ALL784 - Life Writing Now
Unit details
Year | 2025 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 |
Educator-facilitated (scheduled) learning activities - on-campus unit enrolment: | 1 x 2-hour on-campus seminar per week |
Educator-facilitated (scheduled) learning activities - online unit enrolment: | 1 x 2-hour online seminar or approximately 2-hours of online learning tasks and discussions per week |
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. |
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.
Learning Outcomes
ULO | These are the Unit Learning Outcomes (ULOs) for this unit. At the completion of this unit, successful students can: | Alignment to Deakin Graduate Learning Outcomes (GLOs) |
---|---|---|
ULO1 | Identify ways in which formal innovations in life writing respond to contemporary developments in both publishing and sociocultural contexts. | GLO1: Discipline-specific knowledge and capabilities GLO4: Critical thinking |
ULO2 | Articulate the cultural importance of life writing, with an ethical engagement with Australian First Nations textual and literary works and an understanding of the challenges and limitations surrounding the telling of others' stories. | GLO8: Global citizenship |
ULO3 | Communicate knowledge about contemporary life writing using various critical and creative forms of writing, including forms appropriate to publication. | GLO1: Discipline-specific knowledge and capabilities GLO2: Communication |
Assessment
Assessment Description | Student output | Grading and weighting (% total mark for unit) | Indicative due week |
---|---|---|---|
Assessment 1: Exercise | 2000 words or equivalent | 40% | Week 5 |
Assessment 2: Essay | 1000 words or equivalent | 20% | 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 ALL784 can be found via the University Library.
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
Fees and charges vary depending on the type of fee place you hold, your course, your commencement year, the units you choose to study and their study discipline, and your study load.
Tuition fees increase at the beginning of each calendar year and all fees quoted are in Australian dollars ($AUD). Tuition fees do not include textbooks, computer equipment or software, other equipment or costs such as mandatory checks, travel and stationery.
For further information regarding tuition fees, other fees and charges, invoice due dates, withdrawal dates, payment methods visit our Current Students website.