Department of English
Honours
Honours Program
The B.A. (Hons) at Macquarie is a separate degree, normally requiring one year's full-time or two-years' part-time study. The Program begins for all enrolled students in semester 1, i.e., February 2010. Part-time enrolment is available to those students who can demonstrate work or other commitments in excess of 20 hours per week.
The Honours Program in English is an exciting engagement with high-level and cutting-edge study in the field. An Honours degree is traditionally the first step towards a career in university teaching and research. Alternately, Macquarie Honours graduates have gone into careers such as: publishing; teaching; public service; media and journalism; business and industry.
Graduates of other universities are welcome. Graduates of other disciplines are welcome too, but may be asked to take a qualifying program.
What do I need in order to do Honours?
- You need to have qualified for the B.A. with a major in English (or a closely related discipline)
- A minimum of 24 credit points in English units above 100 level, at least 12 of them at 300 level, at least 8 of them in 300-level ENGL units.
- An overall grade point average of 2.5
- A grade point average of 3 in 300 level units
All students undertake:
- ENGL455 Research Methods and Practices
- A short thesis
- Two Honours units
1. ENGL455 Research Methods and Practices
(Semester 1)
Dr Paul Sheehan, Professor Tony Cousins, Assoc. Prof. Antonina Harbus
This is the core unit in the Honours Program, involving practice-based research training aimed at developing student research skills. The unit focuses on the location, evaluation, management and use of research material, and combines this with seminar discussions and exercises with practical applications. Detailed instruction is given in the areas of citation management and bibliographic construction, the development of writing skills, rationale and methodological awareness, and effective time management strategies. Students are shown how to apply the general principles and strategies taught in the seminars to their specific research projects.
2. A short thesis
A thesis of 15,000 words on a topic in the field of English Studies. Students are at liberty to work in an area and topic of their choice subject to a final approval by the Honours Committee.
3. Two Honours units
Students undertake two Honours units which are to be chosen from:
- ENGL 420
- ENGL 431
- ENGL 451
- ENGL 454
First Semester 2010
ENGL 420
Comparative Literature
This unit explores literature (in translation) from various societies and cultures, principally but not only from Europe, over the past 3000 or so years. Comparative literary studies consider the way in which images and concepts are represetned over time and within different cultural contexts and how our understanding of them is enriched by thinking about different modes of representation and their literary histories. We will also be looking at the ways in which works interrogate and transform the generic conventions of the traditions they are based in, and the extent to which stories and motifs pervade the visual arts as well as literature. The unit examines issues of translation and semantics, genre and form (epic,
romance, bildungsroman and elegy), the development and remodeling of figures and motifs within a continuing tradition, and the responses of different literary traditions (“world literatures”) to similar events. This unit has a substantial reading list.
Dr Rosemary Colmer
Tel: 9850 8731
Email: rosemary.colmer@mq.edu.au
ENGL 431
Image, Text, Theory
This unit is designed to acquaint students with a broad range of theoretical readings and positions. In conjunction with a number of prominent image-based works (films, photographs, paintings, graphic novel) as well as fictional and non-fictional texts, some of the most important debates of postwar critical theory are studied in detail. The unit aims to provide students with a repertoire of potential critical resources for understanding how arguments are shaped and how they can be taken apart.
Dr Paul Sheehan
Tel: 9850 8757
Email: paul.sheehan@mq.edu.au
Second Semester 2010
ENGL 451
Decadence
This course will engage with Decadence as a concept of cultural crisis which has been deployed to reflect, represent, interrogate and often revel in the exigencies and transformations of modernity. Ranging from the eighteenth century to the present and across a wide variety of cultural forms, from poetry and novels, to photographs, paintings and fi lms, to sexology, aesthetics and racial theory, this course will explore the ways in which change and transformation are always haunted by fears of decline, crisis and nostalgia.
Dr Geoff Payne
Tel: 9850 8726
Email: geoff.payne@mq.edu.au
ENGL 454
Contemporary Poetry
This unit’s focus is the study of a range of current poetry in English from Britain, Australia, the United States and other transnational cultures. In addition to studying language and form, and engaging with the significance of critical theory, poetics and aesthetics in the making of poetry, we will examine current issues in trends and approaches to the writing and publishing of contemporary poetry – for example, visual and performance poetry; the role of the internet and hypertext; the lyric voice and the impact of poststructuralist critical theory; cross-cultural influences; political poetry; eco-poetry.
Dr Marcelle Freiman
Tel: 9850 8754
Email: marcelle.freimanl@mq.edu.au
Further Information
Convenor
Dr Paul Sheehan
Tel: 9850 8757
Email: paul.sheehan@humn.mq.edu.au