English Descriptions
English
Major
A major in English requires 48 credit points from this table including:
(i) 12 credit points of 1000-level units
(ii) 12 credit points of 2000-level units
(iii) 18 credit points of 3000-level units
(iv) 6 credit points of 3000-level Interdisciplinary Project units
Minor
A minor in English requires 36 credit points from this table including:
(i) 12 credit points of 1000-level units
(ii) 12 credit points of 2000-level units
(iii) 12 credit points of 3000-level units
1000 level units of study
ENGL1002 Narratives of Romance and Adventure
Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 1 Classes: 2x1hr lectures/week and 1x1hr tutorial/week Assessment: 1x1000wd Assignment (20%), 1x2000wd Essay (45%), 1x1.5hr Exam (35%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day
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.
ENGL1007 Language, Texts and Time
Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 2 Classes: 2x1hr lectures/week, 1x1hr tutorial/week Assessment: 2x500wd assignments (30%), 1x2000wd Essay (30%), 1x1.5-hr exam (40%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day
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.
ENGL1011 Introduction to Film Studies
Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 1,Summer Main Classes: 1x2hr lecture/week, 1x1hr tutorial/week Assessment: 1x800wd exercise (20%), 1x800wd exercise (20%), 1x800wd exercise (20%), 1x2000wd Take-home exercise (30%), Tutorial participation (10%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day
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.
ENGL1012 The Gothic Imagination
Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 1 Classes: 2x1hr lecture/week, 1x1hr tutorial/week Assessment: 2x500wd close reading exercise (30%), 1x2000wd research essay (40%), 1x1.5hr exam (30%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day
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.
ENGL1013 Global Literatures in English
Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 2 Classes: 2x1hr lecture/week, 1x1hr tutorial /week Assessment: 1x1000wd close reading (20%), 1x1500wd essay (35%), 1x2000wd take-home exercise (45%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day
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.
ENGL1014 Creative Writing
Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 1 Classes: 1x1hr lecture/week, 1x2hr seminar/week Assessment: 1x1000wd reading response task (20%), 1x1000wd creative writing draft (20%), 1x 2500wd creative writing portfolio (50%), workshop participation (10%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day
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.
ENGL1026 Constructing the Fictive Self
Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 2 Classes: 2x1hr lectures/week, 1x1hr tutorial/week Assessment: 1x500wd Assignment (15%), 1x2000wd Essay (45%), 1x2hr Exam (40%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day
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.
2000 level units of study
Selective
ENGL2603 Imagining America
This unit of study is not available in 2018
Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 2 Classes: 1x1hr lecture/week, 1x2hr seminar/week Prerequisites: (12 Junior credit points from English) or (6 Junior credit points from English and AMST1001) or (AMST1001 and (HSTY1076 or HSTY1023)) Prohibitions: ENGL2003 Assessment: 1x500wd Oral Presentation (10%), 1x2000wd Essay (50%), 1x1500wd Take-home exercise (40%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day
This course takes as its point of departure the notion of America as fashioned by diverse and even conflicting acts of imagination. Beginning with writers in the mid-19th century and working our way to more recent imaginings of filmmakers and songwriters, we will examine the various ways in which visions of America have been put in play in the national consciousness in prose, poetry, song and film, to construct and to challenge the 'imagined community' of the United States.
ENGL2605 Literary Theory: An Introduction
Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 2 Classes: 2x1hr lectures/week, 1x1hr tutorial/week Prerequisites: 12 Junior credit points in English or 6 Junior credit points in English and AMST1001 Prohibitions: ENGL3910 or ENGL3920 or ASLT3602 or ENGL3962 Assessment: 1x750wd critical analysis assignment (17%), 1x1500wd assignment (33%), 1x2250wd Essay (50%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day
This unit approaches literary theory and criticism as such in three ways, synoptically, historically, and polemically. First, a generous sampling of kinds of theory and criticism establishes the ambit of the field. Second, a more concentrated sampling explores the history and importance of a particular period or mode of theory and criticism. Third, another such sampling evaluates the nature and significance of a matter of current theoretical and critical controversy.
ENGL2611 Jane Austen, Then and Now
Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 2 Classes: 2x1hr lectures/week, 1x1hr tutorial/week Prerequisites: 12 Junior credit points in English or 6 Junior credit points from English and AMST1001 Prohibitions: ENGL2011 Assessment: 1x1500wd research exercise (35%), 1x2500wd Essay (50%), 1x500wd equivalent online discussion task (15%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day
Jane Austen is an iconic figure, both within the academy and without. In the discipline of English, her novels consolidate generic traditions that are both forward and backward looking. This unit examines Austen's novels in their historical and critical context in order to understand the place of her works, then and now. We will analyse how these novels engage the literary, social and political debates of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. We will also assess the interpretative traditions her work inaugurated in subsequent centuries.
ENGL2613 Literature, Politics and Modernity
Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 1 Classes: 2x1hr lectures/week, 1x1hr tutorial/week Prerequisites: 12 credit points at 1000 level in English Prohibitions: ENGL2013 Assessment: 1x2000wd essay (50%), 1x1500wd take-home exercise (35%), 1x500wd tutorial presentation (15%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day
This unit considers the creative interplay between literature and politics in the modern period (1789-1945), introducing and examining how authority, social structures and individual autonomy have been represented and analysed in real and imagined settings. Using an array of forms including novels, poems, documents, essays and film, we look at topics such as revolution, equality, imperialism, the environment and utopias. We track historical changes in how political power has operated and been challenged at the personal, national and global levels.
ENGL2617 Postmodernism
Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 2 Classes: 2x1-hour lectures Prerequisites: 12 Junior credit points in English or 6 Junior credit points in English and AMST1001 or (AMST1001 and (HSTY1076 or HSTY1023)) or 18 Junior credit points including ENGL1011 Prohibitions: ENGL2017 Assessment: 1x1500wd Essay (40%), 1x2000wd Take-home exercise (40%), 1x500wd equivalent Tutorial presentation (10%), Tutorial participation (10%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day
What was postmodernism? This unit will explore the most interesting and innovative theoretical, literary and multimedia texts of the last half century to think about what aesthetic texts brought to arguments about politics, identity, truth and knowledge. We will examine the relationship between modernism and postmodernism, movements, communities and subcultures, experimentalism and activism, popular and high culture, and the rise of identity politics, the 'culture wars,' and queer theory.
ENGL2638 Literature and Cinema
Credit points: 6 Session: Intensive June,Semester 2 Classes: 1x1hr lecture/week, 1x2hr seminar/week Prerequisites: 12 Junior credit points in English or (6 Junior credit points from English and AMST1001) or 18 Junior credit points including ENGL1011 Prohibitions: ENGL2038 Assessment: 1x500wd Oral Presentation (10%), 1x2000wd Essay (50%), 1x1500wd Take-home exercise (40%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day
This unit will examine issues arising from a comparative study of literature and cinema, including: the continuities and discontinuities between the two mediums; the cultural and historical contexts of literary and cinematic texts; authorship, auteurism and aesthetic authority; adaptation and intertextuality; the figurative styles of literature and cinema; narrative and narration in literature and cinema; genre study.
ENGL2640 Shakespeare
This unit of study is not available in 2018
Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 1,Winter Main Classes: 2x1-hr lectures/week, 1x1-hr tutorial/week Prerequisites: (12 junior credit points from English) or (6 junior credit points from English and AMST 1001) or (12 junior credit points from at least one of the following: European Studies, European, Middle Eastern or Classical Languages/Studies, Asian Studies, English, Government and International Relations, Ancient History, Philosophy, Political Economy, Sociology or Media and Communication) Prohibitions: ENGL2040 Assessment: 1x500wd metaphor exercise (20%), 1x2000wd essay (45%), 1x1.5hr exam (35%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day
This unit is an intensive study of plays by Shakespeare in a variety of genres, particularly focusing on current critical interventions, as well as the detailed reading of Shakespeare's dramatic language. Current approaches to Shakespeare read his texts as a way of thinking about ideas of urgent concern in the twenty first century: the environment and ideas of the natural; sexuality and gender; scepticism and belief. Watching film versions of the plays will form an integral part of our study.
ENGL2653 Western Theories of Language
Credit points: 6 Teacher/Coordinator: Dr Nick Riemer Session: Semester 1 Classes: 2x1-hr lectures/week, 1x1-hr tutorial/week Prerequisites: 12 Junior credit points in English or (6 Junior credit points in English and AMST1001) or (12 junior credit points in Linguistics) Prohibitions: ENGL2053 Assessment: 1x500wd tutorial notes (10%), 1x2000wd essay (50%), 1x2hr exam (40%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day
An introduction to the history of Western ideas about the structure, origin and use of language, with a particular focus on theories of English grammar and on the main theoretical developments of the 20th century. Students will consider the evolution of grammatical and rhetorical thought with reference both to the inherent constraints on linguistic theorizing, and to the varying ideological currents that have shaped Western ideas on language structure and use from antiquity to the present.
ENGL2654 Novel Worlds
This unit of study is not available in 2018
Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 2 Classes: 2x1-hr lectures/week, 1x1-hr tutorial/week Prerequisites: (12 junior credit points from English) or (6 junior credit points from English and AMST1001) Assessment: 3x750wd written exercises (60%), 1x2250wd take-home exercise (40%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day
This unit of study explores the rise of novel reading in English as an educative, aesthetic and passionate practice from the 17th century to the present. The unit moves chronologically to examine how novels and the world came to be understood as mutually constitutive, how novels create and sustain attachments amongst their readers, how the genre of the novel became available for interrogations of national, gendered, "racial", sexual and class identity, of liberty and intellectual emancipation, and of pleasure.
ENGL2657 Myths, Legends and Heroes
Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 2 Classes: 2x1hr lectures/week, 1x1hr tutorial/week Prerequisites: 12 Junior credit points in English or (6 Junior credit points in English and AMST1001) Assessment: 1x1000wd Essay (15%), 1x1500wd Essay (35%), 1x1.5hr exam (40%), Tutorial participation (10%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day
Students will study (in modern English translation) the literature of the peoples who lived in Britain in the Early Middle Ages -- Britons, Anglo-Saxons, Vikings and Normans. Lectures and tutorials will cover the literature, history, religion and language of these cultures, focusing on representations of the heroic ideal, as this is embodied in mythic, legendary and historical writing. Texts to be studied include Beowulf, The Wanderer, selections from the Edda, and early Arthurian material.
ENGL2660 Reading the Nation: American Literature
This unit of study is not available in 2018
Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 2 Classes: 2x1-hr lectures/week, 1x1-hr tutorial/week Prerequisites: ((12 junior credit points from English) or (6 junior credit points from English and AMST1001)) or (AMST1001 and (HSTY1023 or HSTY1076)) Assessment: 1x2000wd essay (45%), 1x500wd class exercise (15%), 1x1500wd take-home exercise (40%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day
In this unit, we study a variety of American literary and visual texts to consider what it means to read "nationally". We first examine the rise of literary nationalism to look then at the ways in which exigencies of empire, race and ethnicity, and gender and sexuality, for example, have exerted pressure on the fantasy of a cohesive national culture. We will also consider the transnational turn of recent decades to understand the nation's function in a global context.
ENGL2661 Imagining Camelot
This unit of study is not available in 2018
Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 1 Classes: 2x1hr lecture/week, 1x1hr tutorial/week Prerequisites: (12 junior credit points from English) or (6 junior credit points from English and AMST1001) Assessment: 1x500wd equivalent Tutorial exercise (10%), 1x2000wd Essay (45%), 1x2000wd Take-home exercise (45%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day
The legend of Camelot and King Arthur emerged from the so-called 'Dark Ages', and grew through imaginative storytelling to become one of the most enduring narratives of western literature. In this unit students will study a range texts which have developed the fantastic world of Camelot, from medieval texts in translation to recent adaptations and reconfigurations. Students will consider the legend's transformations across the tradition from its origins in the Middle Ages, through Romantic medievalism to the late 20th century.
ENGL2665 The Victorian Novel
This unit of study is not available in 2018
Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 1 Classes: 2x1hr lecture/week, 1x1hr tutorial/week Prerequisites: (12 Junior credit point from English) or (6 Junior credit points from English and AMST1001) Assessment: 1x500wd Assignment (10%), 1x1800wd Essay (45%), 1x2200wd Take-home Exercise (45%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day
The novel was the preeminent literary form of the Victorian period, unrivaled in its aesthetic influence and cultural importance. In this course, we'll read a representative selection of the most notable Victorian novels in order to understand what 'the Victorian novel' is, why it rose to prominence during a period of rapid societal change, and how its narrative techniques and thematic concerns continue to shape the genre today.
ENGL2666 Creative Writing:Theory and Practice
Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 1,Summer Main Classes: 1x1hr lecture/week, 1 x 2hr seminar/week Prerequisites: 12 Junior credit points Assessment: 2x1500wd portfolio (70%), 1x1500wd essay (30%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day
This unit fosters students' practice and knowledge of creative writing through interactive workshops, seminars and lectures led by established writers and academics. The emphasis is on writing as a creative mode of intellectual, historical and aesthetic engagement with the contemporary.
ENGL2667 Reading Drama
Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 2 Classes: 1x1hr lecture/week, 1x1hr tutorial/week, 1x1hr equivalent online task/week Prerequisites: (12 Junior credit points in English) or (6 Junior credit points in English and any of AMST1001, PRFM1601 or PRFM1602) Assessment: 1x1000wd scene analysis (25%), 1x1500wd essay (35%), 1x2000wd take-home exercise (40%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day
In this unit, you read some great plays and develop skills in reading dramatic texts. Looking at four or five plays in detail, we consider issues such as: what it means to read dramatic text; the relationship between text and performance; 'personation' and the establishment of dramatic character.
ENGL2669 Australian Stage and Screen
Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 1 Classes: 2x1hr lecture/week, 1x1hr tutorial/week Prerequisites: 12 credit points at 1000 level in Australian Literature or 12 credit points at 1000 level in English Studies Prohibitions: ASLT2616 Australian Stage & Screen Assessment: 1x 5-10 minutes/500wd (based on textual analysis of selected text/passage) oral presentation/summary (20%), 1x 2000wd essay (40%), 1x 2000wd take-home exercise (40%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day
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.
ENGL2671 Australian Writing in the Postmodern Age
Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 1 Classes: 2x1hr lecture/week, 1x1hr tutorial/week Prerequisites: 12 credit points at 1000 level in Australian Literature or 12 credit points at 1000 level in English Studies Prohibitions: ASLT2609 Assessment: 5x 200wd Online posts (10%), 1x 1500wd Essay (40%), 1x 2000wd Take-Home Exercise (50%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day
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.
ENGL2672 Postcolonial Modernisms/Modernities
Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 1 Classes: 2x1hr lecture/week, 1x1hr tutorial/week Prerequisites: 12 credit points at 1000 level in Australian Literature or 12 credit points at 1000 level in English Studies Assessment: 3 x 500wd Reader Response (30%), 1x 1000wd Interpretive Analysis (20%), 1x 2000wd Research Project (35%), 1x Participation (15%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day
This unit examines literary and cultural expressions of modernism/modernity in sites that were or continue to be colonised. We will study how notions such as race, gender, class, sexuality, nation, and religion shape ideas of being modern, and how 20th and 21st century aesthetic works register the contradictory yet interconnected experiences of modernity.
3000 level units of study
Selective
ENGL3603 Contemporary British Literature
This unit of study is not available in 2018
Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 2 Classes: 1x2-hr seminar/week Prerequisites: 18 senior credit points from any of (English or Australian Literature) Assessment: 1x4000wd essay (60%), 1x1500wd annotated bibliography (30%), 1x500wd in-class oral presentation and report (10%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day
This unit examines literary texts produced in Britain in the past two decades, exploring their relationship to significant social and political changes occurring in Britain over that period. We will investigate a variety of literary, social, and cultural issues, each of which have contributed to contemporary British culture.
ENGL3607 Modern Irish Literature
This unit of study is not available in 2018
Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 1 Classes: 1x1hr lecture/week, 1x2hr seminar/week Prerequisites: 18 Senior credit points from English or Australian Literature Assessment: 1x500wd annotated bibliography (12%), 1x1500wd Essay (38%), 1x2000wd Take-home exercise (50%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day
This unit of study charts the development of Irish literature from the late nineteenth century to the present day, in the form of drama, short fiction, novels, poetry, biography and autobiography. Prominent themes include: the emergence of the modern Irish nation through resistance, civil war, and independence from Britain; Northern Ireland and the Troubles; expatriation and exile; wit and verbal dexterity; the fate of specifically "Celtic" sensibilities; and the relation of writing to history (ancient, colonial, the Famine, Republicanism).
ENGL3609 Mapping American Literature
This unit of study is not available in 2018
Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 1 Classes: 1x1hr lecture/week, 1x2hr seminar/week Prerequisites: (18 Senior credit points from English or Australian Literature) or (12 Senior credit points of American Studies including AMST2601) Assessment: 1x1000wd annotated bibliography (30%), 1x2500wd Essay (50%), 1x500wd equivalent Seminar presentation (10%), Seminar participation (10%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day
In this unit, we will map the places and spaces-urban, suburban, regional-of American literature as these are represented in a variety of film and literary texts from the nineteenth through the twentieth centuries. Our study will also include consideration of specific locales-Chicago and Hollywood, for example-that have given rise to important literary movements and cultural forms, as well as consideration of the ideological work that certain regions, such as the South, perform in relation to the nation.
ENGL3611 Issues in the Semiotics of Language
This unit of study is not available in 2018
Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 1 Classes: 1x2hr seminar/week Prerequisites: 18 Senior credit points from English or Australian Literature Prohibitions: ENGL3915 Assessment: 1x2000wd (35%), 1x4000wd Essay (65%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day
This unit examines some key historical and theoretical topics in the semiotics of language. We begin with an investigation into the structuralist legacy, concentrating on exegetical and theoretical questions raised by Saussurean "valeur" and "difference". We then discuss analyses of lexical polysemy and alternatives to the Saussurean paradigm provided in the Humboldtian and Soviet traditions and in Relevance Theory. The course ends by assessing the desirability and difficulties of accommodating emotion in theories of linguistic signification.
ENGL3616 Reading Contemporary America
This unit of study is not available in 2018
Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 2 Classes: 1x2hr seminar/week Prerequisites: (18 Senior credit points from English or Australian Literature) or (ARHT2656 and 6 credit points from (ARHT2652 or ARHT2653 or ARHT2655 or ARHT2657 or ASNS3616 or ENGL2627 or ENGL2638 or ENGL3604 or FILM2601 or HSTY2608 or ICLS2637 or MUSC2663)) Prohibitions: ENGL2035 or ENGL2635 Assessment: 4x500wd reading response exercise (30%), 1x4000wd research essay (60%), seminar particiaption (10%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day
In this unit we will investigate the most interesting and engaging cultural work done in the US over the last decade, focusing on intellectual and aesthetic cultural engagement with cultural and political diversity. In particular we will be considering: how 'quality' televisions reconfigures the aesthetic ecology, how protests movements (Black Lives Matter, Occupy) affect the aesthetic representation of citizenship, how LGBTIQ concerns are reflected in new and familiar aesthetic domains, and what reading does to your brain.
ENGL3623 The 18th Century: Scandal and Sociability
This unit of study is not available in 2018
Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 1 Classes: 1x1-hr lecture/week, 1x2-hr seminar/week Prerequisites: 18 senior credit points from English or Australian Literature Prohibitions: ENGL2659 Assessment: 1x1500wd research report (40%), 1x2500wd research essay (50%), 1x500wd discussion paper (10%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day
In eighteenth-century Britain, authors were brought into new relation with readers. Commercial publication, now central to literary production and dissemination, meant texts reached an anonymous and potentially limitless readership. How did awareness of this new public dimension shape literary texts? Students will evaluate the constitutive role of scandal and sociability in the period's most important texts. We will focus on the development of the novel as a sociable form, and assess recent theories addressing public engagement in eighteenth-century literature.
ENGL3633 Introduction to Old English
Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 1 Classes: 1x1hr lecture/week, 2x1hr tutorials/week Prerequisites: 18 Senior credit points each in any of (English or Australian Literature), Linguistics or Celtic Studies Prohibitions: ENGL3621 or ENGL3622 or ENGL3631 or ENGL3632 Assessment: 1x1000wd translation exercise (20%), 1x1500wd Essay (40%), 1x1.5hr exam (40%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day
Old English was the language of England from the fifth century until the twelfth. This earliest phase of the English literary tradition evolved against a background of cultural encounters: as the Anglo-Saxons encountered the culture of Rome, as they adopted and adapted the Christian religion, and as they reflected on their origins on the European continent. This unit introduces students to the language spoken and written by the Anglo-Saxons, and presents the opportunity to translate and read Old English texts.
ENGL3642 Medieval Literature: Dreams and Visions
This unit of study is not available in 2018
Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 2 Classes: 1x2-hr seminar/week Prerequisites: (18 senior credit points from English or Australian Literature) or (18 senior credit points from Celtic Studies) Assessment: 1x1500wd annotated bibliography (25%), 1x2500wd essay (40%), 1x2000wd take-home exercise (35%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day
This unit will study the literature of dreams and visions of the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period against a range of literary and social backgrounds. The unit will begin with a survey of the classical and biblical background to works which may be defined as dreams or visions, as well as examining the relationship between the two genres and their transformations from the Middle Ages into the Renaissance.
ENGL3651 Christopher Marlowe
Credit points: 6 Teacher/Coordinator: Assoc Prof Liam Semler Session: Semester 2 Classes: 1x2hr seminar/week Prerequisites: 18 senior credit points in English or Australian Literature Prohibitions: ENGL3922 Assessment: 1x1500wd essay (25%), 1x2500wd essay (40%), 1x2000wd take-home exercise (35%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day
Christopher Marlowe was a radically creative dramatic and poetic genius whose blockbuster plays changed the course of English drama and paved the way for Shakespeare. His daring themes put Renaissance taboos such as atheism, necromancy, homoeroticism and current politics on stage for public debate. These themes, combined with his trademark obsessive protagonists, mighty poetic line and aesthetics of violence, continue to impress audiences and scholars. This unit is an advanced study of Marlowe's body of work in the context of his times and modern scholarship.
ENGL3655 The Literary in Theory
This unit of study is not available in 2018
Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 2 Classes: 1x2hr seminar/week Prerequisites: 18 Senior credit points from English or Australian Literature Assessment: 1x2000wd Seminar presentation of research proposal (30%), 1x4000wd Research essay (70%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day
This unit will introduce students to significant movements in modern and contemporary literary theory to think about what it means to speak of the literary. The unit of study begins by examining the question of "literariness" through its exposition and defence by a number of scholars. We will pursue the applications of their arguments through a selection of theoretical models, including queer and gender theory, psychoanalysis, and race theory, to consider the cultural and ideological work imaginative literature undertakes.
ENGL3657 The Brontes
Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 1 Classes: 1x2hr seminar/week Prerequisites: 18 Senior credit points in English or Australian Literature Assessment: 1x2000wd assignment (40%), 1x500wd Essay proposal (10%), 1x3500wd Essay (50%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day
The novels of the Bronte Sisters are among the most enduringly popular Victorian texts, yet they have an ambiguous critical status. The perception that the Brontes are labile and cloistered writers, best interpreted psychoanalytically, raises questions about the relationship between biography and literature, and the ways in which notions of social and historical relevance play into judgments about literary value. We will think about canonical and popular literary status, biography and authorship, gender and writing, and Victorian society.
ENGL3695 Medieval Tales of Wonder
Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 2 Classes: 1x2hr seminar/week, 1x1hr lecture/week Prerequisites: 18 Senior credit points each in either (English or Australian Literature) or Celtic Studies Assessment: 1x1500wd annotated bibliography (25%), 1x3000wd research essay (60%), Class Participation (15%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day
Medieval Romance includes narratives of adventure and ideals of courtly love within a context infused with wondrous potential. In this unit students will explore a selection of romance texts, exploring themes of gender, the fantastic and literary history. Students will analyse recent developments in theoretical approaches to Medieval romance, including monster theory and affect theory. Texts will be studied in Middle English with class support.
ENGL3696 Advanced Creative Writing
Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 2 Classes: 1x2hr seminar/week Prerequisites: ENGL2666 or 12 credit points at 2000 level in English Assessment: 1x1000wd outline of project (20%), 1x2000wd draft of project (30%), 1x3000wd final project (50%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day
This unit builds on ENGL2666 Creative Writing: Theory and Practice, offering students the opportunity to complete a creative project. Student may complete projects in fiction, poetry, creative non-fiction, writing for performance, or by combining any of the above.
ENGL3697 Imagining Jerusalem
Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 1 Classes: 1x2hr seminar/week Prerequisites: 12 credit points at 2000 level in English Assessment: 4x500wd reader responses/blog posts (30%), 1x4000wd research essay (60%), seminar participation (10%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day
Jerusalem has long fascinated travellers, artists, and pilgrims, both as a real and as an imagined city. For some, this fascination lies in the religious symbolism of the city, while in the contemporary period Jerusalem is also increasingly shaped by the role it plays in the conflict in the Middle East. This unit focuses on how literature and film from Australia, Europe, Israel, North America, and Palestine imagines Jerusalem as a past, present, and future city.
ENGL3701 Major Australian Authors: Depth Study
Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 2 Classes: 1x2hr seminar/week Prerequisites: 12 credit points at 2000 level in Australian literature or 12 credit points at 2000 level in English Studies Prohibitions: ASLT3608 Assessment: 1x 2000wd Short essay (40%), 1x 4000wd Long essay (60%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day
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.
ENGL3703 Writing Australian Nature
Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 2 Classes: 1x2hr seminar/week Prerequisites: 12 credit points at 2000 level in Australian literature or 12 credit points at 2000 level in English Studies Prohibitions: ASLT2620 Assessment: 6x 250wd Online Writing Tasks (10%), 1x 2000wd Critical Concepts Journal (40%), 1x 2500wd Essay (50%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day
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.
ENGL3706 African American Literature
Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 1 Classes: 1x1hr lecture/week, 1x2hr seminar/week Prerequisites: 12 credit points at 2000 level in Australian literature or 12 credit points at 2000 level in English Studies or 12 credit points at 2000 level in American Studies Assessment: 1x 1000wd Close-reading exercise (30%), 1x 500wd Essay Plan (20%), 1x 3000wd Essay (50%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day
We examine a range of African American-authored texts, including films, from the 18th century to the present to consider the relationship of race and writing, and the ways African American cultural expression contributes to and interrogates American cultural history. Issues covered include enslavement and freedom, and segregation and Civil Rights.
ENGL3707 Text, Action and Ideology
Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 1 Classes: 1x2hr seminar/week Prerequisites: 12 credit points at 2000 level in Australian literature or 12 credit points at 2000 level in English Studies Assessment: 1x 2500wd Essay (40%), 1x 3500wd Essay (60%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day
This unit of study explores text-production as a social and ideological act, with particular reference to English-speaking contexts. We will ask how competing social and political interests shape specific textual practices, and consider the ideological influences impinging on theoretical discourse about language and textuality.
Interdisciplinary project unit of study
FASS3999 Interdisciplinary Impact
Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 1,Semester 2 Classes: 1hr lecture/performance event week for 5 weeks 2hr workshop per week for 10 weeks 2hr online learning modules for 5 weeks Prerequisites: 18 credit points at 2000 level Assessment: 1x 2000 wds equivalent Mapping knowledge exercise (30%), 1x 10 minutes Collaborative Presentation (30%), 1x 2000 wds equivalent Critical reflection essay (40%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day
Note: Department permission required for enrolment
Interdisciplinarity is a key skill in fostering agility in life and work. This unit provides learning experiences that build students' skills, knowledge and understanding of the application of their disciplinary background to interdisciplinary contexts. In this unit, students will work in teams and develop interdisciplinarity skills through problem-based learning projects responding to 'real world problems'.
Honours
Honours in English requires 48 credit points from this table including:
(i) 30 credit points of 4000-level Honours thesis units
(ii) 18 credit points of 4000-level Honours seminar unit
Honours seminar units
ENGL4113 Approaches to Critical Reading
Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 2 Classes: 1x2hr seminar/week Assessment: 1x 6000wd Essay (100%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day
This core unit introduces students to a variety of critical approaches to literature from the eighteenth century to the present. It asks a number of questions basic to the study and understanding of literature. What does it mean to read a text critically? What roles do critical and theoretical perspectives play in our understanding of literary texts? In addition to developing critical and theoretical literacy, the unit will examine how such strategies may be brought to bear on reading literary texts and whether they are effective and/or appropriate in specific cases.
ENGL4114 Approaches to Literary History
Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 2 Classes: 1x2hr seminar/week Assessment: 1x 1500wd critical assessment (20%), 1x 2000wd archival report (30%), 1x 2500wd essay (50%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day
How do literary texts relate to history? When we divide time into different periods, what are the implications for interpretation? Focusing on one or two literary periods, this unit introduces students to historicist literary criticism, developing skills in relating literature to historical context. We read key texts from the designated period(s), conduct research into appropriate archives (including online databases), and identify the theoretical questions that underpin those investigations.
ENGL4115 Approaches to Global English Literatures
Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 1 Classes: 1x2hr seminar/week. Assessment: 1x 5min, 500wd equivalent Oral presentation (10%), 1x 1500wd Take Home Exercise (35%), 1x 4000wd Research Essay (55%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day
Students will familiarise themselves with critical approaches to a range of literary works written throughout the world in the English language, and they will critically examine ways in which theories of globalization and place have come to inflect paradigms of local and national identity.
ENGL4116 Approaches to Genre
Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 1 Classes: 1x2hr seminar/week Assessment: 1x 6000wd Essay (100%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day
In this unit students will critically examine significant theoretical definitions of and debates about genre through time. They will apply an advanced understanding of genres (or 'kinds' or 'forms') to representative and problematic texts in order to develop a deep appreciation of the function, limitations and transformations of genre in literature. The complex relationship between formal properties, creativity and historical context will be explored.
ENGL4117 Henry James and the Art of Fiction
Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 1 Classes: 1x2hr seminar/week Assessment: 1x 6000wd Essay (100%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day
In addition to writing distinctive short stories and novels, Henry James was a voluminous critic whose writings on the art of fiction have shaped modern approaches to the novel. In this unit, we take a chronological approach, reading selections from James's critical writings alongside his novels and tales to compare the author's evolving theory of fiction with his practice of it. Matters of special interest include Anglo-American literary culture; strategies of characterisation and narration; experiments in literary style; the purpose of criticism; and the ethics of representation.
ENGL4118 Modern Australian Poetry and Poetics
Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 1 Classes: 1x2hr seminar/week Assessment: 1x 6000wd Essay (100%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day
This unit explores the history, contexts and variety of modern and contemporary Australian poetry, with particular focus on the question of modernism. Students will study a selection of key Australian poets and statements about poetry from 1900 to the present.
ENGL4119 Shakespeare and His Contemporaries
Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 2 Classes: 1x 2hr seminar/week Assessment: 1x 2500wd Essay 1 (40%), 1x 3500wd Essay 2 (60%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day
The unit explores important works by Shakespeare and his contemporaries in the contexts of late-sixteenth- and early-seventeenth-century England. The unit will analyse the texts and authors in relation to one another to uncover key discourses of the period relating to politics, humanism, drama, poetry, gender and genre. Students will gain valuable insights into the literary and cultural richness of the period and come to a deeper understanding of Shakespeare's relevance and significance in his day.
ENGL4121 The Secret History of the Novel
Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 2 Classes: 1x2hr seminar/week Assessment: 1x 6000wd Research essay (100%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day
The English novel emerged as a distinct genre in the eighteenth century. This unit investigates its development and circulation, analysing novels that have since been canonised as well as material usually excluded from the story of the novel's rise. We aim at a more complex understanding of the novel as a historical genre as well as the roots of its contemporary appeal.
ENGL4122 Critical Contexts for Creative Writing
Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 1 Classes: 1x2hr seminar/week Prerequisites: ENGL3696 Assessment: 1x 1500wd Seminar Paper (30%), 1x 4500wd Essay (70%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day
This unit will further develop your understanding of how creative writing connects with major scholarly and critical debates in literary and cultural theory. Focusing in particular on writers whose work is both creative and theoretical, the unit will examine: theories of authorship; the history of the book; the ethics and politics of writing; aesthetic hierarchy and value; close and distant reading; form, genre and style; writing, sex and embodiment.
Honours thesis units
ENGL4111 English Honours Thesis 1
Credit points: 12 Session: Semester 1,Semester 2 Classes: 7x0.5hr supervision meetings/semester Mode of delivery: Supervision
This unit involves research towards and preliminary writing of an Honours thesis of 15000 words, in collaboration with a supervisor approved by the English Honours Coordinator.
ENGL4112 English Honours Thesis 2
Credit points: 18 Session: Semester 1,Semester 2 Classes: 7x0.5hr supervision meetings/semester Assessment: 1x 15000wd Thesis (100%) Mode of delivery: Supervision
In this unit you complete your substantial, independent research project in English. Regular meetings with a supervisor approved by the English Honours Coordinator will guide your progress. You will continue to submit drafts at agreed times and develop your expertise in relevant research methods and analytical skills as well as in the subject matter of your specialist topic.
Advanced coursework
The requirements for advanced coursework in English are described in the degree resolutions for the Bachelor of Arts/Bachelor of Advanced Studies.
24-36 credit points of advanced study will be included in the table for 2019.