What a great start to our excursion into William Blake territory… and great to be back with you all again! So what did we cover today! We explored something of WB’s background especially the politics of his time and his reaction to this. Most importantly we began to get a sense of WB’s mystical sense…
Category: x Blogging
Blog Topics- Australian Lit- for Week Two- coming thick and fast
Australian Literature and Landscape- Sydney Boronias in the Bush near Galston Gorge (27/07/2014) Australian Literature: we had a great introductory day today exploring what is meant by Judith Wright’s wish not to “chisel things into new shapes. The remnant of a mountain has its own meaning.” She was so ahead of her time with her concern to…
Spring has Sprung in 2014!
Hi all, I have just been for a long bush walk through Kuring-gai Chase near my place and the deep-pink Boronias and pale-pink Wax Flowers (Eriostemon Australis) and the luminous red and white Epacris (Native Fuchsias) are already coming into flower- and it is still mid-winter! That has to be one of the most beautiful…
Weeks 10-12…. nearing the finishing line! YaY
One of the high points of our semester was the visit to our campus by world famous Australian novelist David Malouf. Thank you David for giving our students so much of your valuable time! Indeed, in addition to the excitement of having David Malouf with us, It has been quite a journey in these last…
Week 9- week before our well-earned break!
Hi all, this visit to the Brett Whiteley studio a few weeks ago was one of the high points for us all on the ACU literary calendar. What a fabulous moment this was for 3rd year students studying William Blake and his impact on Australian artists and writers to see Brett Whiteley’s image of William…
Week 8: Literature Bloggers Reach New Heights of Creativity
Hello all, I have been amazed, inspired and delighted by the overall quality of the literature blogs coming out of ACU this semester. There is some wonderfully original work appearing in text, photos and youtube videos recording student’s responses to stories, poems and paintings. Take for example this short video exploring the contrasting imagery in…
Week 7- Modernism in the Art Gallery/ The Poetry of Kevin Hart/ The Everlasting Gospel
Topics for Week 7 ENGL202 chose one of the modernist paintings viewed during this week’s visit (go on a virtual visit of the gallery if you missed the visit) and discuss the ways in which it has opened your mind to a new understanding of what Modernism is and how this understanding helps your appreciation…
Week 6 Blog Topics- Exactly Half Way Through Semester!
Week 6 has seen Australian Lit students introduced to the delights of the NSW Art Gallery. I trust that you have now discovered how interesting it is to link themes and techniques from paintings with themes in literature. This is always a marvellous way to expand people’s sense of the wider cultural context in which…
Week 5: Writing & Revolution
Writers/ Artists have, since Plato’s time, been seen as dangerous to the stability of the state. Why? Because they dare to question! They dare to expose! As Percy Shelley said early in the 19th Century “Poets are the unacknowledged legislators” – by which he might have meant that they saw truths, spoke them, but were…
Week 4 – Art and Poetry
This week has been a fabulous week for the integration of literature and art. Third years went to the Art Gallery of NSW to explore the original etchings of William Blake’s Book of Job which gave a rare glimpse of Blake’s deep challenge to the moralistic Christianity of his times. For Blake Job’s salvation lay…
Week 3 Literature and Blog Topics
Hello all, read on to find out what this image is and what the Yellow House is. The semester has finally gained momentum and we are all opening our eyes to the literary and artistic feasts before us! In Aust Lit this week we delved into Early Colonial literature: Charles Harpur, Anne Meredith Henry Kendall…
End of Week Two- Scroll to the end for new topics!
An amazing week! Spring is intensifying: if you go into the bush now the beautiful pink Wax Flowers (Eriostomon Australis) are pumping out their colour Here they are intermingling with the remnants of the Boronias which were out so strongly last week: And and along with sprays of pink these the little dark buds of Gompholobium…
Literature: We have reached the end of week 1 !
Hi all, we come to the end of a busy week settling in to our literature studies and now we have the grand-finalé today and tomorrow with this amazing conference “Addressing the Sacred” in which we have writers, artists, literary critics and theologians sharing their gifts and their experience with us. I hope as many…
Welcome Spring Semester 2013
Please enjoy the video that I have created as an introduction to Literature this semester. Regardless of which unit you are doing you will find this 7 minute video useful as a “starter”. Click on this image to make the face “move”! Please remember also that for all your units you are expected to spend…
Don’t miss the first four episodes of our pioneering Transmedia Group + Fifth!!
http://ineternallinestotimethougrowst.wordpress.com And thank you to all the brave members of this group for getting this cutting edge event up and running. Enjoy MG And here is the Fifth Episode: http://s00107891.wordpress.com/2013/05/18/transmedia-shakespeare-in-the-library-episode-five/ http://s00107891.wordpress.com/2013/05/18/week-11-peer-review/
The David Malouf Symposium (at ACU) in Honour of David’s 80th Year
If you haven’t caught up with the David Malouf Symposium yet, then please take a look at the following article (click on the image) which will also take you to the Registration page: This photo was taken last week on the day that David Malouf came and visited the Clemente Mission Australia students in Surry…
Transmedia- there is more !!!!
Go to the blog before last to see the whole topic. Here are a few more key links that might give you more ideas for Transmedia collaborative creation: http://henryjenkins.org/2007/03/transmedia_storytelling_101.html http://transmediacoalition.com/aondine/story/what-is-transmedia http://transmediacoalition.com/aondine/story/transmedia-resources http://transmediacoalition.com/aondine/story/transmedia-in-canada http://www.starlightrunner.com/transmedia
Clemente- Mission Australia- Blog Topics for Week 10: Louis Nowra’s The Golden Age.
Hi all! First- the announcement: A performance of selected scenes from Louis Nowra’s The Golden Age, by students of the Clemente Australian Literature Unit on Wednesday 29th of May at 5pm, at the Mission Australia Centre (MAC) Surry Hills, 19 Denham Street. All Welcome: Free of Charge. Today -at Surry Hills- we begin work on…
Vlogs and Transmedia Story Telling
Hi all, I have a dream that we can profoundly enhance our blogging experience by working together interactively. There is a new mode of on-line story-telling happening called Transmedia and it is being used across a whole range of artistry and industry. It is the way that some marketing companies saturated the community with their…
Week 9 – on campus: George Eliot Middlemarch & Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra
This week second years began exploring the world of George Eliot. Middlemarch is the number one novel on the list of the top 100. Can you begin to see why this is so? Here are some Blog topics that you can try out for week 9: 1. Explore the Victorian Web and create a mini-guide on…
David Malouf Clemente Mission Australia Visit
At Mission Australia, Surry Hills we are getting ready for David Malouf’s visit to our class to talk about his amazing novel Remembering Babylon. This is a novel which expresses the importance to our society, of those people who society usually dismisses as having no worth. Gemmy is such a person. Treated badly as a child…
Week 8 (on campus) Blog Topics.
Nineteenth Century Literature: Charles Dickens Hard Times. 1. Imagine yourself into the role of Sissy Jupe (Girl Number 20!). Write a letter to a friend (back in the circus) describing what it feels like to be living with the Gradgrinds. 2. Write a review guide to the resources on Dickens available on The Victorian Web…
Clemente Week 7
Shakespeare’s Henry IV and Sundry Other Literary Delights
With third years I went last night to see John Bell playing Falstaff in the complete production of Henry IV Part One and Part Two at the Sydney Opera House. As was said in a recent review, this was John Bell’s best performance of his career. This was an amazing, energizing production that brought Falstaff…
Pandaemonium- Heading into mid semester-
Blog Topics for Romantic Victorians and Shakespeareans. If you are a Romantic Victorian enthusiast then these topics are for thee: 1/ Take the first lines from any stanza of poetry studied in this last week and compose a poem that generates a reflection on how life in the 21st Century compares with life in the…
Clemente Literature Journal (Blog) Topics Weeks 5-7
LIterature Journal (Blog) Topics for Clemente Week 5-7. . Chose any one of the poems or stories that we have studied in the last few weeks and answer either of the following two questions: Either What experience, idea or feeling is the author trying to convey? How effective is the way the author has used…
Clemente Mission Australia ENGL102 Week 4 – Blog Topics
Thank you all for your participation in the Art Gallery visit last week. Many of the pictures/ sculptures that we pondered over can be found in this blog if you click on “NSW Art Gallery Visits” at the top of this page or click on the image below: Blog Topics can be found on pages…
Week 4- Bernard Shaw and Shakespeare
William Shakespeare and Bernard Shaw were both dramatists who were trying to make the world a better place. Will Shakespeare did this by allowing his imagination to transform the Globe. The audience contained therein had their imaginations filled with new possibilities, new hopes of a world free from contaminations of greed and aggression. Bernard Shaw…
Victorian Working Women
Week Three: Tempestuous Women: Asia, Warren & The Tempest
This week Shakespeare students have been immersing themselves in Shakespeare’s The Tempest, NIneteenth Century students have been wrestling with Bernard Shaw and Clemente (Mission Australia) Students getting on-board with WordPress! You will begin to hear their voices soon, but you may want to have a look at David’s Blog (first cab off the rank) and…
Prometheus and Twelfth Night: Misrule Challenges the Status Quo
Prometheus and Twelfth Night: Misrule Challenges the Status Quo. It is good to see so many of you hopping straight into WordPress with such keenness and proficiency. Remember that you have free help at hand by simply going to http://lynda.acu.edu.au and entering your student username and password. When there go straight to WordPress: Essential Training.…
Welcome Clemente Students at Mission Australia
This week we begin our exploration of Australian Literature in the context of Australian Painting. This is an opportunity for you to read the poetry and fiction of some of our best writers and to see the way their themes are often reflected in other art forms. This is also an opportunity for you to…
William Shakespeare and Mary Wollstonecraft on Sexualization of Women- and other Quirky Topics
This week in Nineteenth Century Literature our core idea was the way the Romantics were searching for Freedom from Tyranny of all kinds. Beethoven is a good example of someone whose music was inspired by this quest. As we see in the film clip from his opera Fidelio, Beethoven was passionate about social justice for…
Welcome to Literature and Life 2013
Hello all! This semester I have the pleasure of teaching second year Nineteenth Century Literature and third year Shakespeare and the Renaissance. Both these units have challenging and exciting components. For the 19th Century we are going to be challenged by Shelley’s verse drama “Prometheus Unbound” and George Eliot’s Middlemarch. For Shakespeare we will plunge into Twelfth…
The Queen with Prince Philip and Great-Grand-Daughter-in-Law Kate Middleton on Campus to Adjudicate Drama Performances
What a joy it was to have royalty with us on Campus. A real treat for all! Second Years still have this wonderful visit to look forward to on Friday. What a wonderful Memento forwarded to us by the Royal Photographer.
Week 10 Moving into Literature that walks and talks
All units in literature are moving into their drama extravaganzas. Third years are preparing segments from their five Shakespeare plays ( A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Henry IV, Macbeth, Troilus and Cresside and The Tempest) and are being helped in this by the Artist in Residence James Evans of Sydney’s Bell Shakespeare Company. Second years are…
Welcome to Week 9
Cream of the the Cream / or Crème de la Crème/ or Schlagobers dazu- Best Blogs!
Crème de la Crème Literature students have completed the first round of their blogging before they hone their skills and prepare to embed these blogs into their Literature ePortfolios. This has engaged students at first, second and third years completing units in “Introduction to Literature”, “Nineteenth Century Literature” & “Shakespeare and the Renaissance”. The activity…
19th Century Group venture into the Art Gallery Time Tunnel
Two groups of 19th Century students wandered through the 18th and 19th Centuries today, finishing with a brief look at modernism before exiting into the wonderful sunny skies of a Sydney midday. We then journeyed half a kilometre – past William Shakespeare- on to the gates of the Palace Gardens, that one-time icon of Victorian…
Macbeth at the Opera House with 3rd Year Shakespeare Students
Kate Mulvaney played a fabulous, demonic Lady Macbeth for our 3rd year students yesterday. She brought an electrifying, negative force onto the stage and demonstrates that Shakespeare’s women are sometimes far from the meek downtrodden characters that we have seen in Henry IV Parts 1 & 2, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Troilus and Cressida.…
Shakespeareans Gathered in Shakespeare Place
Here we all are again at our ritual honouring of The Bard at his Sydney Shrine. No Photo-Regulations broken here! All in the spirit of cultural transformation. And no, there were no lives or limbs lost in the effort! Have a great Easter Week!
Rollicking into mid-semester!
This week past we have completed Henry IV parts 1 & 2 in “Shakespeare”, explored Tolstoy in the” 19th Century “and glanced at a number of key contemporary poets in “Introduction to Literature”: Langston Hughes, Wislawa Symborska, Wole Soyinka and Martin Espada. First year blogs have all been marked, second and third year essay marks…
Visit to Shakespeare Room in the State Library
This was a fabulous visit for all who attended. Not only were we able to touch the chair, made from the tree, that grew in the garden, next to the house where Shakespeare lived in Statford… but we also were introduced to the symbolism surrounding two of his great benefactors, The Earl of Southampton (young…
Literature and Life Week 4/5: Subversion Continued!
Last week I spoke about the subversive power of literature and poetry and explored this in Shelley, Shakespeare and Dickens. This week we have just experienced some of the most amazing practitioners of this subversion, the Americans Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson and the German Arthur Schopenhauer, the Persian Shamsu d-Dīn Muhammad, Hafiz and the…
The Subversive Power of Literature- Week 3: heading into Week 4
The Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley declared at the end of his “ A Defence of Poetry” (1821) that “Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the World” (Norton). By this Shelley meant that while poets are not acknowledged for their insight and wisdom by the status quo -they are usually considered as useless and irrelevant…
Former ACU Literature Student- Justine Zarebski (ACU 2005- Now Full-Time Literature Teacher) Praises Blogging at ACU
Here is Justine’s Blog entry on the impact of blogging on her teaching trajectory (quoted with her explicit permission): Hello! I am a third year out teacher who studied a BT/BA (Literature) at ACU. I graduated in 2009 and have decided to use this page as a record of my professional development. My first experiences…
Week 3: Bottom’s Dream- Wordsworth’s Leech Gatherer and Metaphors Galore!!!!
(Be sure to click on all the links- some you will find very useful) Bottom’s Dream in A Midsummer Night’s Dream is one of the most amazing, inexplicable moments in all of Shakespeare. Here is a character, at the bottom of the social hierarchy – like so many of Shakespeare’s most loved characters- who has glimpses of…
End of Week One ! A Great Beginning!
Introduction to Literary and Dramatic Forms has been launched with a glimpse – in Dead Poet’s Society- into the way a contact with literature can be a subversive agent of social change, for keeping us in touch with the things that really matter to our lives, to emotion, to relationship, to the creative force that…
Welcome to Literature and Life Autumn 2012
This semester we have literature bloggers and ePortfolio creators across three years: in first year students studying “Introduction to Literary and Dramatic Forms”; in second year “The Nineteenth Century”; in third year “Shakespeare and the Renaissance”. What a feast! Welcome to this blogging site where you will be getting a running commentary on weekly lectures…
David Malouf Visits ACU
What a fabulous event this was for both third and first year students. Here in this photo are two of our international students from Germany Nesrin Gencer (on left) and Katrin Hartwig (both studying Australian and Twentieth Century Literature) with David Malouf and yours truly (MG). I felt that we were all nourished in a…
Michael Griffith: Home Page- Literature and Life Spring 2025 
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