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AustLit

Australian Popular Culture (ENGL1040)
Semester 2 / 2015

Texts

y separately published work icon Look Who's Morphing Tom Cho , Artarmon : Giramondo Publishing , 2009 Z1580990 2009 selected work short story (taught in 6 units)

Look Who's Morphing is a collection of bizarre, funny, often menacing stories in which, along with his extended family, the central character undergoes a series of transformations, shape-shifting through figures drawn from film and television, music clips and video games, porn flicks and comics. He is Godzilla, a Muppet, and Whitney Houston's bodyguard; the Fonz, a robot, a Ford Bronco 4x4 - and, as a climax, a Gulliver-sized cock rock singer, played upon by an adoring troupe of sexy Lilliputians in short skirts and sailor suits and cheerleader outfits. Within these fantasies there is a deep intellectual and emotional engagement, a fundamental questioning of the nature of identity, and the way it constructs itself in a world dominated by the images of popular culture. – From the publisher's website.

y separately published work icon Little White Slips Karen Hitchcock , Sydney : Picador , 2009 Z1619397 2009 selected work short story (taught in 3 units)
y separately published work icon Breath Tim Winton , Camberwell : Hamish Hamilton , 2008 Z1457075 2008 single work novel (taught in 21 units) 'Breath is a story about the wildness of youth - the lust for excitement and terror, the determination to be extraordinary, the wounds that heal and those that don't - and about learning to live with its passing.'
Source: Publisher's website

Description

The course introduces students to Australian cultural studies through consideration of constructions of Australian national identity in a broad range of popular cultural forms such as popular literature, film and television.

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