52692 Imagining the Real

Warning: The information on this page is indicative. The subject outline for a particular session, location and mode of offering is the authoritative source of all information about the subject for that offering. Required texts, recommended texts and references in particular are likely to change. Students will be provided with a subject outline once they enrol in the subject.

Subject handbook information prior to 2025 is available in the Archives.

Description

This subject explores the diverse field of creative non-fiction. Students learn how to write their own works of creative non-fiction across formats and platforms through close analysis of existing texts. The subject covers a wide array of non-fiction forms, which may include memoir, travel, nature, true crime, as well as the cultural review, the personal and lyric essay, and writing about human subjects. Students apply techniques such as voice, perspective, scene-setting, and dialogue to non-fiction texts; develop skills in critical self-reflection; and discuss and respond to current debates in the field. Students also consider the theoretical and ethical aspects of representing the real.

Subject learning objectives (SLOs)

Course intended learning outcomes (CILOs)

This subject engages with the following Course Intended Learning Outcomes (CILOs), which are tailored to the Graduate Attributes set for all graduates of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences:

• Apply theoretically informed understandings of communication industries to independent and collaborative projects across a range of media (1.2)
• Employ appropriate research and inquiry skills to independently gather, organise and analyse information across diverse platforms (2.1)
• Act as reflexive critical thinkers and innovative creative practitioners who evaluate their own and others' work (2.2)
• Demonstrate a strong awareness, knowledge of, and sensitivity to, diversity, equity and global contexts (3.1)
• Apply knowledge of Indigenous issues in professional practices and engage responsibly in communicating with and about Indigenous people and communities (4.1)
• Analyse and act ethically in the personal, political and professional contexts of civil society (5.1)
• Exemplify effective and appropriate communication in different communication industry contexts (6.1)

Teaching and learning strategies

This subject combines self-paced online learning with live tutorials. Weekly prerecorded lectures, readings and interactive activities build critical and analytical skills in the diverse field of creative non-fiction. In live practice-oriented tutorials, students are introduced to different forms of writing non-fiction, as a basis to devise, develop, draft and present their own pieces of creative non-fiction. This subject also employs the writers workshop model in which students provide detailed and constructive feedback on other students’ work, and through this process get formative feedback on the viability of their ideas and the quality of their writing. It is through the workshop that students receive formative feedback before week 4.

Content (topics)

In this subject, students engage with the material of the everyday to construct compelling stories as they imagine the real. Their explorations are framed by a range of texts by writers from diverse cultural backgrounds and concepts drawn from various disciplines to explore ways in which the personal, the particular and the specific can convey bigger stories to broad audiences. Students become attuned to the ways in which ordinary experiences and locales offer rich material for telling ‘true’ stories. There is a particular focus on writing place and objects, broadening from detailed and specific observations and experiences to the political, social and cultural contexts of everyday life. Students explore the intersections of narrative and place in multiple ways, writing about their streets, suburbs, towns, and cities, chronicling their lives, telling stories, taking pictures, making films, drawing comics and capturing ‘found texts’ such as overheard conversations, advertising, announcements – the written and spoken language of the streets. Students learn skills to weave this material into their own original writing.

Assessment

Assessment task 1: Reflective response

Assessment task 2: Literary personal essay