University of St Andrews

Key information

SCOTCAT credits : 30

ECTS credits : 15

Level : SCQF level 10

Semester: 2

Availability restrictions: Not automatically available to General Degree students

Planned timetable: 10.00 am - 12.00 pm Fri

This module introduces students to a range of writing in English about the Pacific/Oceania by Europeans, Americans and Pacific Islanders. It considers texts from a variety of genres including travel writing, fiction, and poetry from eighteenth-century to contemporary writing. The texts considered include creative and critical works about the Pacific by Europeans, Americans, Hawai'ian, Samoan, Tongan, Papua New Guinean and Maori writers. Beginning with British accounts of 'first encounters', the module considers some of the important formal tropes and ideas that recur in representations of the region and its peoples, such as mapping, oral vs written authority, tradition and westernisation, and questions of pan-Pacific and regional identity.

Relationship to other modules

Pre-requisite(s): Before taking this module you must pass EN2003 and pass EN2004

Learning and teaching methods and delivery

Weekly contact: A 2-hour weekly seminar (x 11 weeks). 2 office hours (x 11 weeks)

Scheduled learning hours: 22

Guided independent study hours: 278

Assessment pattern

As used by St Andrews: Coursework = 100%

As defined by QAA
Written examinations : 0%
Practical examinations : 0%
Coursework: 100%

Re-assessment: exam = 100%

Personnel

Module coordinator: Professor E S Sutton
Module teaching staff: Dr Emma Sutton
Module coordinator email ess2@st-andrews.ac.uk

Intended learning outcomes

• Students will gain familiarity with a selection of writing in English about the Pacific/Oceania by Pacific islanders, Europeans and Americans.
• They will consider some of the theoretical, aesthetic and political issues at stake in studying literary representations of the Pacific/Oceania by Western and indigenous Pacific writers. These will include questions such as: the representation of cross-cultural encounters; the roles and relative status of oral storytelling and writing within literary texts and critical methodology; and the use and decolonization of Western literary tropes and genres (such as the sublime, the Bildungsroman and the epic poem) by Pacific writers.