Undergraduate Course: Outback, Outlaws and Outcasts: Antipodean literature and (un)settlement (ENLI10365)
Course Outline
| School | School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures |
College | College of Humanities and Social Science |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 10 (Year 4 Undergraduate) |
Availability | Not available to visiting students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | This course engages with a range of Australian and New Zealand literature and film focused upon the experiences of settler communities (including British settlers but also other ethnic groups such as Chinese and Pacific Islanders), as well as indigenous Australian and New Zealand literary responses to white settlement. It focuses primarily upon twentieth- and twenty-first-century ¿reimaginings¿ of the colonial settler experience, but also features creative writing by nineteenth- and early twentieth-century ¿first-generation¿ settlers from England, Ireland and Scotland.
The course will explore the strategies through which antipodean settlers staked a claim to their adoptive countries (including the renaming and ¿taming¿ of the environment, and the ¿forgetting¿ of the often violent acts of appropriation that displaced the indigenous peoples of these territories). We will also investigate the anxieties and sense of alienation that have persisted within settler cultures; and the prevalence of outlaws and ¿outsiders¿ (such as Ned Kelly, the infamous Irish Australian bushranger, or Chinese miners during the antipodean gold rushes of the nineteenth century) within the histories and literatures of these nations.
The course is divided into two sections, the first focused upon writing from Australia, and the second on New Zealand writing. Each section begins with a session on colonial poetry and prose, before moving on to consider a range of later works by well-known authors, poets and film-makers such as Peter Carey, Henry Lawson, David Malouf, Janette Turner Hospital, and Patrick White (Australia); and Katherine Mansfield, Eleanor Catton, Witi Ihimaera, Alison Wong and Jane Campion (New Zealand). |
| Course description |
Week 1 Course introduction; outback and bush country: late nineteenth/early twentieth century Australian poetry and prose
Week 2 Patrick White, Voss
Week 3 David Malouf, Remembering Babylon
Week 4 Peter Carey, True History of the Kelly Gang; Janette Turner Hospital, "Litany for the Homeland"
Week 5 Aboriginal writing and settlement
Week 6 INNOVATIVE LEARNING WEEK
Week 7 Colonial NZ poetry and prose
Week 8 The gold rush: Eleanor Catton, extracts from The Luminaries; Alison Wong, selected poetry
Week 9 ESSAY COMPLETION WEEK
Week 10 NZ settlers on film: Jane Campion's The Piano
Week 11 Katherine Mansfield¿s New Zealand stories
Week 12 Maori settlement: Witi Ihimaera's The Whale Rider (novel and Niki Caro's film)
This course engages with a range of Australian and New Zealand literature and film focused upon the experiences of settler communities (including British settlers but also other ethnic groups such as Chinese and Pacific Islanders), as well as indigenous Australian and New Zealand literary responses to white settlement. It focuses primarily upon twentieth- and twenty-first-century "re-imaginings" of the colonial settler experience, but also features creative writing by nineteenth- and early twentieth-century "first-generation" settlers from England, Ireland and Scotland.
The course will explore the strategies through which antipodean settlers staked a claim to their adoptive countries (including the renaming and "taming" of the environment, and the "forgetting" of the often violent acts of appropriation that displaced the indigenous peoples of these territories). We will also investigate the anxieties and sense of alienation that have persisted within settler cultures; and the prevalence of outlaws and "outsiders" (such as Ned Kelly, the infamous Irish Australian bushranger, or Chinese miners during the antipodean gold rushes of the nineteenth century) within the histories and literatures of these nations.
The course is divided into two sections, the first focused upon writing from Australia, and the second on New Zealand writing. Each section begins with a session on colonial poetry and prose, before moving on to consider a range of later works by well-known authors, poets and film-makers such as Peter Carey, Henry Lawson, David Malouf, Janette Turner Hospital, and Patrick White (Australia); and Katherine Mansfield, Eleanor Catton, Witi Ihimaera, Alison Wong and Jane Campion (New Zealand).
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Course Delivery Information
| Not being delivered |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- -An understanding of the ways in which Australian and New Zealand settler writing has evolved from the colonial period to the present
-A comparative understanding of the major themes and preoccupations in Australian and New Zealand writing about the settler experience
-A clear sense of the problematic status of Australian, New Zealand and other settler literatures within postcolonial theory, given the conflicted relationship between white settlers and indigenes/other migrant groups
-A critical vocabulary with which to analyse the shift from "imported" British literary traditions to a local literary aesthetic.
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Reading List
Set Texts (compulsory purchase)
Carey, Peter. True History of the Kelly Gang. Faber & Faber, 2011. ISBN 0571270158.
Catton, Eleanor. The Luminaries. Granta, 2013. ISBN 1847084311.
Ihimaera, Witi. The Whale Rider. Heinemann, 2005. ISBN 0435131087.
Malouf, David. Remembering Babylon. Vintage, 1994. ISBN 009930242X.
Smith, Angela, ed. Katherine Mansfield: Selected Stories. Oxford University Press, 2008. ISBN 0199537356.
White, Patrick. Voss. Vintage, 1994. ISBN 0099324717.
Selected secondary reading
A. Australia/Australian Literature:
Bennett, Bruce and Strauss, Jennifer (eds), The Oxford Literary History of Australia (Oxford University Press, 1998).
Callahan, David, Contemporary Issues in Australian Literature: International Perspectives. London: Routledge, 2002.
Clancy, Laurie, A Reader¿s Guide to Australian Fiction (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1992).
Dixon, Robert, Writing the Colonial Adventure (Cambridge University Press, 1995).
Goodwin, Ken, A History of Australian Literature (London: Macmillan, 1986).
Gunew, Sneja, Haunted Nations: The Colonial Dimensions of Multiculturalisms (Routledge, 2004).
Herganhan, Laurie, Unnatural Lives: Studies in Australian Convict Fiction (University of Queensland Press, 1993).
Huggan, Graham, Australian Literature: Postcolonialism, Racism, Transnationalism. Oxford University Press, 2007.
Kramer, Leonie (ed.), The Oxford History of Australian Literature (Oxford University Press, 1981).
Lawson, Alan and Tiffin, Chris, De-Scribing Empire: Post-colonialism and Textuality (London: Routledge, 1994).
Macintyre, Stuart, A Concise History of Australia (Cambridge University Press, 2004).
Pierce, Peter (ed), The Oxford Literary Guide to Australia. (Oxford University Press, 1987).
Reid, Ian, Fiction and the Great Depression: Australia and New Zealand (Melbourne: Edward Arnold, 1979).
Reynolds, Henry, The Other Side of the Frontier: Aboriginal Resistance to the European Invasion of Australia (Melbourne: Penguin, 1990).
Rickard, John, Australia: A Cultural History (London: Longman, 1988).
Schaffer, Kay, Women and the Bush: Forces of Desire in the Australian Cultural Tradition (Cambridge University Press, 1988).
Webby, Elizabeth, The Cambridge Companion to Australian Literature. Cambridge University Press, 2000.
New Zealand/New Zealand Literature
Curnow, Allen. Look back harder : critical writings, 1935-84. Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2013.
Evans, Patrick. The long forgetting : post-colonial literary culture in New Zealand. Christchurch: Canterbury University Press, 2007.
Goldie, Terry. Fear and Temptation: The Image of the Indigene in Canadian, Australian and New Zealand Fiction. McGill Queen¿s University Press, 1989.
Jones, Lawrence. Picking up the traces : the making of a New Zealand literary culture, 1932-1945. Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2003.
Kaplan, Sydney Janet. Katherine Mansfield and the Origins of Modernist Fiction. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University. Press, 1991.
Keown, Michelle. Pacific Islands Writing: The Postcolonial Literatures of Aotearoa/New Zealand and Oceania. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.
King, Michael. Maori: A Photographic and Social History. Auckland: Heinemann, 1983.
King, Michael. The Penguin History of New Zealand. Auckland: Penguin, 2003.
Murray, Stuart. Never a soul at home : New Zealand literary nationalism and the 1930s.Wellington: Victoria University Press, 1998.
Paul, Mary. Her side of the story : readings of Mander, Mansfield & Hyde. Dunedin: Otago University Press, 1999.
Smith, Bernard, European Vision and the South Pacific, 1768-1850 (Oxford University Press, 1960).
Stafford, Jane, and Mark Williams. Maoriland: New Zealand literature, 1872-1914. Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2006.
Stead, C.K. Kin of place : essays on 20 New Zealand writers. Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2002.
Sturm, Terry (ed), The Oxford History of New Zealand Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.
Williams, Mark and Michele Leggot (eds). Opening the book : new essays on New Zealand writing. Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1995.
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Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Michelle Keown
Tel: (0131 6)50 6856
Email: |
Course secretary | Ms June Haigh
Tel: (0131 6)50 3620
Email: |
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