106-413 Reading Suburbia in Post-War Australia

Usually admission to the postgraduate diploma or fourth year honours in English, see Honours entry.

This subject will explore postwar Australian literature and cultural criticism as a means to unravelling the conflicting political and aesthetic claims made on or against suburbia. The subject will suggest that debates about suburbia are also debates about modernity more generally conceived, and as such, impact upon our understanding of issues like colonisation, multiculturalism, consumerism, the feminisation of domestic space, urban planning and the relationship between private and public spheres. Students will also encounter a series of theoretical writings which introduce the concepts necessary to discuss the relationship between cultural material and a broader notion of modernity. As a result, on completion of the subject, students should be familiar with literary texts and critical writing implicated in debates about the interpretation of suburbia in Australian life and have developed analytical techniques that will enable them to mediate cultural products, everyday experience and theoretical paradigms.

Written work totalling 5000 words for 4th year, 6000 words for masters students.

A subject reader will be available.

• G Johnson, My Brother Jack.
• C Stead, The Man who Loved Children.
• P White, Riders in the Chariot.