This unit is concerned with the contribution of literature to forming and interrogating national identity, and with postwar attempts to assimilate the heritage of modernism to Australian experience. Texts range from the colonial period to the present. They focus on the distant and recent historical record as a site of contention, on racial and gender relations, on attempts to rewrite the romance and pastoral traditions and on recent developments in the Australian novel. Authors studied include Bail, Carey, Garner, Jolley, Malouf, Mudrooroo and Prichard.
