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AustLit

Transnational Indigenous Literatures (3062HUM)
Semester 1 / 2015

Texts

y separately published work icon Macquarie PEN Anthology of Aboriginal Literature Anita Heiss (editor), Peter Minter (editor), Nicholas Jose (editor), Crows Nest : Allen and Unwin , 2008 Z1483175 2008 anthology poetry drama prose correspondence criticism extract (taught in 19 units)

'An authoritative survey of Australian Aboriginal writing over two centuries, across a wide range of fiction and non-fiction genres. Including some of the most distinctive writing produced in Australia, it offers rich insights into Aboriginal culture and experience...

'The anthology includes journalism, petitions and political letters from both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as well as major works that reflect the blossoming of Aboriginal poetry, prose and drama from the mid-twentieth century onwards. Literature has been used as a powerful political tool by Aboriginal people in a political system which renders them largely voiceless. These works chronicle the ongoing suffering of dispossession, but also the resilience of Aboriginal people across the country, and the hope and joy in their lives.' (Publisher's blurb)

Great Short Stories by Contemporary Native American Writers

Adventures of Vela

Poetry of the Earth: Trilingual Mapuche Anthology

Description

We often study literature on the basis of its nation of origin, but this gets complicated when we read a lot of twentieth century and contemporary indigenous literatures from around the world. Indigenous authors often write in direct opposition to, or in tension with, national languages and literary traditions. In this course we will see how literary forms have been of vital importance for indigenous peoples not only as modes of aesthetic expression, but as potent forms of political resistance to colonial and neo-colonial powers. As we study a variety of genres from indigenous authors in Australia, the Americas and the Pacific, we will see how these literatures imagine the possibility of spaces that don't correspond to the lines on national maps.

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