UWA Handbook 2024

Unit Overview

Description

World War I was seen by many young artists of the time as a cultural as well as a political crisis—as the culmination and damnation of Western culture as it was consolidated in the nineteenth century. This disillusionment led to the experimental art practices that became known collectively as the avant-garde, which found their most radical and tumultuous expressions in the period between 1914 and 1930. This unit offers an opportunity to focus on 'High' modernist texts, by placing them in historical context and tracing the ways in which they contest established ideas of the reader, personal identity, sexuality, perception and aesthetics, and explores technology and popular culture. In keeping with modernism's cosmopolitanism the unit looks at texts from England, Europe and the USA, and ranges through literary and filmic genres.

Credit

6 points

Details for undergraduate courses

• Level 3 elective

Outcomes

Students are able to (1) have a sophisticated knowledge of some early twentieth-century literary and cinematic texts in relation to the historical and cultural conditions of their production and reception; (2) have the ability to grapple with some radical and experimental modes of writing and cinema; (3) have an historicised understanding of literary concepts fundamental to modernism that allow them to recognise and discuss the relationship between the formal, thematic and functional aspects of modernist textual practices; (4) situate their knowledge of modernism into the wider history of literary studies; (5) interpret modernist literary and cinematic texts independently through analysis of relevant scholarly information and creative material concerning modernism; (6) have a critical understanding of the role played by ideologies of race, gender and class in modernist contexts and texts; (7) express original arguments, together with research methodologies, approaches and findings, coherently and logically in oral and written formats; (8) undertake and present research in groups efficiently and creatively, and to offer and respond to feedback appropriately; (9) locate, assess and engage critically with research findings, both individually and in groups; (10) demonstrate an awareness of the importance of informing and challenging one's independent analyses and ideas with discriminating reading of imaginative, critical and theoretical texts; (11) apply, knowingly and appropriately, highly developed skills of textual analysis, critical reasoning, interpretation and research; (12) interpret texts from a range of cultural genres independently, confidently and appropriately through developed modes of close reading and writing that encourage personal and critically informed engagement and expression; and (13) apply developed skills in independent enquiry-based research, leading towards an informed understanding of, and ethical sensitivity towards, our diverse and globalised world in the context of advanced further studies and/or future career paths.

Assessment

This comprises essays and tutorial participation.

Student may be offered supplementary assessment in this unit if they meet the eligibility criteria.

Unit Coordinator(s)

Associate Professor Tanya Dalziell

Unit rules

Prerequisites

any Level 2 ENGL
or EURO2209 Utopias, Imagination and Modernity in European Culture

Incompatibility

ENGL2215 Modernism

Contact hours

lectures: 1 hour per week
tutorials: 2 hours per week (over 10 weeks)