INS4210

Modern Indonesian literature - defining national identity

Offered subject to faculty approval
* Proposed to be offered next in 1999

Barbara Hatley

12 points
* 3 hours per week
* Second semester
* Clayton

Objectives Students successfully completing this subject should have gained an understanding of connections between modern Indonesian literature and historical processes of modernisation, colonial relations, nationalist struggle and nationhood and post-colonial formation of identity. Through reading and analysing selected texts (in the original or translation) students should have developed an appreciation of the qualities and strategies of these texts as literary works, and of the way these features connect with the social environment in which the wiritings were produced. They should also have developed some appreciation of ways in which post-colonial and feminist literary theories can be applied to Indonesian writing.

Synopsis This subject explores modern Indonesian literature in terms of the themes of encoutner with modernity, colonialism and pos-colonial experience, natinalism and the establishment of the nation state, contemporary identityt formation. It analyses the emergence of modern Indonesian writingas a response to colonial conditions and traces connections with the nationalist movement and with issues of modernity and identity. It then analyses post-independence literature in terms of its reflection on key ideological issues of particular periods. In the contemporary period it discusses the role of literature as a stie of definition of identity in post-modern, post-colonial conditions, as political critique and protest and as a field of contestation of competing representations of gender.

Assessment Written (7000 words): 75%
* Seminar participation: 25%

Recommended texts

Eagleton T Literary theory: An introduction Blackwell, 1988
Foulcher K Pudjangga Baru Flinders U
Foulcher K Social commitment in literature and the arts CSEAS, Monash U
Pane A Shackles Ohio U P/Belenggu P T Dian Rakyat
Pramudya Ananta Tur Girl from the coast Select Books/Gadis Pantai Hasta Mitra
Teeuw A Modern Indonesian literature vols 1 and 2, Nijhoff