Humanities and Social Sciences

English Program

Honours Unit Timetable and Descriptions 2009

ENG4ABN: Auto/biography: narratives of the self in biography and autobiography
Coordinator: Dr Alexis Harley

People have written biographies and autobiographies for centuries, but only in recent years has the study of these forms become a major field of academic discussion and inquiry. The field opens up many important and interesting questions: What's the relationship between self-knowledge and the knowledge we have of others? How much can we in fact know about self or other? To what extent, and in what ways, does the sense of self we have derive from cultural norms and narratives? What sorts of plots do authors of biographies and autobiographies inherit or fashion in order to write narratives of the self? What role does ideology - gender, class, racial, colonial, ethnic - play in the narratives of self that we can, or might want to, write? In this unit we will discuss these and other issues in relation to a range of biographical and autobiographical texts.

Prescribed Reading :

•  Darwin , C., Autobiographies, (Penguin)

•  Frame, J., An Autobiography (George Braziller)

•  Freud, J., An analysis of a case of hysteria, (Simon & Schuster)

•  Gosse, E., Father and Son , (Penguin)

•  Jacobs, H., Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

•  Nabokov, V., Speak, Memory , (Penguin)

•  Rousseau, J.J., Confessions , (Penguin)

•  White, P., Flaws in the Glass , (Vintage)

•  Wilde,O., De Profundis and other writings (Penguin)

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ENG4WRT: Writing transcendence: Jung, Hillman, Derrida, Levinas
Coordinator: Dr David Tacey

The transcendent dimension will not go away, try as culture might to expunge it.  In modern and in postmodern times, its traditional forms are often obliterated or contested, and then transcendence returns in a new guise.  In Jung it returns as psyche and symbol, in Hillman as soul and image, in Derrida as negative theology and the impossible, and in Levinas as the absolute other.

This unit will explore the transcendent in these psychologists and philosophers, while also reflecting on their common sources: Nietzsche, Heidegger. We will contextualise the return of transcendence to a postmodern philosophy that seemed inimical to it.  We will read essays by Jung, Hillman, Derrida, Levinas, and read or re-read poems and novels in light of the ?postmodern transcendent'. Poets will include Plath, Hardy, Heaney, Larkin, Murray, Wright; and novels by Atwood and Dillard. Students are invited to introduce new works and writers into this list.

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ENG4RWM: Reading and writing memoir
Coordinator: Dr Susan Bradley Smith

Memoir is a flourishing creative non-fiction genre. this course explores a selection of contemporary memoirs - reading as writers - and also expands creative writing competencies. Discussion of contemporary texts will focus on the content of these life stories, as well as the forms and techniques authors use to shape memoirs, considering the interrelationships of technical and thematic concerns. Theoretical and critical issues such as memory, ethics, and authenticity will also be surveyed.

Because the elastic characteristics of the novel can now be found in non-fiction, craft workshops will be devoted to developing these creative skills whilst writing memoir. The guided writing workshops aim to strengthen student's skills in areas such as accessing confessional material, 'capturing' content, writing about place, structuring narratives, conducting research and interviews, and how to deal with ethical issues in writing about subjects.

Assessment requirements will allow students to either consider set texts in terms of their implicit theories of memoir, (submitted in essay form), or allow the opportunity to submit an extended piece of creative non-fiction writing (memoir).

Prescribed Reading :

• Miler, P., The memoir book, (Allen & Unwin) 2007
• Course Reader

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ENG4/5POT: Poetics of transgression
Coordinator: Dr Alison Ravenscroft

Transgression and subversison are often cited as characteristics of avant-garde literary and other artistic practices. These art forms, it is said, transgress and subvert not only social codes, but aesthetic ones. In western art, ‘avant-garde' aesthetics have not only pitted themselves against the prevailing values of ‘polite society' but have transgressed the borders of art; they have challenged artistic genre and modes of representation; they have sought to unsettle received notions of beauty, transcendence, and the sublime; they have sought a ‘revolution in feeling'. This subject studies some exemplary moments in English-language literary history since 1900 up to the present, in Australia and elsewhere, and organises its investigations around the questions: what are transgression and subversion in the literary arts, and what are their effects?

Prescribed Reading:
To be advised.

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ENG4WRF: Writing fiction
Coordinator: Dr Catherine Padmore

This unit takes the form of a series of workshops and seminars focusing on elements of the writer’s craft in fiction, including style, structure, point of view, setting, research and characterisation. Student works in progress will be discussed in detail. Prescribed reading lists will be available in the first class.

Prescribed Reading:
To be advised.

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Content Approved by: Head of School
Page maintained by: Administrative Officer
Last Updated: 20 July, 2009