Monash University Handbook 2010 Postgraduate - Unit

Level	Postgraduate
Faculty	Faculty of Arts
Offered	Not offered in 2010
Coordinator(s)	Kevin Foster

Synopsis

This unit will examine how the Spanish Civil War has been represented and remembered in literature, the visual arts, photography, film, ceremonies and in the form of physical memorials by the victors and the defeated. It will consider how cultural memory of the war has been shaped and expressed during and after the dictatorship. It will examine the forces responsible for this shaping, and explore how, subsequently, these memories of the conflict have been challenged and re-interpreted and the forces responsible for this process of revision.

Objectives

On successful completion of this unit students will:

1. have a solid grasp of the principal causes and events of the Spanish Civil War
2. have a detailed knowledge of the major cultural responses to the war and the political and social forces that brought them into being
3. be able to provide a sophisticated interpretation of individual texts from/about the war, detailing the political and cultural forces that shaped them
4. recognise how cultural memory of the war was shaped, re-shaped and re-interpreted over time
5. be able to explain and apply a variety of theoretical approaches concerning cultural memory.

In addition, students enrolled at Masters level will demonstrate a greater mastery over the broader conceptual issues addressed in the unit and a greater capacity to produce more developed arguments and analyses arising from them.

Assessment

Textual analysis (3000 words): 40%
Seminar presentation (1000 words): 10%
Research assay (4000 words): 50%

Contact hours

One 2-hour seminar per week

Prerequisites

Major sequence in Communication and Media Studies, any European language, European and European Union Studies, or other discipline approved by the unit coordinator

Prohibitions

COM4120