Texts

y separately published work icon The Red Thread Nicholas Jose , South Yarra : Hardie Grant Books , 2000 Z840486 2000 single work novel (taught in 1 units)

'A seductive love story set in contemporary Shanghai, The Red Thread intertwines the lives of two pairs of lovers across the centuries. Shen is a young, American-educated appraiser for an auction house. Ruth is a gifted Australian artist he meets, it seems, by chance. And Han is a beautiful, enigmatic woman who both facilitates and complicates their relationship. Yet all three lives mysteriously mirror characters described in a rare, eighteenth-century book that comes up for auction – a book that is missing its final chapters. As the characters in the original tale move toward an ominous, unknown end, Shen’s search for the missing pages goes from curiosity to desperation as he hopes to discover – and perhaps alter – his fated future with Ruth.'

Source: Author's blurb.

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y separately published work icon Radiance : The Play + The Screenplay Louis Nowra , Sydney : Currency Press , 2000 Z668116 2000 selected work drama screenplay (taught in 6 units)
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y separately published work icon Hiam Eva Sallis , St Leonards : Allen and Unwin , 1998 Z804000 1998 single work novel (taught in 4 units)

"The world had changed. As far as the eye could see, the earth was red. It wasn't orange, or soil red, or brown red, or perhaps all of them at once. It was profound rich red, glittering deeply in the mid-morning light. She was vaguely aware of having known that somewhere in Australia the land was this colour but the reality of it was startling and stunning.'

Hiam is the story of a journey through both a psychic and geographic landscape, a journey through disintegration and loss. Hiam, an Arab migrant woman, abandons Adelaide to unravel her life and memories on the road North after her family and identity have been destroyed. In the course of the novel she weaves an identity out of past, present, stories, dreams and the Australian landscape with which she engages for the first time.

On one level, this is the story of a migrant's experience in a strange land, a novel which explores the pressures, fragilities and strengths of exiled communities. It is also a story of universal human grief, individual courage and the will, not only to survive, but to live fully in the world."

Source.

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y separately published work icon Benang : From the Heart Kim Scott , Fremantle : Fremantle Press , 1999 Z135862 1999 single work novel (taught in 31 units) 'Oceanic in its rhythms and understanding, brilliant in its use of language and image, moving in its largeness of spirit, compelling in its narrative scope and style, Benang is a novel of celebration and lament, of beginning and return, of obliteration and recovery, of silencing and of powerful utterance. Both tentative and daring, it speaks to the present and a possible future through stories, dreams, rhythms, songs, images and documents mobilised from the incompletely acknowledged and still dynamic past.' (Publisher's website)
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Description

Outcomes: Students achieve greater understanding of the multicultural, multivocal nature of contemporary Australian society; the relationship of contemporary Australian cultural identity to that of the past; the representation of contemporary Australian identity in its literature and film. Students become familiar with literary and historical material which establishes and broadens an understanding of the cultural complexity of Australia now and in the past, and are encouraged to view reading itself and the process of publication and presentation of literary work as a significant factor in the construction of a sense of national identity. Students achieve a certain level of verbal fluency and general debating/discussion skills through the requirement to organise, present and defend their research in a tutorial paper; and extend their skills by taking the initiative in research and in primary responses to texts and ideas by formally presenting those initiatives and responses in major items of written work.

Content: Recent Australian literature reflects not just an Anglo-Saxon or Celtic heritage but a multicultural, multivocal society with differences in the ways Australians see themselves or traditional Australian concerns such as the relationship between the human and the landscape. This unit examines some of the distinct Aboriginal, Asian-Australian and other migrant voices which have contributed to a redefinition of Australian literature.

Assessment

This comprises an exercise, essay, and participation and attendance.

Other Details

Current Campus: Crawley
Levels: Undergraduate
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