COMM 3005 Australian Textual Studies

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Credit Points 10

Legacy Code 100849

Coordinator Christopher Conti Opens in new window

Description This unit aims to increase students' knowledge of the scope and variety of Australian writing. It examines a range of Australian texts from a number of contexts, usually organised along historical and/or thematic lines, and considers the role of writing both "high" literature and more popular forms in constructions of Australian culture. Issues of place, gender and race may be foregrounded, and consideration given to how these influence images of Australia. Film and television texts may also be included or emphasised.

School Humanities & Comm Arts

Discipline Written Communication

Student Contribution Band HECS Band 4 10cp

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Level Undergraduate Level 3 subject

Equivalent Subjects LGYB 0186 - Australian Textual Studies LGYB 4976 - Australian Authors Special Study LGYB 4974 - Australian Literature The City and The Bush

Restrictions Successful completion of 60 credit points of study in currently enrolled program.

Learning Outcomes

On successful completion of this subject, students should be able to:
  1. Students will increase their knowledge of the scope and heterogeneity of Australian texts.
  2. Students will read and critically examine a range of representative Australian texts from a number of different social and cultural contexts.
  3. Students will examine the relationship between Australian texts and ideas and traditions regarding the nature of Australian culture.
  4. Students will explore the relationship between Australian literary culture and other cultural forms, such as film, television, journalism and the visual and performing arts.

Subject Content

Text and gender in Australian culture.
Landscape as text: writing Australian places and spaces; the city versus the bush.
Imagining community/ies: the textual construction of the Australian nation and national identity/ies.
Aboriginal texts, from pre 1788 cultural inscriptions to present-day writing.
Ethnic minority writing and questions of multiculturalism.
The concept of an Australian literature, its history and discontents.
Focus study of particular Australian authors.
Writing Australian drama, film and television.
Bastards from the Bush and Sentimental Blokes: Australian literature and popular culture; humour, irony and sentiment.
Australian modernity, Australian modernism.
Australian journalism and literary culture.
Australian literary criticism, its history and some of its major issues (for example, national versus universal culture, "the cultural cringe", radical nationalists versus New Critics, responses to post-structuralism and postcolonialism).
It is necessary to understand/That a poet may not exist (Ern Malley): Australian literary hoaxes.
Australian writing and the visual arts.

Teaching Periods

Structures that include subject