The Living Mountain: A Celebration of the Cairngorm Mountains of Scotland
by: Nan Shepherd
Trumpet
by: Jackie Kay
Ice Storm
by: Rick Moody
Loaded
Milsons Point
:
Vintage Australia
,
1995
Z565443
1995
single work
novel
(taught in 40 units)
'Families can detonate. Some families are torn apart forever by one small act, one solitary mistake. In my family it was a series of small explosions; consistent, passionate, pathetic. Cruel words, crude threats... We spurred each other on till we reached a crescendo of pain and we retired exhausted to our rooms, in tears or in fury.
'Ari is nineteen, unemployed and a poofter who doesn't want to be gay. He is looking for something - anything - to take him away from his aimless existence in suburban Melbourne. He doesn't believe in anyone or anything, except the power of music. All he wants to do is dance, take drugs, have sex and change the world.
'For Ari, all the orthodoxies of family, sex, politics and work have collapsed. Caught between the traditional Greek world of his parents and friends and the alluring, destructive world of clubs, chemicals and anonymous sex, all Ari can do is ease his pain in the only ways he knows how.
'Written in stark, uncompromising prose, Loaded is a first novel of great passion and power.' (From the publisher's website.)
The broad aim of this course is to look at texts and topics that raise issues of embodiment and identity using contemporary theories and methodologies from literary and cultural studies. The course is organised around literary texts and cultural topics and the primary focus is on examining these texts and topics. However, students are expected to read widely in literary and cultural studies and to situate their analyses of texts and topics by engaging with theories, methodologies and debates that are introduced in the course. These theories, methodologies and debates will be concerned with identities and how they are constructed in relation to some or all of the following as they relate to the body: race (including whiteness); indigeneities; gender; sexualities (both heterosexualities and non-heterosexualities) and body modifications.
Online and in class participation, essay, take-home exam.
