'In 1982, Sally Morgan travelled back to her grandmother's birthplace. What started as a tentative search for information about her family, turned into an overwhelming emotional and spiritual pilgrimage. My Place is a moving account of a search for truth into which a whole family is gradually drawn, finally freeing the tongues of the author's mother and grandmother, allowing them to tell their own stories.' Source: Publisher's blurb.
'Set in nineteenth-century Australia, Voss is the story of the secret passion between an explorer and a naïve young woman. Although they have met only a few times, Voss and Laura are joined by overwhelming, obsessive feelings for each other. Voss sets out to cross the continent. As hardships, mutiny and betrayal whittle away his power to endure and to lead, his attachment to Laura gradually increases. Laura, waiting in Sydney, moves through the months of separation as if they were a dream and Voss the only reality.
'From the careful delineation of Victorian society to the sensitive rendering of hidden love to the stark narrative of adventure in the Australian desert, Patrick White's novel is a work of extraordinary power and virtuosity.'
Source: Random House Books (Sighted 21/09/2012)
'Oscar Hopkins is an Oxford seminarian with a passion for gambling. Lucinda Leplastrier is a Sydney heiress with a fascination for glass. The year is 1864. When they meet on the boat to Australia their lives will be forever changed ...'
(Source: Publisher's website)
Students test a range of critical and theoretical approaches in their analyses of fiction and non-fiction, written by or about people who have risen to the challenges of potential marginalization on account of migration, indigenous origins or disability. The unit interrogates both the inspirational and the confrontational effects that these works have on readers as well as on the social contexts that have produced them. It examines ways of approaching diversity within the community and emphasises the particular importance of understanding individual people within the time and place of their experiences as well as within the time and place of the publication of their diverse voices.
Essay 40%
Participation - Tutorial presentation and participation 20%
Examination 40%