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Material Girls, Material Boys (ALL326)
Semester 1 / 2016

Texts

y separately published work icon Pink Lili Wilkinson , Crows Nest : Allen and Unwin , 2009 Z1610783 2009 single work novel young adult (taught in 1 units)

'The pink jumper was practically glowing in my grey bedroom. It was like a tiny bit of Dorothy's Oz in boring old black-and-white Kansas. Pink was for girls.

'Ava Simpson is trying on a whole new image. Stripping the black dye from her hair, she heads off to the Billy Hughes School for Academic Excellence, leaving her uber-cool girlfriend, Chloe, behind.

'Ava is quickly taken under the wing of perky, popular Alexis who insists that: a) she's a perfect match for handsome Ethan; and b) she absolutely must audition for the school musical.

'But while she's busy trying to fit in - with Chloe, with Alexis and her Pastel friends, even with the misfits in the stage crew - Ava fails to notice that her shiny reinvented life is far more fragile than she imagined.' (From the publisher's website.)

10,000 Dresses, Ewart

Impulse, Hopkins

Sold, McCormick

Description

Both traditional and new media texts incorporate representations of the child that are gendered, sexualised, pathologised and commodified. In this unit, students critically engage with a range of texts representing the child as embodied subject, and research and respond to the politics of representation. Building on their understanding of narrative theory, ideology, power and identity as they operate in literature and other textual forms, students investigate how texts intervene in the construction of the embodied child as a gendered and sexual subject.

Supplementary Texts

Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes, CRUTCHER

Geography Club, HARTINGER

Wonder, PALACIO

Uglies, WESTERFIELD

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