English Descriptions
Semester 2 2020 unit of study availabilty
Some Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences units of study originally intended to run in Semester 2, 2020 are no longer available.
A full and up-to-date list of units of study available in Semester 2, 2020 from the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, can be found on this webpage.
English
Major
A major in English requires 48 credit points from this table including:
(i) 12 credit points of 1000-level selective units
(ii) 12 credit points of 2000-level selective units
(iii) 18 credit points of 3000-level selective 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 selective units
(ii) 12 credit points of 2000-level selective units
(iii) 12 credit points of 3000-level selective units
1000-level units of study
Selective
ENGL1002 Narratives of Romance and Adventure
This unit of study is not available in 2020
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 Englishes: Language Society Text 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.
ENGL1012 The Gothic Imagination
This unit of study is not available in 2020
Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 2 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 2 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.
ENGL1016 Imagining the Black Atlantic
Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 1 Classes: 1 x 1hr lecture/week, 1x 2hr tutorial/week Assessment: 2x1000wd Close-reading exercise (40%), 1x500wd Reflection on feedback (15%), 1x2000wd Essay (45%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day
From the 16th through the 19th centuries, the Transatlantic slave trade meant roughly two-thirds of those who crossed the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas were African. This unit introduces students to the complexities of race and representation by examining the responses to and expressive forms arising from the social, political and cultural interactions of African, Caribbean, American and European peoples that together produced what Paul Gilroy termed the Black Atlantic. We examine a range of literary and film texts from Britain and the Americas from the 18th century to the present to consider slavery and its legacies, plantation cultures, and the cultural and historical work of 'blackness. '
ENGL1017 The Idea of the Classic
Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 1 Classes: 2x1hr lecture/week, 1x1hr tutorial/week Assessment: 1x750wd Close reading exercise (15%), 1x750wd Close reading exercise (20%), 1x750wd Classic Covers exercise (20%), 1x2250wd Final Essay (45%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day
Why are some books considered classics while others are hardly read at all? How is the idea of the classic linked to debates about history, representation, excellence, and taste? This unit answers these questions through in-depth, guided readings of a small number of major texts that have, at one time or another, been celebrated for their classic status. We consider whether literary classics must be difficult, innovative, representative, or popular; how they shape our judgements about literary tradition and value; and why they remain implicated in debates about sexuality, race, national identity, and class.
ENGL1018 The Medieval Imaginary
Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 1 Classes: 2x1hr lecture/week, 1x1hr tutorial/week Prohibitions: ENGL2657 Assessment: 1x1000wd Close Reading Task (20%), 1x1500wd Research Essay (40%), 1x2000wd Take-Home Exercise (40%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day
This unit introduces students to the literatures of the peoples who lived in the British Isles in the Middle Ages (c. 500-1500). We will focus on the transformations of myth and legend in this period and study different medieval approaches to storytelling. In particular, we will explore how medieval writers imagined and re-imagined their societies in different cultural contexts. Starting with the Old English heroic poem Beowulf, students will read translations of early and late medieval poetry and prose. We will analyse medieval literature in society, intersections between history and the imagination, the treatment of gender roles and relations, and Christian influences on 'pagan' stories, among other issues.
ENGL1019 Jane Austen, Then and Now
Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 2 Classes: 2x1hr lecture/week, 1x1hr tutorial/week Prohibitions: ENGL2611 Assessment: 1x750wd Close Reading Task (20%), 1x1250wd Research Assignment (30%), 1x2000wd Essay (40%), 1x500wd Tutorial Preparation (10%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day
What does it mean to read literature historically? And what does it mean to relocate classic texts to contemporary contexts? This unit will address these questions by focusing on the example of Jane Austen, one of Britain's most celebrated novelists. We will analyse how these novels engage the literary, social and political debates of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Then, through consideration of recent adaptations, students will analyse the reading processes that allow some novelists to escape their history.
ENGL1026 Constructing the Fictive Self
This unit of study is not available in 2020
Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 1 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
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
This unit of study is not available in 2020
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
This unit of study is not available in 2020
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
This unit of study is not available in 2020
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.
ENGL2627 Screening Sexuality
Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 2 Classes: 1x2-hr seminar/week Prerequisites: 12 credit points at 1000 level in English or 12 credit points at 1000 level in Film Studies Prohibitions: ENGL2027 Assessment: 1x1500wd word essay (40%), 1x2000wd take-home exercise (40%), 1x500wd tutorial presentation (10%), tutorial participation (10%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day
This unit explores the relationship between cinema and sexuality in classic films through detailed, historicised readings. Questions to be investigated include the erotics of cinematic genre and form; the sexual politics of representation and spectatorship; stardom, scandal and cult appreciation; cinema and sexuality as technologies of modernity; cinema, sexuality and pedagogy.
ENGL2638 Literature and Cinema
This unit of study is not available in 2020
Credit points: 6 Session: 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 2020
Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 1 Classes: 2x1-hr lectures/week, 1x1-hr tutorial/week Prerequisites: 12 credit points at 1000 level in English. 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.
ENGL2650 Reading Poetry
This unit of study is not available in 2020
Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 1 Classes: 2x1hr lectures/week, 1x1hr tutorial/week Prerequisites: 12 credit points at 1000 level in English Prohibitions: ENGL2050 Assessment: 1x1000wd essay (20%), 1x1500wd essay (35%), 1x2000wd essay (45%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day
A range of poetry will be offered each year concentrating on an historical period, an individual poet, and a close study of a poetic form. Readings of individual poems will involve both intensive study of technical and linguistic characteristics, as well as of the broader historical, social, ideological and personal contexts and issues which they reflect. As well, there will be discussion of on-going literary-critical debate about poetry and its function.
ENGL2653 Western Theories of Language
This unit of study is not available in 2020
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
Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 2 Classes: 2x1-hr lectures/week, 1x1-hr tutorial/week Prerequisites: 12 credit points at 1000 level in English 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
This unit of study is not available in 2020
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 2020
Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 2 Classes: 2x1-hr lectures/week, 1x1-hr tutorial/week Prerequisites: 12 credit points at 1000 level in English or 12 credit points at 1000 level in American Studies Assessment: 1x500wd in-class exercise (15%), 1x1500wd reader response (40%), 1x2500wd essay (45%) 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 Camelot: Text Stage Screen
Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 1 Classes: 1x1hr lecture/week, 1x1hr online lecture/week, 1x1hr tutorial/week Prerequisites: 12 credit points at 1000 level in English Assessment: class participation (5%), 3x160wd blog posts (15%), 1x520wd equiv class presentation (10%), 1x1000wd essay (20%), 1x2500wd essay (50%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day
From Geoffrey of Monmouth's Caerleon to the Kennedy White House, Camelot represents the glittering apogee of chivalry and courtliness. Or does it? Students will consider the legend's political and cultural transformations from medieval texts to musical, film, graphic novel and fantasy adaptations.
ENGL2665 The Victorian Novel
This unit of study is not available in 2020
Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 1 Classes: 2x1hr lecture/week, 1x1hr tutorial/week Prerequisites: 12 credit points at 1000 level in English 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 Classes: 1x1hr lecture/week, 1 x 2hr seminar/week Prerequisites: 12 credit points at 1000 level in English Assessment: 1x1000wd creative writing draft (25%), 1x1000wd online writing task (25%), 1x2500wd portfolio and exegesis (50%) 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. Exploring the theoretical and practical dimensions of developing a personal creative writing practice, the unit emphases writing as a mode of intellectual, historical and aesthetic engagement with the contemporary.
ENGL2667 Reading Drama
This unit of study is not available in 2020
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.
ENGL2668 Australian Gothic
This unit of study is not available in 2020
Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 2 Classes: 2x1hr lecture/week, 1x1hr tutorial/week Prerequisites: 12 credit points at 1000 level in English or 12 credit points at 1000 level in Australian Literature Prohibitions: ASLT2619 Assessment: 1x 5-10mins (approximately 500wd) oral presentation/summary (20%), 1x2000wd essay (40%), 1x2000wd take-home exercise (40%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day
From the earliest days of European colonisation alongside visions of its promise, Australia has also been seen as the worst of all possible worlds, a hellish place of exile where nature seemed uncannily strange or hostile. The 'gothic' has offered a powerful means of representing this dystopian theme. This unit examines the gothic mode in Australian literature and film from the nineteenth century to the present, taking in such issues as 'Weird Melancholy', ghosts, bunyips, badlands and postcolonial (dis)enchantment.
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.
ENGL2670 Revolutionary Writing: 1960s and Beyond
This unit of study is not available in 2020
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 Prohibitions: ASLT2602 Assessment: 5x200wd online tasks (10%), 1x1500wd essay (40%), 1x2000wd take-home exercise (50%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day
The 1960s through to the 1970s were decades of international cultural and social upheaval. A new range of cultural influences, drugs, pop art, sexual, women's and gay liberation, and the predominantly American counter-culture, influenced a new generation of Australian writers. Bush realism gave way to previously censored subject material - sex, drugs, anti-Vietnam War sentiment - and innovative forms of writing. This unit of study investigates these issues through the works of some of the key writers and films of this period.
ENGL2671 Australian Writing in the Postmodern Age
This unit of study is not available in 2020
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.
ENGL2673 Television Fictions
This unit of study is not available in 2020
Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 2 Classes: 1x2hr lecture/week, 1x1hr tutorial/week Prerequisites: 12 credit points at 1000 level in the English major Assessment: 1x500wd or equivalent Class presentation (10%), 1x1500wd Textual Analysis (35%), 1x2500wd Research Paper (55%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day
This unit will consider how systems of meaning have been generated in TV narratives. It will address theoretical questions regarding production and authorship, but most of this unit will focus on how particular aesthetic forms underwrite the construction of television fictions across factual narratives (news, sport), drama, comedy and serials.
3000 level units of study
Selective
ENGL3607 Modern Irish Literature
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).
ENGL3608 Transpacific American Literature
This unit of study is not available in 2020
Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 1 Classes: 1x1-hr lecture/week, 1x2-hr seminar/week Prerequisites: 12 credit points at 2000 level in English or 12 credit points at 2000 level in Australian Literature Prohibitions: ENGL3608 Assessment: 1x2000wd research essay (40%), seminar participation 10%, 1x1000wd textual commentary (20%), 1x1.5hr exam (30%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day
Students will apply advanced literary methods to address the broad ways in which American Literature in the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries has engaged with the opening of transpacific space. Themes will include the nature of westward exploration, the emergence of planetary perspectives and how these have affected US culture. Students will build on their knowledge of literary study to consider the key methodological question of how relationships between nation and narrative should be defined.
ENGL3611 Issues in the Semiotics of Language
This unit of study is not available in 2020
Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 1 Classes: 1x2hr seminar/week Prerequisites: 12 credit points at 2000 level in English or 12 credit points at 2000 level in 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.
ENGL3623 The 18th Century: Scandal and Sociability
This unit of study is not available in 2020
Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 1 Classes: 1x1-hr lecture/week, 1x2-hr seminar/week Prerequisites: 12 credit points at 2000 level in English or 12 credit points at 2000 level in 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 2 Classes: 1x1hr lecture/week, 2x1hr tutorials/week Prerequisites: 12 credit points at 2000 level in English or 12 credit points at 2000 level in Australian Literature or 12 credit points at 2000 level in 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.
ENGL3635 Old Norse
This unit of study is not available in 2020
Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 1 Classes: 1x1hr lecture/week, 1x2hr tutorial/week Prerequisites: 12 credit points at 2000 level in English or 12 credit points at 2000 level in Australian Literature or 12 credit points at 2000 level in Linguistics or 12 credit points at 2000 level in Celtic Studies Prohibitions: ENGL3631 or ENGL3632 or ENGL3622 or ENGL3621 Assessment: 2x1500wd essays (70%), 1x1hr exam (30%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day
Old Norse is the name given to the language of medieval Scandinavia which was spoken by the Viking invaders of Britain in the early Middle Ages. Old Norse literature presents a rich variety, from mythological and legendary poetry to Icelandic sagas. This unit extends students' understanding of the Germanic culture which the Anglo-Saxons brought to Britain by introducing them to the language of medieval Iceland, the literary centre of medieval Scandinavia, through texts written in Old Icelandic.
ENGL3642 Medieval Literature: Dreams and Visions
This unit of study is not available in 2020
Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 1 Classes: 1x2-hr seminar/week Prerequisites: 12 credit points at 2000 level in English or 12 credit points at 2000 level in Australian Literature or 12 credit points at 2000 level in 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
This unit of study is not available in 2020
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
Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 1 Classes: 1x2hr seminar/week Prerequisites: 12 credit points at 2000 level in English or 12 credit points at 2000 level in 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 2 Classes: 1x2hr seminar/week Prerequisites: 18 credit points at 2000-level from 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 or 12 credit points at 2000 level in Australian Literature 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 2 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
This unit of study is not available in 2020
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
This unit of study is not available in 2020
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.
ENGL3705 Writing Country: Indigenous Ecopoetics
This unit of study is not available in 2020
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 or 12 credit points at 2000 level in Indigenous Studies Assessment: 1x1000wd seminar presentation and paper (20%), 1x1000wd online writing task (30%), 1x4000wd essay (50%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day
This unit surveys Australian Indigenous representations of Country in poetry, fiction, art and film. We consider Indigenous expressions of Country through comparative ecocritical, transnational and trans-Indigenous frameworks, and examine how Indigenous philosophies of Country can contribute to thinking about issues such as environmental crisis and climate change.
ENGL3706 African American Literature
Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 2 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.
ENGL3708 Love and Desire in Early Modern England
This unit of study is not available in 2020
Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 2 Classes: 1x2hr seminar/week Prerequisites: 12 credit points at 2000 level in English or 12 credit points at 2000 level in Australian Literature Assessment: 1x2000wd Take-Home Paper (35%), 1x2500wd Essay (40%), 1x1500wd Reading and Analysis (25%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day
In this unit, we learn, and discuss, the languages used to investigate love and desire in early modernity. We explore works, including drama and poetry, by Shakespeare and his contemporaries, discovering the relationships that they make between emotion, reason, language, politics and sexuality.
ENGL3709 Global Literature and Times of Perpetual War
This unit of study is not available in 2020
Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 2 Classes: 1x1hr lecture/week, 1x2hr seminar/week Prerequisites: 12 credit points at 2000 level in English or 12 credit points at 2000 level in Australian Literature Assessment: Participation (15%), 1x3000wd Research Project (55%), 3x500wd Reader Responses (30%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day
This unit explores how literary and cultural works address the state of perpetual war of the historical present. Focusing on Third World decolonisation contexts, we will consider how writers and artists interrogate the gender, racial, and national ideologies that fuel violence, and how literary, cultural analysis contributes towards understanding the global, unevenly distributed effects of war.
ENGL3710 Utopias and Dystopias: Literature; Films; TV
This unit of study is not available in 2020
Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 1 Classes: 1x2hr seminar/week Prerequisites: 12 credit points at 2000 level in English or 12 credit points at 2000 level in Australian Literature Assessment: 4x500wd Response/Blog Post (40%), 1x4000wd Essay (60%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day
This unit critically explores modern and contemporary utopias and dystopias in literature, tv and cinema. It examines the history, aesthetics and politics of utopias and dystopias, focusing on questions of the development of new spaces and social orders, technology, the environment, surveillance, the post-human and IT. It assesses different conceptions of the future in relation to the present and the past. The unit addresses questions about the representation of the future in different media, and asks students to imagine the future as both dream and nightmare.
ENGL3711 Travellers' Tales
This unit of study is not available in 2020
Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 1 Classes: 1x2hr seminar/week Prerequisites: 12 credit points at 2000 level in English or 12 credit points at 2000 level in Australian Literature Prohibitions: ENGL2648 or ENGL2048 Assessment: 1x3500wd essay (50%), 1x500wd essay plan (10%), 4x500wd blog posts (40%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day
This unit explores travel writing as both historical genre and creative practice. Ranging from Homer to contemporary travel blogs, it considers how the archetypal journey story is reshaped in particular cultural and political contexts. Students will have the opportunity to demonstrate their learning via both critical and creative assessment.
JCTC3603 Representing the Holocaust
This unit of study is not available in 2020
Credit points: 6 Session: Semester 2 Classes: 1x2hr lecture/week, 1x1hr tutorial/week Prerequisites: 12 credit points at 2000 level in the Jewish Civilisation, Thought and Culture major, International and Comparative Literature Studies major, English Studies major or European Studies major. Assessment: 1x1hr exam (30%), class participation (10%), 1x500wd critical assessment of reading (10%), 1x500wd discussion board activity (10%), 1x2500wd research essay (40%) Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day
Few historical events have inspired as many literary and artistic interpretations as the Holocaust. This unit will explore and critically assess how a broad range of forms, including but not limited to literature, film, fine arts, museums and memorials represent the Holocaust. In addition to a critical evaluation of these diverse artistic representations, the historical development of these forms will be considered as well as their national and transnational contexts.
Interdisciplinary project unit of study
Where this major is being completed as a first major towards a degree, students should ensure that the Interdisciplinary Impact unit of study is undertaken.
Where this major is being completed as a second major from the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences towards a degree, the Industry and Community Project unit of study is the appropriate unit to select.
ENGL3999 Interdisciplinary Impact
Credit points: 6 Session: Intensive December,Intensive July,Semester 1,Semester 2 Prerequisites: Completion of at least 90 credit points Prohibitions: Interdisciplinary Impact in another major Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day
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'.
ENGL3998 Industry and Community Project
Credit points: 6 Session: Intensive February,Intensive July,Semester 1,Semester 2 Corequisites: Interdisciplinary Impact in any major. Mode of delivery: Normal (lecture/lab/tutorial) day
This unit is designed for third year students to undertake a project that allows them to work with one of the University's industry and community partners. Students will work in teams on a real-world problem provided by the partner. This experience will allow students to apply their academic skills and disciplinary knowledge to a real-world issue in an authentic and meaningful way.