Texts

y separately published work icon The Boat Nam Le , Camberwell : Hamish Hamilton , 2008 Z1495449 2008 selected work short story (taught in 42 units)

'In the magnificent opening story, "Love and Honor and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice," a young writer is urged by his friends to mine his father's experiences in Vietnam - and what seems at first a satire on turning one's life into literary commerce becomes a transcendent exploration of homeland, and the ties between father and son. "Cartagena" provides a visceral glimpse of life in Colombia as it enters the mind of a fourteen-year-old hit man facing the ultimate test. In "Meeting Elise" an ageing New York painter mourns his body's decline as he prepares to meet his daughter on the eve of her Carnegie Hall debut. And with graceful symmetry, the final, title story returns to Vietnam, to a fishing trawler crowded with refugees where a young woman's bond with a mother and her small son forces both women to a shattering decision.' (From the author's website.)
form y separately published work icon The Proposition Nick Cave , ( dir. John Hillcoat ) Australia United Kingdom (UK) : Autonomous Jackie O Productions Pictures in Paradise Surefire Film Productions LLP , 2005 Z1216692 2005 single work film/TV thriller western crime (taught in 8 units)

'Set in the 1880s, [The Proposition] opens in the middle of a frenzied gunfight between the police and a gang of outlaws. Charlie Burns ... and his brother Mikey are captured by Captain Stanley... Together with their psychopathic brother Arthur, ... they are wanted for a brutal crime. Stanley makes Charlie a seemingly impossible proposition in an attempt to bring an end to the cycle of bloody violence.'


Source: Nick Cave's website (http://www.nickcaveandthebadseeds.com/)

Sighted: 20/09/2005
y separately published work icon The Magic Pudding : Being the Adventures of Bunyip Bluegum and His Friends Bill Barnacle and Sam Sawnoff Norman Lindsay , Sydney : Angus and Robertson , 1918 Z862346 1918 single work children's fiction children's humour satire (taught in 4 units) "The adventures of two koalas, a penguin, an old sailor and a cantankerous walking, talking pudding that is vulnerable to thieves."
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form y separately published work icon Romulus, My Father Nick Drake , ( dir. Richard Roxburgh ) Australia : Arenafilm , 2007 Z1308732 2007 single work film/TV (taught in 1 units)

Film adaptation of Raymond Gaita's biography.
y separately published work icon In the Winter Dark Tim Winton , Ringwood : McPhee Gribble , 1988 Z375616 1988 single work novel horror (taught in 2 units)

'Night falls. In a lonely valley called the Sink, four people prepare for a quiet evening. Then in his orchard, Murray Jaccob sees a moving shadow. Across the swamp, his neighbour Ronnie watches her lover leave and feels her baby roll inside her. And on the verandah of the Stubbses’ house, a small dog is torn screaming from its leash by something unseen. Nothing will ever be the same again. ' (Publication summary)
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y separately published work icon The Cardboard Crown Martin Boyd , London : Cresset Press , 1952 Z501486 1952 single work novel (taught in 1 units) Dominic Langton dies, leaving the family home to his brother, Guy Langton. There, Guy's discovery of letters written by his grandmother, Alice, provokes him to tell his family's history, with Alice as the central figure, in a novel. As a writer, he sets himself the task of discovering, narrating, and creating from the remnants of the past. (Source: Sydney University Press)
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12 Edmondstone Street David Malouf , 1985 single work prose autobiography (taught in 1 units)
— Appears in: 12 Edmondstone Street 1985; (p. 1-66)
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Description

Peter Allen assures us that 'I still call Australia home'. But what and where is home for Australians? The destination is not as simple as the song's popular sentiment would imply. Indeed the concept 'home' is a highly politicised domain burdened by domestic and family ideology; by ideality; and more broadly by nationalism and patriotism; and is inflected by ideas of nationhood. Out of the politics of home arise some of the most prevailing Australian mythsthe bush legend; the battlermyths which this unit takes apart. The concept of 'home' is ironically loaded with every stereotype imaginable: 'home sweet home'; 'home is where the heart is'; 'there's no place like home'. In Australian narratives, the destination point 'home' also has a Eurocentric bias which this unit examines. Exploring a range of literary genresnovels, short stories, poems, film, essays and children's writingsince colonisation, the unit considers various takes on the idea of home.

Key issues that are addressed include (1) the problem for British colonisers of whether England or Australia is home; (2) white Australia's struggle to make a home in this country, to indigenise, adapt, survive; (3) feminist critiques of home; (4) the issue of home against the perceived harshness and hostility of landscape producing battler myths and lost children stories and Australian gothic; and (5) narratives of Aboriginal displacement, the stolen generation.

Assessment

This comprises an exercise, essay, two-hour examination and tutorial assessment on participation, presentation and attendance.

Supplementary Texts

David Carter, Nations and National Identity: too much or not enough? Chapter 1 of Dispossession, Dreams and Diversity: Issues in Australian Studies. Frenchs Forest, NSW: Pearson Education Australia, 2006.

Bob Hodge and Vijay Mishra, Dark Side of the Dream: Australian literature and the postcolonial mind, Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1991.

Bruce Bennett, Home and Away: Reconciling the Local and the Global Chapter 13 in Homing In: Essays on Australian Literature and Selfhood. Perth: Network Books, 2006.

David Carter, Land, Place and Possession, Chapter 7 of Dispossession, Dreams and Diversity: Issues in Australian Studies. Frenchs Forest, NSW: Pearson Education Australia, 2006.

Ken Stewart, The Loaded Dog A Celebration in Fran de Groen and Peter Kirkpatrick, eds., Serious Frolic: Essays on Australian Humour. University of Queensland Press, 2009.

Brenda Niall, Australia Through the Looking Glass: Childrens Fiction, 1830-1980. Melbourne University Press, 1984.

Alice Mills, For Little Australians: Australian Childrens Literature, in Amit Sarwal and Reema Sarwal, eds., Reading Down Under: Australian Literary Studies Reader. New Delhi: SSS Publications, 2009. 447-453.

David Carters For all Australians: the Red Centre, Aboriginal landscapes and national symbols (ch. 8 DDD) discusses the Jindys along with the issues signalled in the title.

Reconciling the Accounts: Jack Davis, Judith Wright, AD Hope Chapter 22 in Homing In: Essays on Australian Literature and Selfhood. Perth: Network Books, 2006.

Networks and Shadows: the public sisterhood of Oodgeroo Noonuccal and Judith Wright Chapter 3 in Brigid Rooney, Literary Activists: Writer-intellectuals in Australian public life. University of Queensland Press, 2009.

Bruce Bennett, Living Spaces: Some Australian Houses of Childhood in Homing In (2006) - Discusses the way Australian authors have evoked the houses of their childhood, including Malouf, Winton, Murray, Hewett, Jack Davis, Sally Morgan.

Bruce Bennett, Expatriate Voices in Homing In (2006) pp.45-54. Discusses both the inter-war and post-war expatriates. Boyd only discussed in passing.

Hoa Pham and Scott Brook, Generation V: The Search for Vietnamese Australia in Amit Sarwal and Reema Sarwal, eds., Reading Down Under: Australian Literary Studies Reader. New Delhi: SSS Publications, 2009. 311-320.

Other Details

Current Campus: Crawley
Levels: Undergraduate
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