University of Technology, Sydney

Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences:
School of Writing and Contemporary Cultures

Fictocriticism, 2008.
Professional Strand – Writing – 200 Level (2nd Year)

Coordinator: Dr Gareth Jenkins

Description
Ficto-criticism deforms the limits of literary genres, working both within and beyond them. Post-romantic in conception, it is driven less by the individual imagination and more by the material and attitudes thrown up by the writer's encounter with everyday political emergencies. At its simplest, it makes a persuasive argument while telling an engaging story; at its most complex, it is a surrealist montage of different styles and media. Ficto-criticism can label a wide variety of styles – the renaissance tradition of the essay (from Montaigne to Barthes); the new journalism of Joan Didion; the travelling philosophy of Alphonso Lingis; and the hallucinatory ethnographies of Mick Taussig.

Objectives
Ficto-critical writing aims to develop students' intellectual and writing skills simultaneously. Students will aim to develop arguments in narrative frameworks, to workshop particular techniques such as montage, characterisation, and discontinuous narrative. Students will develop their reading and critical skills through the classroom discussion of samples of ficto-critical writing. These ficto-critical models will inform and develop the original texts of the students themselves.

Assessment:
Task One: 2000-3000 words
Taking 'Local Consumption' as your working title, compose a 2000 -3000
word (moving image, music etc) piece that responds to the ideas of consumption
and local.

Task Two: 1000-1500 words
Write a ficto-critical text on the topic 'Sensing Selves'. You are able to
define, redefine , cut-up or pervert this title as long as doing so reflects a
knowledge and appreciation of the history and cultural meanings of the
idea of 'the senses' and 'the self'.

Task Three: Journal Responses
Students are to complete four written responses (300 words each) to the topics/readings for four different weeks of semester. In the final week of class students are to hand in these responses for assessment and deliver a 5 minute verbal overview of them (about 500 words).

READING SCHEDULE

Gareth S. Jenkins