Unit rationale, description and aim
The novel has a history spanning two millennia, but during the past 300 years, it has become the dominant genre of imaginative writing in the world, opening up new ways of understanding and articulating human experience. The novel, moreover, forms an indispensable part of appreciating the dignity of the individual and human diversity, since the empathy demanded by the patient reading of novels makes reading itself an ethical act.
In this unit, students will engage with the thinking that happens in the novel and find new ways of thinking about the novel. The unit is designed to offer an openness and flexibility of approaches by which the student moves from the acquisition of knowledge to the application of that knowledge and the development of skills to consider the unique thinking of particular novels. However, they will also want to explore works (e.g. of philosophy, science, visual art, music) that are not novels, but which offer new interdisciplinary approaches to reading or thinking about the novel.
The aim of this unit is to situate itself at the border of many disciplines and is designed to make ‘novel thinking’ happen in dynamic new ways every time the unit is taught.
Learning outcomes
To successfully complete this unit you will be able to demonstrate you have achieved the learning outcomes (LO) detailed in the below table.
Each outcome is informed by a number of graduate capabilities (GC) to ensure your work in this, and every unit, is part of a larger goal of graduating from ACU with the attributes of insight, empathy, imagination and impact.
Explore the graduate capabilities.
Acquire an advanced, integrated, research-based kn...
Learning Outcome 01
Interpret the literary, social, historical, philos...
Learning Outcome 02
Apply the knowledge described above in advanced, g...
Learning Outcome 03
Critically evaluate and synthesise knowledge, conc...
Learning Outcome 04
Content
Topics and/or authors may include:
- The status of a fictional or possible world inside and outside the novel – e.g. Cervantes, Leibniz
- Thinkers whose writings have been called novelistic, or novelists whose writing raises questions about thinking – e.g. Hegel, Henry James, Virginia Woolf
- Psychologists interested in novelists and novelists interested in psychology – e.g. Freud, Dostoevsky
- Artists who influence, or have been influenced by, or illuminate, the thinking of the novel – e.g. Wagner and modernism
- Novelists whose novels may think differently than they do – e.g. Tolstoy
- Novel thinking about the novel – Beckett, Kafka, Robbe-Grillet, Mary Shelley
- Novel thinking about the style of the novel – Flaubert
- Melville
- Novels that raised ethical challenges in relation to human diversity and assumptions about ideas of class, race or gender (George Eliot, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Radclyffe Hall, the Brontës, and others)
Assessment strategy and rationale
This 600-level unit is designed to include assessment tasks that build content knowledge and higher-order research and analytic skills.
The close reading task requires students to produce a patient, graduate-level, interdisciplinary analysis of the great books. As the Unit Rationale, Description and Aim make clear, and as the Content underscores, the topic of this unit does not sit comfortably within any disciplinary norm. The novel belongs not only to the discipline of literature but also to philosophy, psychology, music, and politics, inter-alia. It is appropriate for this unit that the close reading task demands the crossing of disciplinary norms in its analysis.
The research essay requires students to produce a theoretically acute, graduate-level, interdisciplinary analysis of key texts on a topic proposed in consultation with the instructor. It is intended to develop skills in locating and evaluating sources on a cultural text, developing a sustained evidence-based argument, and active engagement with key theory debates.
The assessment tasks for this unit have been designed to contribute to high-quality student learning by both helping students learn (assessment for learning), and by measuring explicit evidence of their learning (assessment of learning). Assessments have been developed to meet the unit learning outcomes and develop graduate attributes consistent with the University’s assessment requirements. These have been designed so that they use a variety of tasks to measure the different learning outcomes at a level suitable for graduate studies in the subject area.
Minimum Achievement Standards
The assessment tasks and their weighting for this unit are designed to demonstrate achievement of each learning outcome. In order to pass this unit, students are required to submit all assessment tasks, meet the learning outcomes of the unit and achieve a minimum overall passing grade of 50%.
Overview of assessments
Assessment Task 1: Close reading: challenging dis...
Assessment Task 1: Close reading: challenging disciplinary norms
This task requires students to produce analyses that challenge disciplinary norms.
50%
Assessment Task 2: Research Essay This task requi...
Assessment Task 2: Research Essay
This task requires students to produce a theoretically acute, graduate-level, interdisciplinary analysis of key texts or authors on a topic proposed in consultation with the instructor.
50%
Learning and teaching strategy and rationale
This unit is designed and delivered in a small-group face-to-face mode which facilitates the use of the Socratic method. It will immerse students in active learning through cooperative dialogue designed to stimulate critical thinking and challenge pre-existing assumptions. Learning exercises will facilitate the development of skills fundamental to the discipline of literary studies and to facilitate the interaction of students with guest speakers, when available. In addition to close reading of a range of novels, extracts of novels, or works that illuminate some aspect of thinking in the novel, students will participate in writing activities, interpreting and evaluating texts, and critical and argumentative debates
This is a 10-credit point unit and has been designed to ensure that the time needed to complete the required volume of learning to the requisite standard is approximately 150 hours in total across the semester. To achieve a passing standard in this unit, students will find it helpful to engage in the full range of learning activities and assessments utilised in this unit. The learning and teaching and assessment strategies include a range of approaches to support learning such as reading, reflection, and discussion.