GSC2409

Narratives and representations

Mary Griffiths

8 points
* Second semester
* 3 hours per week (2-hour lecture/screening, 1-hour tutorial)
* Gippsland and distance
* Prerequisites: English major, GSC1401 and GSC1402 or equivalents; gender studies major, GSC1901 and GSC1402 or equivalents

Objectives On completion of this subject student will develop their understanding of different approaches to culture, the place of literature as an institution in culture, and to aesthetic and materialist frameworks for the analysis of literary and cultural texts. The mediated connections between popular texts, worldly knowledge and different readers/audiences are explored in this subject with particular reference to gender, race and ethnicity, and class. In part one students will develop an understanding of the debate about `realism' and the differences between aesthetic and materialist accounts of representation; skills in analysis of a range of compositional practices; a familiarity with a number of `regimes' of representation, particularly of `the body': racist, romantic, medical, pornographic and class-based. In part two students will develop a familiarity with popular generic narrative forms across a range of media and, through case studies in selected media forms, an understanding of the techniques for promoting `ways of being' for mass audiences and readerships.

Synopsis This subject is a text-based study of prose narratives, film, photographic and televisual materials, and the wider social questions they raise. Students will consider how narratives demonstrate structural similarity and difference across a range of media; and how codes and conventions of representing `reality' are used to construct meaning shared by different audiences and readerships. Working from a comparison of idealist and materialist accounts of representation , the subject includes the study of a range of regimes of representation (medical, scientific, legal, pornographic); body narratives in the popular framing of contemporary issues such as AIDS or euthanasia; and a short study of examples of selected mass audience and circulation genres: gothic romance, film noir, the thriller, and other narratives of detection. Each student will be required to complete a case study across a range of print, televisual and film texts.

Assessment Case study (3000 words): 45%
* Major assignment (3000 words): 45%
* Participation: 10%

Prescribed texts

Subject reader
Subject video
Palmer J Potboilers: Methods, concepts and case studies in popular fiction Routledge, 1991
and two examples of popular fiction (subject to availability):
Chandler R The big sleep Random, 1988