Macquarie University 

Department/Program:
English Department

Degree(s) granted:
Ph.D. (by research culminating in 90,000 - 100,000 word thesis)
MPhil (by research culminating in a 50,000 word dissertation)
M.A. (six coursework units and a minor thesis of 20,000 words, on a topic devised by the student, or eight coursework units)

Institution address:
Department of English
Macquarie University
NSW 2109
Australia

Faculty involved in the program:
Robyn McCallum robyn.mccallum@humn.mq.edu.au
John Stephens john.stephens@humn.mq.edu.au

Courses offered:
LIT 846 Retelling Stories: Sources of Children’s Literature
This unit focuses on the retelling of traditional stories, mainly drawn from European cultures, as a significant endeavour in Anglophone children’s literature. It examines how the retelling of classical myths, Bible stories, heroic legends, Arthurian romances and ‘oriental’ tales discloses the aspirations of society and the values it wishes to convey to children.

LIT 847 Romanticism to Postmodernism
Developments in Children’s Literature
This unit takes a thematic approach to the critical and cultural development of children’s literature from the nineteenth century to the present. It relates the literature to social and intellectual history, and considers the impact of major paradigm shifts. Topics may include the social and literary constructions of childhood; the representations of gender, class, race and power; the development of social realism and of fantasy.

LIT 848 Young Adult Fiction
This unit examines some major themes and concerns associated with ‘young adult fiction’ as an identifiable field: self-definition and subjectivity; exploring sexuality and writing the body; social power and social responsibility; representations of self and society; relationships with dominant ideologies of twentieth century children’s literature.

LIT 854 Narrative: Theory and Method
Drawing on both theoretical texts and works of fiction, this unit examines the critical application of key aspects of narrative theories to children’s fiction. Topics include: types of narration, point of view and focalisation in narrative; beginnings and endings; narrative time; characterisation; theory of genres and modes; metafiction and experimental fiction.

LIT 855 Australian Children’s Fiction
Considers the development of Australian writing for children, with special emphasis on recent fiction. What is characteristic of Australian children’s literature? Is there an Australian tradition? How does children’s literature intersect or engage with formations and developments in Australian culture?

LIT 856 Picture Books
Examines picture books as multi-media texts, focussing on : pictorial codes; the construction of narrative; text-picture interrelationships; the representation of reality; the reflection of social and cultural ideology; experimental picture books.

LIT 859 Film and the Folktale Canon
Examines how the Disney industry has defined folktale for the twentieth century, especially its contents and structures. Explores the significances given to the ‘universal’ structural elements employed in Disney versions of folktale and their potential for great ideological impact on culture, especially in the promotion of particular cultural formations and the containment of change (as in the shifting representations of limited female agency).
[Not offered in distance mode]

LIT 860 Comedy in Children’s Texts
By focussing on some of the principal types of comic effect in texts produced for children – the ludicrous and the ridiculous; iconoclasm and parody; zanyism; comic violence; transgressiveness - this unit examines how texts teach, reproduce and reflect notions of the comic, and construct social functions for the comic. Genres examined include comic verse, stories, novels and plays, TV narratives and film.

LIT 864 Children’s Literature: Concepts and Theories
This unit introduces students to contemporary literary and cultural theories pertinent to reading and analysing texts produced for children. Topics include: social and historical contexts for the production and reception of children’s literature; constructions of childhood; semiotics of visual and verbal texts; critical approaches to children’s texts; critical approaches to children’s texts; ideology and value; classics, canons and postmodernity.

JPN 815 Manga and Anime
This unit examines narrative forms and processes in a selected range of manga and anime productions. Areas of special focus will include: manga story structure (both discrete and serial forms), visual techniques and codes, character types and functions, the production of subjectivities in “manga” and “anime” social worlds, diversifying media types and spin-offs.
Texts will be studied in English.

For more information:
http://www.engl.mq.edu.au/postgrad/ma_childrens_lit.htm