ALL784 - Life Writing Now

Unit details

Year:

2024 unit information

Enrolment modes:Trimester 1: Burwood (Melbourne), Online
Credit point(s):1
EFTSL value:0.125
Unit Chair:Trimester 1: Ann Vickery
Prerequisite:

Nil

Corequisite:Nil
Incompatible with: Nil
Typical study commitment:

Students will on average spend 150-hours over the teaching period undertaking the teaching, learning and assessment activities for this unit.

This will include educator guided online learning activities within the unit site.

Educator-facilitated (scheduled) learning activities - on-campus unit enrolment:

1 x 2-hour weekly seminar

Educator-facilitated (scheduled) learning activities - online unit enrolment:

Online independent and collaborative learning activities including 1 x 2-hour seminar equivalent

Content

‘Life Writing’ designates a vast literary movement that has gathered momentum and popularity in the 21st century. While creative nonfiction and personal essay proliferate across digital publishing, contemporary experiments with hybridity in auto/biography, lyric essay, autofiction, graphic memoir, and multimedia destabilise traditional ideas of authorship, allowing exploration of fluid and diverse identities and contexts.

This unit situates life writing as a central mode of contemporary discourse. By studying texts from writers such as Maggie Nelson, Alison Bechdel, Rachel Cusk and others, students will explore formal innovation, and engage in current debates about the possibilities and provocations offered by contemporary Life Writing. Exercises and assessments undertaken throughout the unit will develop skills in combining creative and critical modes of reading and writing practice.

ULO These are the Learning Outcomes (ULO) for this unit. At the completion of this unit, successful students can: Deakin Graduate Learning Outcomes
ULO1

Articulate the cultural importance of life writing as a transnational creative practice, with particular attention to its hybrid and transmedia affordances

GLO2: Communication

GLO8: Global citizenship

ULO2

Identify ways in which formal innovations in life writing respond to contemporary developments in both publishing and sociocultural contexts

GLO1: Discipline specific

GLO2: Communication

ULO3

Communicate knowledge about contemporary life writing using various critical and creative forms of writing, including forms appropriate to publication

GLO2: Communication

GLO4: Critical thinking

Assessment

Assessment Description Student output Grading and weighting
(% total mark for unit)
Indicative due week
Assessment 1 - Exercise 1500 words or equivalent 30% Week 5
Assessment 2 - Essay 1500 words or equivalent 30% Week 8
Assessment 3 - Essay OR Portfolio and Creative Appendix 2000 words or equivalent 40% End of unit assessment period

The assessment due weeks provided may change. The Unit Chair will clarify the exact assessment requirements, including the due date, at the start of the teaching period.

Learning Resource

The texts and reading list for the unit can be found on the University Library via ALL784
Note: Select the relevant trimester reading list. Please note that a future teaching period's reading list may not be available until a month prior to the start of that teaching period so you may wish to use the relevant trimester's prior year reading list as a guide only.

Unit Fee Information

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