UNIT: Complex Transformations and Defences

Unit 2

English Extension

UNIT: Complex Transformations and Defences

UNIT OVERVIEW: This unit builds on students’ learning in Unit 1 by exploring the relationship between writing practices and reading positions. This involves investigating the invited readings of the text that students might want to challenge, and constructing alternative meanings by intervening in those texts. These investigations must involve a consideration of particular textual features that could be manipulated tom produce alternative meanings, In a complex transformation, the rewritten text invites alternative and or resistant readings other than those that the base text seems to invite. Alternative and resistant readings require students to make an ideological shift that moves beyond mere inversion. Transformations must relate to repositioning the reader in a purposeful way and must be theoretical defensible.

ASSESSMENT: Students produce a theory-based complex transformation of a selected fairy tale/fable and a defence of the transformation. This transformation will explain how they applied the theories to reposition the readers regarding the base text. Students will also evaluate how the rewritten text offers readers an alternative perspective.

UNIT DETAILS:

No / Learning Goal / Success Criteria
(I Know I’ve got it when I can …)
1 / Structuralism and Post Structuralism:
Explain the way in which Saussurean linguistics gave rise to Structuralism.
Explain signification and apply to examples.
Explain what is meant by discourse (according to Foucault)
Explain the difference between Modern and Postmodern representations of discourse.
Explain what is meant by ‘transcendental signified’ and logocentrism.
Explain and apply Derrida’s notion of deconstruction. / Successfully complete questions on given readings and contribute actively to class discussion.
2 / World Context Centred approaches to reading:
Marxist reading practices:
Explain what is meant by hegemony.
Explain what is peculiar about the Marxist account of human existence.
Define terms such as base, superstructure, capital, labour, alienation, bourgeois, capitalism
Explain ideology and its function.
Explain Althusser’s notion of interpellation.
List Marxist theorists and summarize their contributions.
Feminist reading practices:
Describe the aims of feminist reading practices.
List feminist theorists and summarize their contributions.
Explain the central tenets of feminist approaches. / Successfully complete questions on given readings and contribute actively to class discussion.
3 / World Context Centred approaches to reading:
New Historicism:
Explain the central tenets of New Historicism.
Explain Foucault’s notion of episteme.
Post - Colonial reading practices:
Explain Said’s Orientalism.
Explain what Bhabha means by unhomeliness and hybridity / Successfully complete questions on given readings and contribute actively to class discussion
4 / Textual Interventions and Complex Transformations:
Explain the way in which texts work to perpetuate socially unjust representations.
Explain and identify invited, alternative and resistant readings.
Explain and identify binary oppositions.
Explain what is meant by a complex transformation.
Describe appropriate structure for transformation and defence. / Successfully complete exercises identifying invited readings, binary oppositions and ideology.
Identify appropriate structural components of defence from examples supplied.
5 / Assignment preparation:
Research world context centred theorists. / Record notes and comprehend central ideas on world context centred theorists.
6 / Assignment preparation:
Research world context centred theorists. / Record notes and comprehend central ideas on world context centred theorists.
7 / Assignment preparation:
Apply world context centred approaches to reading of chosen text.
Identify invited reading of chosen text and deconstruct. / Identify invited reading and successfully deconstruct chosen text.
Provide explanation of construction of ideologies according to world context centred theorists.
8 / Assignment preparation:
Apply world context centred approaches to explanation of transformed text. / Explain reading with reference to theorists researched.
9 / Assignment preparation:
Construct assignment using appropriate structure and including appropriate content, synthesizing throughout. / Complete transformation and defence using appropriate structure and including appropriate content, synthesizing throughout.
Demonstrate understanding of world context and text centred approaches.
10 / Assignment preparation:
Construct assignment using appropriate structure and including appropriate content, synthesizing throughout. / Complete transformation and defence using appropriate structure and including appropriate content, synthesizing throughout.
Demonstrate understanding of world context and text centred approaches.