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Description

Explore the relationships between Australia's changing culture and society and the literature that
society produces for its children. You will focus on the late twentieth and early twenty-first
centuries, and will explore the representation of issues such as: maturation; relationships of self
to place; structures of power and authority in society; and the quest for reconciliation between
the white-settler society and the Aboriginal peoples of Australia. These issues will be examined
in fiction, picture books and film.
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Learning Outcomes
On completion of this unit students will have attained:
1. an understanding of and an ability to apply concepts employed in discussing and
analysing relations between Australian culture and texts produced for children
2. familiarity with notions of high culture and popular culture and understanding of the
orientation of literature to cultural presuppositions and forms
3. an understanding of the relationship between texts and the cultural construction of
childhood and adolescence
4. awareness of the relationships of literature to social and cultural paradigm shifts for
example, the emergence of multiculturalism, the impact of the women's movement,
changing notions of nationhood
5. understanding of theories of genre and examine prominent genres used in a range of texts
written for children in Australia
6. enhanced generic skills such as assembling information to develop an argument,
comparing different points of view, arguing one's own view, and finding creative ways to
present ideas.
7.
Courses offered:
LIT 846 Retelling Stories: Sources of Childrens Literature
This unit focuses on the retelling of traditional stories, mainly drawn from European cultures, as a
significant endeavour in Anglophone childrens literature. It examines how the retelling of classical
myths, Bible stories, heroic legends, Arthurian romances and oriental tales discloses the aspirations of
society and the values it wishes to convey to children.

LIT 847 Romanticism to Postmodernism
Developments in Childrens Literature
This unit takes a thematic approach to the critical and cultural development of childrens literature from
the nineteenth century to the present. It relates the literature to social and intellectual history, and
considers the impact of major paradigm shifts. Topics may include the social and literary constructions
of childhood; the representations of gender, class, race and power; the development of social realism
and of fantasy.

LIT 848 Young Adult Fiction
This unit examines some major themes and concerns associated with young adult fiction as an
identifiable field: self-definition and subjectivity; exploring sexuality and writing the body; social power
and social responsibility; representations of self and society; relationships with dominant ideologies of
twentieth century childrens literature.

LIT 854 Narrative: Theory and Method
Drawing on both theoretical texts and works of fiction, this unit examines the critical application of key
aspects of narrative theories to childrens fiction. Topics include: types of narration, point of view and
focalisation in narrative; beginnings and endings; narrative time; characterisation; theory of genres and
modes; metafiction and experimental fiction.

LIT 855 Australian Childrens Fiction
Considers the development of Australian writing for children, with special emphasis on recent fiction.
What is characteristic of Australian childrens literature? Is there an Australian tradition? How does
childrens literature intersect or engage with formations and developments in Australian culture?

LIT 856 Picture Books
Examines picture books as multi-media texts, focussing on : pictorial codes; the construction of
narrative; text-picture interrelationships; the representation of reality; the reflection of social and
cultural ideology; experimental picture books.

LIT 859 Film and the Folktale Canon
Examines how the Disney industry has defined folktale for the twentieth century, especially its contents
and structures. Explores the significances given to the universal structural elements employed in
Disney versions of folktale and their potential for great ideological impact on culture, especially in the
promotion of particular cultural formations and the containment of change (as in the shifting
representations of limited female agency).
[Not offered in distance mode]

LIT 860 Comedy in Childrens Texts
By focussing on some of the principal types of comic effect in texts produced for children the ludicrous
and the ridiculous; iconoclasm and parody; zanyism; comic violence; transgressiveness - this unit
examines how texts teach, reproduce and reflect notions of the comic, and construct social functions for
the comic. Genres examined include comic verse, stories, novels and plays, TV narratives and film.

LIT 864 Childrens Literature: Concepts and Theories
This unit introduces students to contemporary literary and cultural theories pertinent to reading and
analysing texts produced for children. Topics include: social and historical contexts for the production
and reception of childrens literature; constructions of childhood; semiotics of visual and verbal texts;
critical approaches to childrens texts; critical approaches to childrens texts; ideology and value;
classics, canons and postmodernity.

JPN 815 Manga and Anime
This unit examines narrative forms and processes in a selected range of manga and anime productions.
Areas of special focus will include: manga story structure (both discrete and serial forms), visual
techniques and codes, character types and functions, the production of subjectivities in manga and
anime social worlds, diversifying media types and spin-offs.
Texts will be studied in English.Top

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