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Reorientations in Australian Literature (ASLT2605)
Semester 1 / 2009

Texts

y separately published work icon Wrong About Japan : A Father's Journey with His Son Peter Carey , Milsons Point : Vintage Australia , 2004 Z1153365 2004 single work autobiography travel (taught in 1 units) Peter Carey writes about his relationship with his son when they both embark on a journey to Japan and discover the world of Japanese animation.
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y separately published work icon The Eastern Slope Chronicle Yu Ouyang , Rose Bay : Brandl and Schlesinger , 2002 Z976924 2002 single work novel (taught in 3 units)
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y separately published work icon The Year of Living Dangerously Christopher Koch , West Melbourne : Nelson , 1978 Z493822 1978 single work novel (taught in 2 units)

'The charismatic god-king Sukarno has brought Indonesia to the edge of chaos - to an abortive revolution that will leave half a million dead. For the Western correspondents here, this gathering apocalypse is their story and their drug, while the sufferings of the Indonesian people are scarcely real: a shadow play. Working at the eye of the storm are television correspondent Guy Hamilton and his eccentric cameraman Billy Kwan. In Kwan's secret fantasy life, both Sukarno and Hamilton are heroes. But his heroes betray him, and Billy is driven to desperate action. As the Indonesian shadow play erupts into terrible reality, a complex personal tragedy of love, obsession and betrayal comes to its climax.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

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y separately published work icon Shanghai Dancing Brian Castro , Artarmon : Giramondo Publishing , 2003 Z1011730 2003 single work novel (taught in 5 units)

'After 40 years in Australia, António Castro packs a bag and walks out of his old life forever. The victim of a restlessness he calls "Shanghai Dancing," António seeks to understand the source of his condition in his family's wanderings. Reversing his parents' own migration, António heads back to their native Shanghai, where his world begins to fragment as his ancestry starts to flood into his present, and emissaries of glittering pre-war China, evangelical Liverpool and seventeenth-century Portugal merge into contemporary backdrops across Asia, Europe and Australia. A "fictional autobiography," Shanghai Dancing is a dazzling meditation on identity, language and disorientation that combines photographs and written images in the style of W.G. Sebald. ' (Publication summary)

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Description

Through a reading of Australian fiction, film and poetry, this unit examines the nature, place and function of China, Southeast Asia and the South Pacific in the Australian literary imagination. Its intention is at once to give students a broad acquaintance with such works and an introduction to the poetics of trans-cultural perception which those works wittingly or unwittingly manifest.

Assessment

One 1500 word mid-semester essay (30%), one 4000 word end-of-semester take-home exam (60%) and one tutorial presentation (10%)

Other Details

This unit is available as a designated 'Advanced' unit for students who are already enrolled in the BA (Advanced) degree program.

Levels: Undergraduate
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