LIT 827 Crossing Cultures: Travel Narratives (semester 1, 2008)

This unit looks at the ways in which the figure of the traveller has changed from Homer’s epic character Ulysses, to the adventurer and explorer (ie. Marco Polo), the Christian pilgrim to the modern tourist. It considers how our understanding of place, self and Other has changed and how the genre of travel literature has developed and continues to flourish today.

LIT 828 Must Reads: Classics of World Literature (semester 2, 2008)

This unit provides students with the opportunity to get acquainted with some of the masterpieces of the Western and non-Western canon. The study of a variety of world classics will provide students with a deeper understanding of the foundations of literature and the history of ideas and how these continue to relate to modern thought and literature.

LIT 829 Writing Identity, Reading Lives: Biography and Autobiography from Antiquity to the Present (2009)

This unit looks at the changing tradition of biography and autobiography as a literary form, including diaries, letters, memoirs as well as fictional (auto)biographies. The unit explores the ways in which ideas about subjectivity and identity have changed across the ages.

LIT 830 Sex, Knowledge and Power: Key Themes in World Literature (2009)

This unit will study a number of recurring key themes in a range of world classics throughout the ages. It will focus on how the quest for love and power has characterised human endeavour regardless of historical period and cultural context and examines how global themes are culturally defined.