Life Writing: Theory and Practice (ALL783)
Semester 2 / 2012

Texts

y separately published work icon Balanda : My Year in Arnhem Land Mary Ellen Jordan , Crows Nest : Allen and Unwin , 2005 Z1198559 2005 single work autobiography (taught in 1 units) Mary Ellen Jordan left her Melbourne city life to spend fourteen months in Maningrida, a coastal community in Arnhem Land. A place that would challenge her perceptions of race, culture, political correctness, art, language, and whiteness.
y separately published work icon Joe Cinque's Consolation Helen Garner , Sydney : Pan Macmillan Australia , 2004 Z1132428 2004 single work prose (taught in 26 units)

'In October 1997 a clever young law student at ANU made a bizarre plan to murder her devoted boyfriend after a dinner party at their house. Some of the dinner guests - most of them university students - had heard rumours of the plan. Nobody warned Joe Cinque. He died one Sunday, in his own bed, of a massive dose of rohypnol and heroin. His girlfriend and her best friend were charged with murder. Helen Garner followed the trials in the ACT Supreme Court. Compassionate but unflinching, this is a book about how and why Joe Cinque died. It probes the gap between ethics and the law; examines the helplessness of the courts in the face of what we think of as 'evil'; and explores conscience, culpability, and the battered ideal of duty of care.' (Source: Pan Macmillan website)

Garner takes 'a deliberately subjective and "literary" approach' to her material with an 'emphasis on a sympatheitic authorial persona as the source of the reader's perspective' (Susan Lever 'The Crimes of the Past: Anna Funder's Stasiland and Helen Garner's Joe Cinque's Consolation'. Paper delivered at the Association for the Study of Australian Literature (ASAL) conference 2006).

Description

This unit examines the various meanings and modes of the diverse group of writings (memoir, biography, autobiography, ficto-criticism) brought together under the term of 'life writing'. The unit offers theoretical perspectives on life writing and related issues (to do with identity, agency, embodiment, memory, testimony, and truth) and the opportunity to undertake practically in a mode of life writing in the light of such theory. The aim is to encourage students to engage (both critically and creatively) with issues-to do with identity, life stories, and experience-that highlight the complex and complementary relationship between 'life' and 'writing'.

Assessment

Two essays (one critical, one creative) 2500 words each, (2x 50%) 100%

Other Details

Offered in: 2011, 2010
Current Campus: Burwood (Melbourne), External
Levels: Postgraduate
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