units

ATS2519

Faculty of Arts

18 September 2017 31 December 2024

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This unit entry is for students who completed this unit in 2016 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.

Monash University

6 points, SCA Band 1, 0.125 EFTSL

Undergraduate - Unit

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

Faculty

Arts

Organisational Unit

Literary Studies

Coordinator(s)

Dr Rebecca Do Rozario

Offered

Not offered in 2016

Synopsis

A study of contemporary literature for children by major Australian, American and British writers. The unit explores a range of modes, including humour, fantasy, picture story books, realistic and historical novels. Specific issues examined include the construction of national identity, cultural variations in thematic and formal emphasis, changing notions of childhood and the child figure, and the notion of the implied child/adolescent reader. Students will be encouraged to consider the ideological implications of the adult interests vested in the production of texts for children.

Outcomes

It is intended that students undertaking this course should develop:

  1. Knowledge and an understanding of the historic context of the development of the main genres of children's literature, and of contemporary trends and issues.
  2. Knowledge and an understanding of the ways in which different cultures construct different ideas of childhood, and of implied child readers.
  3. A critical understanding of the ways in which adult and child readers learn to construct cultural paradigms, particularly of national identity, through their reading.
  4. Critical skills pertaining to narratology, deconstruction and discourse analysis.
  5. An understanding of the crucial significance of childhood reading, and a desire to explore beyond the text's parameters.

Assessment

Within semester assessment: 100%

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.

See also Unit timetable information

Chief examiner(s)

Dr Rebecca Do Rozario

This unit applies to the following area(s) of study

Literary studies

Prerequisites

Twelve credit points of first-year Arts units.

Prohibitions

ATS3519