Racial Violence and American Identity

After completing this course, you:

• master the basic social science and cultural approaches to the understanding of race in the United States.
• have a working knowledge of the ways in which literary texts reflect, shape, and interact with history and culture.
• understand the important underlying historical, cultural, and psychological causes of racial violence in the U.S.
• know how individual and cultural identities are constituted by narrative patterns, metaphors and other literary and imaginative structures.

Students who are admitted to study programmes at UiO must each semester register which courses and exams they wish to sign up for in Studentweb.

This course is for students admitted to the master programmes European Languages (master's two years), Lektorprogrammet (master - 5 år), masterspesialisering i engelsk and Profesjonsrettet master med integrert praktisk-pedagogisk utdanning (masterspesialisering i engelsk).

Students enrolled in other Master`s Degree Programmes can, on application, be admitted to the course if this is cleared by their own study programme.

If you are not already enrolled as a student at UiO, please see our information about admission requirements and procedures.

Seminars, 2 hours per week for 10 weeks. 20 hours in all.

Obligatory activity:

• An essay of between 1 500 and 2 000 words turned in by a stated deadline. Read more here about rules concerning valid excuses and how to apply for postponements.Information about guidelines for obligatory activities.
• It is obligatory to show up for a minimum of 60% of the teaching. In this course you have to attend 6 of 10 seminars. The requirement is absolute.

The allowed absence limit will cover all absences, including illness. You will not be granted valid absences with documentation, even when the absence is due to something beyond your control.

In certain circumstances, i.e. serious or chronic illness, you could apply for special needs accomodations.

All obligatory activities must be approved for you to sit the exam. All obligatory activities must be approved in the same semester. Approved obligatory attendance and assignments are only valid the semester you attend the course.

The form of assessment is a term paper of 10 standard pages (a standard page consists of 2,300 characters). References and bibliography comes in addition.

You will be offered individual term paper supervision.

You are supposed to work on the assignment throughout the whole semester.