This unit explores the art of narrative from Greek and Roman antiquity to the present. What makes Homer's Odyssey and Ovid's Metamorphoses defining texts for the history of narrative? Why are the early masters of English narrative so compelling? How does a film like O Brother, Where Art Thou? fit in? Issues of particular relevance include: genre, epic and myth; the unfolding of adventure and gender relations; intertextuality and the nature of humankind.

This unit of study equips students with some general tools for the close analysis of literary language. Grammatical concepts will be introduced and applied to the description of prose, poetry and drama, and students will explore the changing relations between form and meaning in English from the earliest times up to the present. A number of key strands in contemporary language study will also be presented, including semiotic theory, rhetoric and discourse studies and theorizations of the relationship between texts and subjectivity.

How do form and style structure our experience of film? This unit provides a critical introduction to elements of film making and viewing, moving through an exploration of formal components of film to consider film aesthetics in relation to the history of film scholarship. We will consider films in a variety of cultural and historical contexts, from early cinema to youtube, and introduce a series of "case studies" to explore historical, cultural and material contexts of film production and consumption.

This unit explores the Gothic, a transgressive literary mode that imagines haunted or hostile social worlds. Beginning with the early Gothic craze and ending with its popular on-screen renewal, we consider the aesthetics of horror and terror, and investigate the questions these texts raise about identity, place, and the imagination.

Global Literatures in English is a transnational and cross-period unit that examines how literary and cultural works from different periods from across the world engage with world historical events and social political structures operating on a global scale, with a particular emphasis on the representation of Empire and its legacies.

Creative writing, reading and thinking are core skills. This unit offers a practical and critical introduction to the development of a reflective creative writing practice across a range of different literary forms. Students will be guided through the process of generating ideas, drafting, workshopping, editing and revision to produce a portfolio of creative writing. The unit will emphasise creative writing as a dynamic mode of engaging with forms and ideas.

What makes the subject of identity so compelling? How are we ourselves involved in the construction of such identity? This unit explores the topic of self in literary and cinematic texts. It will provide an opportunity for students to analyse and creatively explore the construction of self in a variety of social contexts by focusing on textual representations of sexuality, race and gender in ways that are relevant to being and living in today's world.

Is one country's postmodernism the same as another's? Concentrating on works produced since the 1980s this unit looks at some of the early texts of Australian postmodernism, thinking about the range of local, domestic and international contexts with which they engage. It asks whether Australian postmodernism has any distinguishing features, trying to explain what these might be, and how they might have come about, and how it has developed in the contemporary era of digital and social media.

Australian theatre and cinema have lively, at times intersecting, histories, and have played significant roles at both national and international levels, from the depiction of various local 'types' on stage and screen, to the work of Australian actors, directors and cinematographers overseas. This unit examines selected plays and films over the last century or so through a number of thematic focuses, including: race, gender and national identity; comic traditions; Australia and the world; modernity and innovation.

This unit provides students with the opportunity to undertake in-depth study of the life, work, career and reception of one or more major Australian writers, such as Peter Carey, Helen Garner, Alex Miller, H.H. Richardson, Christina Stead, Patrick White or Judith Wright. While focusing on close reading of texts that have come to be regarded as outstanding both nationally and internationally, students will also use methodologies that include career biography, reception history, and analysis of key works of literary criticism and the economy of literary prestige.

How is 'nature' represented in Australian texts and from whose perspective? Recognising the complex meanings of 'nature' (Williams), we will trace its significance in Australian texts and contexts. How do novelists, poets and others depict Australian landscapes and ecologies? How do different cultural perspectives shape representations of nature? This unit examines Indigenous and non-Indigenous texts, introducing key approaches from ecocriticism and the ecohumanities, and asking how literature shapes an environmental consciousness.