20th-Century Literature: Inventing the Future
UndergraduateMAQ-ENGX30102025
Course information for 2025 intake View information for 2024 course intake
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- Study method
- 100% online
- Assessments
- 100% online
- Entry requirements
- Prior study needed
- Duration
- 13 weeks
- Loan available
- HECS-HELP and FEE-HELP available
20th-Century Literature: Inventing the Future
About this subject
On successful completion of this unit, you will be able to:
- Demonstrate critical and analytical reading strategies, interpretive analysis, scholarly research, and effective communication, with particular application to the field of modernist and postmodernist studies in English
- Identify, evaluate and apply principles of modernism and postmodernism to different literary modes, narrative and non-narrative
- Display creative thinking and construct cohesive arguments
- Consider how historical and theoretical propositions of modernism have shaped the reception and reproduction of 20th-century art more broadly
- Engage in informed critical discussion on unit content with peers and teachers, consider and assess others’ points of view, and to argue a critical position
- A week-by-week guide to the topics you will explore in this subject will be provided in your study materials.
This unit looks at a range of texts across the 20th century, from modernism to postmodernism and late modernism. The governing theme for the unit is what it means to be human, raising questions about memory, identity, agency, empathy, care and ethical responsibility. Topics to be discussed within these lines of enquiry include the death of God, the crisis of history, war and its aftermath, and changing gender dynamics. The range of Australian and international authors to be studied includes James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Gerald Murnane, Les Murray, J. M. Coetzee and Sarah Kane.
- Textual analysis task (20%)
- Participatory task (20%)
- Online quizzes (20%)
- Research Essay (40%)
For textbook details check your university's handbook, website or learning management system (LMS).
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Entry requirements
Prior study
You must have successfully completed the following subject(s) before starting this subject:
one of
Others
Pre-requisite: 130cp at 1000 level or above
Additional requirements
- Other requirements -
Students who have an Academic Standing of Suspension or Exclusion under Macquarie University's Academic Progression Policy are not permitted to enrol in OUA units offered by Macquarie University. Students with an Academic Standing of Suspension or Exclusion who have enrolled in units through OUA will be withdrawn.
Study load
- 0.125 EFTSL
- This is in the range of 10 to 12 hours of study each week.
Equivalent full time study load (EFTSL) is one way to calculate your study load. One (1.0) EFTSL is equivalent to a full-time study load for one year.
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