Undergraduate - UnitAZA3410 - Exploring narrative

This unit entry is for students who completed this unit in 2015 only. For students planning to study the unit, please refer to the unit indexes in the the current edition of the Handbook. If you have any queries contact the managing faculty for your course or area of study.

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6 points, SCA Band 1, 0.125 EFTSL

Refer to the specific census and withdrawal dates for the semester(s) in which this unit is offered.

Level	Undergraduate
Faculty	Faculty of Arts
Organisational Unit	South Africa School of Social Sciences
Offered	South Africa First semester 2015 (Day)
Coordinator(s)	Dr Joseph Minga

Synopsis

The unit will investigate story-telling, different narrative genres and the role of narrative in our lives. What constitutes narrative? What are its basic features? How does story-telling communicate meaning? How do we construct effective narrative texts? What do we do with narrative? What is the future of narrative? The texts studied are drawn from a variety of genres and countries. They will include short stories, a novel, and some visual texts. There will be some opportunity for the creation of narrative texts as part of the assessed work.

Outcomes

On successfully completing this unit students should be able to:

Develop a sense of the variety of what is possible in literary and cultural studies and a general understanding of the different forms of narrative;
Handle the critical concepts and language appropriate to the discussion of different narrative genres, devices and techniques;
Recognise some of the theoretical perspectives that inform contemporary literary and cultural studies;
Demonstrate the basic skill of analytic and critical discussion, including the technical conventions proper to English;
Appreciate the historical perspectives and conventions within which literature and other narrative texts are produced.

Assessment

Within semester assessment: 60%
Exam: 40%

Workload requirements

Minimum total expected workload to achieve the learning outcomes for this unit is 144 hours per semester typically comprising a mixture of scheduled learning activities and independent study. A unit requires on average three/four hours of scheduled activities per week. Scheduled activities may include a combination of teacher directed learning, peer directed learning and online engagement.