123041 PS Literary Studies / Proseminar Literature (2021W)

For a long time, Australian national imaginaries have centred on the white, British male who has ‘tamed’ what Europeans have often perceived as an antipodean wilderness. Though these images have been highly problematic, considering that they have been based on the exclusion of many, for instance women and Indigenous Australians, they have also been immensely powerful. Over the last few decades, however, such representations have become increasingly fragile. After all, both the demographic diversification of Australia and the growing recognition of Australia’s colonial legacy have irrevocably changed the nation. Literature has responded to these changes by consciously laying out how Australia in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century has to be re-imagined.
In this Proseminar, we will be concerned with key issues and debates within contemporary Australian literature, such as the role of Australia’s Indigenous heritage and the impact of migration on the nation as well as shifting conceptions of gender and sexuality. To this end, we will read texts by Indigenous (in our case solely Aboriginal), Anglo-Celtic (i.e. white Australians of British/Irish descent) and ethnic minority writers (i.e. Australians who are neither of Indigenous nor Anglo-Celtic descent). In terms of genre, we will cover both prose (a short story and two novels) and drama.

Central questions addressed in this Proseminar will include:
1. What are ‘postcolonial literatures’ and why does contemporary Australian writing fall into this category?
2. What role does Indigenous writing play in contemporary Australian literature? How do Indigenous Australians and their concerns feature in Australian writing?
3. What role does writing by ethnic minority authors play in contemporary Australian literature?
4. How does contemporary Australian literature respond to and make sense of demographic changes?
5. How does contemporary writing from Australia engage with the issues of class, gender and sexuality?

Apart from addressing the primary texts in their form and content, this Proseminar is also designed to introduce you to basic academic skills, including academic writing, thesis formulation and the structuring of a term paper in literary studies.