Cirrus@Austlit

A number of recent studies in literary and cultural theory have focused on issues such as the nature of reader-text interaction, the complex of processes involved in the production (writing) and reception (reading) of texts, and the culturally constructed nature of readers and writers.

This subject utilises students' responses to 'literary' texts, and their writing/rewriting/transformation of parallel text as a basis for reflexive analysis of the processes involved in response to literature and the necessary connections between reading and writing.

Objectives

On completion of this subject, students should be able to:

1. Understand and evaluate the nature of readers' response to 'literary' texts: their own and those of the students they will teach.

2. Experiment with a range of written genres as part of a deliberate attempt to integrate the teaching of reading and writing.

3. Make informed choices of appropriate texts for teaching in the upper primary and secondary school.

4. Develop teaching approaches to these texts which exhibit an understanding of current literary and cultural theory.

Content

This unit covers the following topics:

1. Reading and Literary Response

A reader-response approach to literature will be placed in the context of cultural heritage, new critical, and cultural theory approaches.

2. Redefinition of Literature

Canonic views of literature will be contrasted with reconstructed views of literary and popular culture texts.

3. Reading Practices and Positions

Open and closed texts. Literary and cultural repertoires. Gaps, silences and contradictions in texts. Reading and power. Reading and gender.

4. The Reading-Writing Nexus

Formula stories and conventional narrative. Textual ideology and unconventional narrative. Intertextuality and re-reading. Textuality in the classroom.

5. Issues in the Literature Classroom

Criteria for text selection. Censorship. Bibliotherapy. Levels of response to literature.

Approaches to Teaching and Learning

The reading-writing praxis which is the foundation of this subject requires that students will both encounter and produce a range of texts in a workshop situation. These experiences will be linked to lectures which will cover a range of relevant literary and cultural theory.