The University of Edinburgh
College of Humanities and Social Science
School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures
Undergraduate Course Proposal Form
Please note:

All boxes must be completed, none to be left blank. Use ‘N/A’ if needed.

Help fields have been added to provide guidance.
1. COURSE NAME
Victorian Transatlanticism
2. Rationale
This is not a CCAM requirement but is a Board of Studies requirement, in which the reason for introducing the course and the need for it must be explained to the satisfaction of
the relevant school committee.
This fourth-year semester one Core course will allow students to read deeper into some writers with whom they are familiar, while at the
same time introducing them to important writers they will/may not have studied. The breadth of ‘issues’ and variety of genres studied offer
students ideas of how reading across national categories can produce new meanings within national categories. This course should appeal to,
and hold value for, any of our students interested in nineteenth-century writing in English and developments in literary and broader cultural
exchange.
Please confirm the course has been
discussed and approved as per your
subject area practice
3.Business Case
Approved
5. COURSE OUTLINE
5.1 School
5.3 Course Type
Literatures, Languages and Cultures
Choose from:
Standard, Dissertation, Sandwich, Placement, Year
Abroad, Project
4. Library Resources
approved
5.2 College
5.4 Availability
Standard
HSS
Choose from:
Not Available to
Visiting Studies;
Available to All
Students; Part Year
Visiting Students
Only
Not available to
visiting students
SCQF Levels 7 – 10 for UG
5.5 Credit
Level
This box can be left blank. Your reading
list will be considered by the Library rep
and approval given at the Board of
Studies.
5.7 Credits
Choose from: 10; 20;
40; Other (please
specify)
10
5.6 Normal Year
taken
5.8 Home Subject
Area
20
4 Hons
English Literature
5.9 Other Subject Area
Unless the course is
also being taught by
another school, enter
N/A
N/A
5.10 Mode of Study
Choose from: Classes & Assessment incl. centrally
arranged exam; Class & Assessment excl. centrally
arranged exam; Exam only; Class only
Classes & Assessment incl. centrally arranged
exam
5.11 Course Level
UG
5.12 Summary Description
An informative short description of the course should be provided, the description will appear in the course catalogue within the DRPS.
This course will look at Transatlantic literary exchanges between American and Britain between American and Britain from the early 19th-century
to the early 20th-century. Considering works across all major genres, attention will be paid to the ways in which north American & British writers
responded to and represented each other’s social, political and artistic cultures, and to the variety of literary modes they deployed to do this. The
course will concern itself with questions of cultural authority, relationships with the past, cosmopolitanism, slavery and its abolition, gender
politics, the advent of detective fiction, and responses to the natural world, among other things.
6. Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
These will probably be specific courses, although in certain circumstances, this might include alternative courses, e.g. Course A or
6.1 Pre-requisites
Course B.
Students MUST have passed: ( English Literature 1 (ENLI08001) OR
Scottish Literature 1 (ENLI08016)) AND ( English Literature 2 (ENLI08003)
OR Scottish Literature 2 (ENLI08004))
Where they exist, these will be specific courses
6.2 Co-requisites
N/A
6.3 Prohibited combinations
Course(s) which cannot
be taken with this
proposed course and
counted towards a
graduating curriculum
6.4 Other
requirements
N/A
This is unlikely to include additional requirements but might outline
alternative qualifications, e.g. entry to honours in certain specified
programmes
N/A
7. Information for Visiting Students
Any relevant information for visiting students should be entered here. This should include prerequisites.
8. Course delivery Information
S1, S2 or Full Year
8.1 Delivery period
Y or N (N results in no Learn
site for this course)
8.2 Learn enabled
8.3 Quota
Pre hons quotas
should be approved
annually by CHSS.
Seek guidance from
your HoD.
Y
S1
8.4 Days & Times of
whole class
sessions
TBC
9. Detailed description
9.1 Course Description
If you have a longer description of what the student will experience in doing this course, enter it here. If so it should aim to capture the student experience.
9.2 Breakdown of learning & teaching activities
Enter a value for each category (values under certain categories may be zero). A 20 credit course equates to 200 hours; 40 credits to 400 hours (these values will be
automatically calculated by attributing hours leftover after teaching/assessment to ‘independent learning’).
For more information see: http://www.studentsystems.ed.ac.uk/Staff/Support/User_Guides/CCAM/Teaching_Learning.htm#Programme
Lectures:
Seminar/Tutorials:
20 hours
Summative Assessment hours: 2 hours
Other Study: Directed learning: 20 hours
Independent learning: 158 hours
Any further information, not captured elsewhere about the learning and teaching activities or assessment.
9.3 Additional
information
9.4 Weighting of
summative
assessments
Breakdown of summative assessment between different types (coursework, exam, etc.), with percentage weighting
Coursework Essay 30% (2500 words); Class participation assessment 10%; 2-hour
Exam (60%)
9.5 Exam information
Exam diet
Paper name
Choose from:
December; April/May
Victorian Transatlanticism
Hours: minutes
Stationery
requirements
2 hours
APRIL/MAY
Can be used to record details like changes of assessment method (especially from coursework to exam) in case of resits.
The resit diet will be set as ‘August’ by default.
Resit information
10. List of Learning Outcomes
List the Learning Outcomes. Please refrain from using discursive text, but think about them as actual outcomes that relate to the activities of the course and, in particular, to the
assessment. The outcomes should also be ‘active’ in that they will involve intellectual activity – the student will ‘show’, ‘demonstrate’, ‘analyse’, etc.
LO 1
By the end of the course a student will be able to demonstrate knowledge of some key north
American, British and Irish texts across a range of major genres
LO 2
By the end of the course a student will be able to demonstrate knowledge of these texts in
their national and transatlantic contexts
LO 3
By the end of the course a student will be able to demonstrate knowledge of ways in which
nation-specific conceptions of literature might be challenged
LO 4
By the end of the course a student will be able to demonstrate the ability to reflect
constructively on the development of their own learning and research practice
LO 5
By the end of the course a student will be able to demonstrate the ability to work with
interdisciplinary materials
LO 6
LO 7
LO 8
LO 9
LO 10
11. Detailed Assessment Information
11.1 Formative Feedback Event (Nature and Timing)
This regulatory requirement is not captured either by CCAM or DRPS. The nature and timing of it (including return of feedback) should be indicated, although be careful not to be
too precise here. The appropriate place for total precision is in the course booklet, or equivalent document.
Course essay – 2500 words submitted in week 9. Written feedback, and the opportunity to consult the
course organiser for oral discussion,
is made available to all students who have submitted work within 15 working days of submission.
Students will also receive a feedback report on their participation in class linked to that element of
assessment.
11.2 Elements Of Summative Assessment (With Weightings)
More detailed version of 9.4.
Coursework Essay – 30%; Class participation assessment – 10%; Exam – 60%
11.3 Relationship Between Assessment and Learning Outcomes
Map the numbered LOs against the assessments. This could also include formative assessment.
Course Essay – LO1, LO2, LO3, LO4, LO5.
Exam Essay - LO1, LO2, LO3, LO4, LO5.
11.4 Relationship to Programme Assessment Spine/Plan
Awaiting further guidance
11.5 Main Graduate Attributes
This involves a very basic sort of mapping of the main graduate attributes in relation to the course pedagogy and assessment types.
This does not require detailed mapping of particular parts of the course or its assessment to individual attributes. A simple listing of the relevant attributes will suffice.
This goes into the ‘Transferable Skills’ section of CCAM. In that box, please use the heading ‘Main Graduate Attributes’ as part of the free text insertion. This will then appear in
the DRPS.
12. Organisation
Course organiser
Exam Board Convenor
Dr Keith Hughes
Dr Dermot Cavanagh
Course secretary
Marking Scheme
Mrs Anne Mason
Choose from:
Common Marking Scheme - Honours
Grade Only
Common Marking Scheme - Honours
Mark/Grade
Common Marking Scheme - UG NonHonours Grade Only
Common Marking Scheme - UG NonHonours Mark/Grade
Common Marking Scheme Honours Mark/Grade
Taught in Gaelic?
13. Additional Information
No
Additional costs
14. Keywords
These can be useful for database organization and searching
Victorian, nineteenth-century, American, transatlantic, genre, politics, culture
15. Course proposal information
Course proposer
Url for supporting
documentation
Dr Keith Hughes
16. School Specific Requirements
Syllabus:
1.
Imagining the Other I: Washington Irving, The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. (OUP 2009)
2.
Imagining the Other II: Charles Dickens, American Notes: for General Circulation (Penguin 2000)
3.
Poetic Exchanges: Selections from Alfred Tennyson, The Major Works ((OUP 2009); and from H. W. Longfellow, Selected Poems
(Penguin 1988)
4.
Slavery and Abolitionism: Frederick Douglass, My Bondage and My Freedom (Yale University Press 2014); Elizabeth
Barrett Browning, ‘The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim’s Point’ (online); Thomas Carlyle, ‘Occasional Discourse on the Nigger
Question’ (online)
5.
European Hauntings: Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Marble Faun (OUP 2008)
6.
Transatlantic Time Travel: Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur’s Court (OUP 2008); Alfred Tennyson, The
Major Works (OUP 2009)
7.
Transatlantic Detection I: Edgar Allan Poe, ‘The Man of the Crowd’ & ‘The Murders of the Rue Morgue’ in Selected Tales
(OUP 2008); Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet (OUP 2008)
8.
North America - Dramatising Society: George Bernard Shaw, ‘The Devil’s Disciple’ in Three Plays for Puritans (Penguin
2006); Oscar Wilde, ‘A Woman of No Importance’ in The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays (OUP 2008)
9.
Transatlantic Detection II: Henry James, The Ambassadors (OUP 2008)
10. South America – Romancing Nature: W. H. Hudson, Green Mansions: A Romance of the Tropical Forest (OUP 1998)
Reading List (Please breakdown into ‘compulsory’ and ‘recommended’):
Compulsory Primary Texts:
Irving, Washington. The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. Oxford: OUP 2009
Dickens, Charles. American Notes: for General Circulation. Harmondsworth: Penguin 2000
Tennyson, Alfred. The Major Works. Oxford: OUP 2009
H. W. Longfellow, H.W. Selected Poems. Harmondsworth: Penguin 1988
Douglass, Frederick. My Bondage and My Freedom. Yale: Yale University Press 2014
Barrett Browning, Elizabeth. ‘The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim’s Point’. Online
Carlyle, Thomas. ‘Occasional Discourse on the Nigger Question’ (online)
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Marble Faun. Oxford: OUP 2008
Twain, Mark. A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur’s Court. Oxford: OUP 2008
Poe, Edgar Allan. Selected Tales. Oxford: OUP 2008
Doyle, Arthur Conan. A Study in Scarlet. Oxford: OUP 2008
Shaw, George Bernard. Three Plays for Puritans. Harmondsworth: Penguin 2006
Wilde, Oscar. The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays. Oxford: OUP 2008
James, Henry. The Ambassadors. Oxford: OUP 2008)
Hudson, W.H. Green Mansions: A Romance of the Tropical Forest. Oxford: OUP 1998
Recommended Reading:
Recommended Secondary Reading
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Week 1
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Bell, Michael Davitt. The Development of American Romance: the Sacrifice of Relation (Chicago: Chicago University
Press, 1980)
Eberwein, Jane D., “Transatlantic Contrasts in Irving’s Sketch Book”, College Literature 15.2 (1988): 153-170
Mulvey, Christopher, Anglo-American Landscapes: A Study of Nineteenth-Century Anglo-American Travel Literature
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983)
Rubin-Dorsky, Jeffrey, Adrift in the Old World: The Psychological Pilgrimage of Washington Irving (Chicago: Chicago
University Press, 1988)
Week2
Claybaugh, Amanda, “Toward a new transatlanticism: Dickens in the United States”, Victorian Studies 48.3 (2006): 43960
John, Juliet, “ ‘A Body Without a Head’: The Idea of Mass Culture in Dickens’s American Notes”, Journal of Victorian
Culture 12.2 (2007): 173-202
McGill, Meredith L. American Literature and the Culture of Reprinting, 1834-1853 (Philadelphia: U Penn Press, 2007)
Week 3
Meredith McGill, ed. The Traffic in Poems: Nineteenth-Century Poetry and Transatlantic Exchange (New Brunswick:
Rutgers University Press, 2008)
Matthew Bevis, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Victorian Poetry (Oxford, OUP, 2013)
Beverly Taylor and Elizabeth Brewer, The Return of King Arthur: British and American Arthurian Literature since
1800 (Cambridge: 1983)
Kathryn Ledbetter, Tennyson and Victorian Periodicals: Commodities in Context (London: Ashgate, 2007)
Christoph Irmscher and Robert Arbour, eds., Reconsidering Longfellow (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University
Press, 2014)
Christoph Irmscher, Public Poet, Private Man: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow at 200 (Bsotn, Mass: University of
Massachusetts Press, 2009)
Newton Arvin, Longfellow: His Life and Work (London: Greenwood Press, 1963)
Andrew Hilen, Longfellow and Scandinavia: A Study of the Poet's Relationship with the Northern Languages and
Literature (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1947)
Week 4
Douglass, Frederick, Selected |Speeches and Writings, edited by Philip S. Foner, abridged and adapted by Yuval
Taylor (Chicago: Chicago university Press, 1999)
Rice, Alan, and Crawford, Martin eds. Liberating Sojourn: Frederick Douglass and Transatlantic Reform (Athens, Ga:
University of Georgia Press, 1999)
Sweeney, Fionnghuala Frederick Douglass and the Atlantic World (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2007)
Shepperson, George, “Frederick Douglass and Scotland”, The Journal of Negro History 38.3 (1953): 307-321
Brophy, Sarah, “Elizabeth Barrett Browning's ‘The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point’ and the Politics of Interpretation”,
Victorian Poetry 36.3 (1998) 273-288
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week 5
Bell, Millicent “The Marble Faun and the Waste of History”, Southern Review 35.2 (1999): 354-70
Levine, Robert S. “ ‘Antebellum Rome’ in The Marble Faun”, American Literary History 2 (1990): 19-38
Millington, Richard H. (ed), The Cambridge Companion to Nathaniel Hawthorne (Cambridge: CUP, 2006)
Swann, Charles. Nathaniel Hawthorne: Tradition and Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1991)
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Week 6
Fermanis, Porscha, “Culture, Counter-Culture and the Subversion of the Comic in Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in
King Arthur’s Court”, The Mark Twain Annual 5 (2007): 93-107
Kordecki, Lesley C., “Twain’s Critique of Mallory’s Romance: Forma Tractandi and A Connecticut Yankee”, NineteenthCentury Literature 41.3 (1986): 329-348
Lerer, Seth “Hello Dude: Philology, Performance, and Technology in Mark Twain’s ‘Connecticut Yankee’”, American
Literary Realism 1870-1910 26.1 (1993): 26-39
Robinson, Forrest G (ed.).,The Cambridge Companion to Mark Twain (Cambridge: CUP, 1995)
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Week 7
Byer, Robert H., “Mysteries of the City: A Reading of Poe’as ‘The Man of the Crowd’, in Ideology and Classic
AmericanLiiterature, Sacvan Bercovitch and Myra Jehlen eds., (Cambridge: CUP, 1986)
Benjamin, Walter, “On Some Motifs in Baudelaire”, in Illuminations (London: Pimlico, 1999)
Hayes, Kenneth J., The Cambridge Companion to Edgar Allan Poe (Cambridge: CUP. 2002)
Irwin, John T., The Mystery to a Solution: Poe, Borges, and the Analytic Detective (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press,
1994)
Kennedy, J. Gerald “The Limits of Reason: Poe’s Deluded Detectives”, American Literature, 47. 2 (1975): 184-196

Patricia Merivale and Susan Elizabeth Sweeney (eds.), Detecting Texts: The Metaphysical Detective Story from
Poe to Postmodernism (Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania Press, 1999)
Knight, Stephen, Crime Fiction, 1800-2000: Detection, Death, Diversity (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004)
Orel, Harold (ed), Critical Essays on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (New York: GK Hall, 1992)
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Week 8
Friedman, David, Wilde in America: Oscar Wilde and the Invention of Modern Celebrity (New York: Norton, 2014)
Morris Jr., Roy, Declaring His Genius: Oscar Wilde in North America (Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press, 2013)
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Eltis, Sos, Revising Wilde: Society and Subversion in the Plays of Oscar Wilde (Glos: Claendon Press, 1996)
Powell, Kerry, Oscar Wilde and the Theatre of the 1890s (Cambridge: CUP, 1990)
Innes, Christopher, The Cambridge Companion to George Bernard Shaw (Cambridge: CUP, 1998)
Crompton, Louis, Shaw the Dramatist: A Study of the Intellectual Background of the Major Plays (Lincoln, NE: University
of Nebraska Press, 1971)
Meisel, Martin, Shaw and the Nineteenth Century Theatre (Princeton, NJ: Princeton university Press, 1963)
Week 9
Bell, Millicent Meaning in Henry James (Cambridge: Harvard UP 1991)
Held, Joshua: "Conscience and Consciousness in The Ambassadors: Epistemology, Focalization, and Narrative Ethics"
Henry James Review 34.1 (2013): 33-46
Wilson, Sarah: "Americanness Becomes Modernism in James's The Ambassadors" Studies in the Novel 36.4 (2004):
509-32
Week 10
Miller, David, W. H. Hudson and the Elusive Paradise (London: Palgrave 1990)
Ronner, Amy, W. H. Hudson: The Man, The Novelist, The Naturalist (New York: AMS Press, 1986)
Jason Wilson, W. H. Hudson: The Colonial's Revenge (London: University of London, 1981)
John Alcorn, The Nature Novel from Hardy to Lawrence (London: Macmillan Reprints, 1986)