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Programme and Learning Outcomes

America’s cultural icons are the world's cultural icons. From Walt Disney to the Statue of Liberty, from Hollywood to Time magazine, from Jack Kerouac to Don DeLillo and from Margaret Atwood to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. The influence of American culture around the world is tremendous. The meaning and the significance that people assign to American products vary from country to country. The MA program "Literatures and Cultures of North America in International Perspective" focuses on the production and reception of literature, (popular) culture and art in the 20th and 21st centuries in their historical, social and cultural contexts. Our program stresses the diversity of North American cultural production and allows students to study contemporary North American fiction, manifestations of the American avant-garde, and/or the literary and cultural production of American ethnic groups such as African Americans, Native Americans and Chicano/as. Particular emphasis lies on the societal and socio-political context in which literary and cultural communications acquire meaning. All students enrolled in this MA program take certain compulsory foundational courses. These are "American Studies: Theories & Practices," on the methodological developments of the field of American Studies within both the United States and Europe, "Contemporary North American Fiction," which includes novels as well as theatre and film productions and "Transatlantic Transfer and Cultural Mobility: Grounding Transnational American Studies'" a course moments of intercultural confrontations and processes of democratization, cultural appropriation, cultural transfer, and cultural mobility from Modernism to the digital age of globalization. In addition, students take a compulsory MA Thesis Colloquium to help them structure their MA Thesis research and support their writing process. There is an elective space in the program, which enable students to place personal emphases or to engage in an internship. Options for elective courses include courses on North American Indians, Politics and Cultures of the Black Freedom Struggle, aswell as courses from the North American Studies Master program "Transnational America" are open to students from "Literatures and Cultures,". The American Studies Master's program has relations to two Nijmegen research programs: "Performances of Memory and Identity" and "Studying Criticism and Reception Across Borders" (SCARAB).

Learning Objectives

After completing the master in North American Studies, specialization Literatures and Cultures of North America in International Perspective

1.  the student has advanced scholarly insight and knowledge of North American history, politics, (popular) culture, media and society of the 20th and 21st centuries. He/she is capable of combining insights from multiple academic disciplines in order to interpret and analyze connections between developments within these areas

2. he/she is capable of analyzing processes of socio-cultural and political exchange, mutual perceptions and intercultural confrontations, both within and outside of North America.

3.  he/she has an advanced understanding of the theory and practice of "American Studies" as an interdisciplinary scholarly field, and is able to describe and explain historical and contemporary developments in "American Studies" in North America and in Europe.

4. he/she has the scientific and theoretical knowledge and the methodological skills to independently formulate research questions, to carry out a (preferably interdisciplinary) research project, to critically approach and utilize relevant sources, and to communicate the results of his/her research in a scientific work written in good and correct (American) English.

5. the student has acquired an advanced scientific understanding and knowledge regarding the diversity of literary and cultural forms of expression in North America of the 20th and 21st centuries. He/she is capable of interpreting these both in their social, political and cultural contexts and from a historical, comparative and international perspective.

6. he/she is capable, at an advanced scientific level, of analyzing and interpreting manifestations of contemporary (North) American literature and culture, including film, visual arts, digital media and music, as well as examining and describing their reception and transmission within and outside North America.