Welcome to the Teaching Australian Literature Resource

AustLit Anthology of Criticism

AustLit invites you to make use of the The AustLit Anthology of Criticism in your teaching activities in 2011. This AustLit publication provides access to scholarly articles and information about important Australian writers and articles in full text. The anthology content is freely available.

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Example Content

Students are introduced to a number of contemporary written texts. Major issues and themes are identified and a number of critical methods are exploited. Particular attention is paid to those issues and themes which can be seen as having special relevance to post-colonial societies. There is an emphasis on Australian writing.

By permission of the NLA

1940 Cape Town, South Africa

J. M. Coetzee was born in South Africa of Boer and English descent. In the 1960s he moved to England working as a computer programmer before studying literature in the United States. He was awarded a PhD from the University of Austin, Texas, in 1969. Coetzee taught at the State University of New York, Buffalo, and in 1984 was appointed Professor of English Literature at the University of Cape Town. In 2002 he moved to Australia, settling in South Australia where he took up an honorary research fellow position with the English Department at the University of Adelaide and, in the same year, became Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago. Coetzee became an Australian citizen in 2006.

Coetzee's first work, Dusklands, two novellas, The Vietnam Project and The Narrative of Jacobus Coetzee, was published by Ravan...

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