106-124 Australian Literary Controversies

Credit Points

HECS Band

Coordinator

Prerequisites

Usually admission to the Postgraduate Diploma or Fourth Year Honours in English, see Honours entry.

Semester

Contact

Subject Description

This subject is organised around a number of important Australian literary hoaxes or disputes, the grounds of which identify significant areas of contestation in Australian cultural life. The cases under analysis here demonstrate the various ways in which cultural authority is legitimated or challenged through the production and reception of literary texts. Specifically, they focus on issues of national cultural identity; aesthetic judgement; the literary politics of the cold war; ethnic authenticity; the gendering of institutional power and the role of state intervention and the marketplace in literary production. Students should develop an understanding of the production of historically specific cultural and literary value judgements and develop their own skills in critical adjudication and analysis.

Assessment

Written work totalling 5000 words.

Prescribed Texts

A subject reader will be available.

• H Darville (Demidenko), The Hand that Signed the Paper. Allen & Unwin.
• H Garner, The First Stone: Some Questions about Sex and Power. Picador.
• G Greer, The Female Eunuch. Granada.
• F Hardy, Power Without Glory. Angus and Robertson.
• M Harris & J Murray-Smith, The Poems of Ern Malley. Allen & Unwin.
• M Heyward, The Ern Malley Affair. Faber and Faber.
• R Manne, The Culture of Forgetting: Helen Demidenko and the Holocaust. Text Publishing.
• Mudrooroo, Writing from the Fringe: A Study of Modern Aboriginal Literature. Hyland House.