Literature: Modern and Contemporary
UndergraduateMAQ-ENGX10022025
Course information for 2025 intake View information for 2024 course intake
Seek to understand how poets, playwrights, novelists, graphic novelists and screenwriters responded to the world around them – including wars and technological change – reflecting this in their texts. Build on your skills in critiquing narratives.
Enrol today with instant approval and no entry requirements
- Study method
- 100% online
- Assessments
- 100% online
- Enrol by
- 20 July 2025
- Entry requirements
- No ATAR needed, No prior study
- Duration
- 13 weeks
- Price from
- $625
- Upfront cost
- $0
- Loan available
- HECS-HELP and FEE-HELP available
Literature: Modern and Contemporary
About this subject
On successful completion of this unit, you will be able to:
- Demonstrate critical reading habits, interpretive analysis, research, and effective communication, with particular application to the field of English studies.
- Understand and be able to describe some of the key features of a range of texts from the modern to the contemporary.
- Apply understanding of literary techniques to literary study and beyond to other situations.
- Engage in informed critical discussion on unit content with peers and teachers, entertain 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.
Building on the range of concepts and tools introduced to students in ENGL1001 Literature: From Medieval to Modern, this subject focuses on how literature developed throughout the twentieth century to the present day. It analyses how English, Australian and American writers – poets, playwrights, novelists, graphic novelists and screenwriters – responded in profoundly intellectual and visceral ways to the wars, calamities, technological change and digital disruptions of what Eric Hobsbawm calls the ‘Age of Extremes’. We trace patterns of alienation and anomie, but also the growing urgency of hope and human rights in literary responses to the modern world. Continuing to develop university level skills in critical reading, textual analysis and writing about literary texts, this subject also introduces students to theories of visual literacy and critical studies, equipping students with the tools to interpret different kinds of narratives.
- Online Quiz (10%)
- Online Participation Task (20%)
- Textual Analysis Task (30%)
- Research Essay (40%)
For textbook details check your university's handbook, website or learning management system (LMS).
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Entry requirements
No entry requirements
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 subjects offered by Macquarie University. Students with an Academic Standing of Suspension or Exclusion who have enrolled in subjects 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.
Find out more information on Commonwealth Loans to understand what this means to your eligibility for financial support.
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Once you’ve completed this subject it can be credited towards one of the following courses
UndergraduateMAQ-ART-DEG
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