western foreign policy has been influenced by the desire to access, if not control, energy sources (e.g. Middle Eastern oil); evaluates the debate about climate change and how politicians have, and could, respond; and assesses the debate about energy policy and how politicians have, and could, respond to the twin demands of tackling global warming while ‘keeping the lights on’.

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MI6005 -

Popular Music on Film and Television (Optional,20 Credits)

This module is concerned with popular music culture and its relationship to film, an area much neglected in academic film studies, television studies and popular music studies. As such, it seeks to address this absence by looking at a number of key junctures where popular music culture, the cinema and television inter-relate, exploring debates about gender representation, authorship, genre and music in performance, as well as how the films studied relate to context of their production and reception. The module, therefore, covers topics such as the following in a largely chronological fashion. An indicative syllabus is as follows:
1. Early moments: The significance of the early Elvis Films: King Creole
2. Punk rock on film: The Great Rock n’ Roll Swindle
3. The revisionist musical: Von Trier, Lhurmann et al
4. Popular Music and national identity: The Commitments
5. Popular Music and ‘Race’ representation: 8 Mile
6. Gender play: Velvet Goldmine, In Bed with Madonna
7. The popular music / rock documentary
8. Dance and the male body: Saturday Night Fever
9. The concert film" from Wadleigh's Woodstock to Godard's One plus One.
10. Critical approaches to music video: Corbijn, Cunningham et al.
11. Nostalgia and the popular musical biopic: Control

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MI6007 -

Cult Film and Television (Optional,20 Credits)

You will learn to understand how the term ‘cult’ has been applied to film and television programmes in different ways, and how the concept has developed across history. The module will enable you to critically examine the ways that cult has been theorised both in relation to films and television programmes, and some of the key differences between cult television and cult film. You will understand how cult can be applied to both films, the reception of films, as well as how it has increasingly infiltrated marketing discourses. Case studies on the module include midnight movies, authorship and cult, fandom, telefantasy, censorship and controversy, exploitation cinema and global cult cinema.

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MI6010 -

Adaptations on Film and TV (Optional,20 Credits)

In ‘Adaptations on Film and TV’ you will examine the practical and theoretical debates around the translation of a variety of texts into films and television programmes. A broad-range of case studies is covered, from adaptations of ‘high art’ such as Shakespeare and literary fiction, to the conversion of popular fiction, comic-books and supposedly ‘unfilmable’ sources. As well as considering issues of authorship and originality, you will consider the complex relationship between film, television and other media forms, from music and video-gaming to theme-park rides. Films and programmes under discussion are likely to include examples such as Adaptation, William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet, Sherlock, Doom, The Walking Dead, Band of Brothers, Star Trek amongst others.

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MI6022 -

The Modern Horror Film (Optional,20 Credits)

The modern period in horror cinema is generally seen as beginning in 1968 with the release of Night of the Living Dead. This module explores the wide range of horror films produced since that date, primarily in the US but also considering the development and influence of horror film production in Italy, Japan and the UK. Through this exploration, the module will identify key themes, formats and cycles, and engages with the relation of the horror genre to changes in the film industry and to broader social and historical change. It also explores the aesthetic innovations and challenges offered by a range of forms of horror, and the creative ways in which the genre has experimented with film form and style. In taking the module, you will acquire an understanding of the critical and cultural issues raised by this important area of American and global culture and you will develop your own critical and analytic insights into a range of iconic horror films produced between 1968 and the present.

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YC6001 -

Academic Language Skills for Humanities & Social Sciences (Core – for International and EU students only,0 Credits)

Academic skills when studying away from your home country can differ due to cultural and language differences in teaching and assessment practices. This module is designed to support your transition in the use and practice of technical language and subject specific skills around assessments and teaching provision in your chosen subject. The overall aim of this module is to develop your abilities to read and study effectively for academic purposes; to develop your skills in analysing and using source material in seminars and academic writing and to develop your use and application of language and communications skills to a higher level.

The topics you will cover on the module include:

• Understanding assignment briefs and exam questions.
• Developing academic writing skills, including citation, paraphrasing, and summarising.
• Practising ‘critical reading’ and ‘critical writing’
• Planning and structuring academic assignments (e.g. essays, reports and presentations).
• Dissertation writing requirements
• Research Skills
• Ethical considerations
• Understanding research limitations
• Avoiding academic misconduct and gaining credit by using academic sources and referencing effectively.
• Listening skills for lectures.
• Speaking in seminar presentations.
• Presenting your ideas
• Giving discipline-related academic presentations, experiencing peer observation, and receiving formative feedback.
• Speed reading techniques.
• Developing self-reflection skills.

More information

To start your application, simply select the month you would like to start your course.

American Studies BA (Hons)

Home or EU applicants please apply through UCAS

International applicants please apply using the links below

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Full time Courses starting in 2023 are primarily delivered via on-campus face to face learning but may include elements of online learning. We continue to monitor government and local authority guidance in relation to Covid-19 and we are ready and able to flex accordingly to ensure the health and safety of our students and staff.

Contact time is subject to increase or decrease in line with additional restrictions imposed by the government or the University in the interest of maintaining the health and safety and wellbeing of students, staff, and visitors, potentially to a full online offer, should further restrictions be deemed necessary in future. Our online activity will be delivered through Blackboard Ultra, enabling collaboration, connection and engagement with materials and people.

 

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A blog on all manner of research, publications, lectures, conferences, symposia, and more from Northumbria University's History and American Studies programmes.

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Department of Humanities Research

Research in Humanities is divided across two distinct areas: English (Literature, Language and Linguistics and Creative Writing) and History. Alongside these research areas we also have our American Studies research grouping, which draws on researchers from both English Literature and History.

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