Program Overview

Unit Overview

The Modernist Explosion is a 10-credit point unit that offers a multidisciplinary exploration of the tensions and impacts of modernity on contemporary life. The unit aims to engage students in a systematic comparison of assumptions about culture and politics with those expressed in modernist works.

Unit Rationale, Description, and Aim

Modernity, an era of enormous novelty in Western thinking, brought new conceptions of the human, self, and political power, as well as reconceptualizations of art, beauty, civil society, and the state. However, the politics and culture that ensued from this "modern" thinking sometimes proved disastrous. The unit's aim is for students to engage, through close textual readings, in a comparison of assumptions about culture and politics with those expressed in modernist works, to further understand contemporary life and its problems.

Learning Outcomes

To successfully complete this unit, students will be able to:

1. Articulate an advanced, integrated, research-based knowledge of Modern thought and its conceptual, theoretical, and political impacts.
2. Explain the literary, social, historical, philosophical, political, aesthetic, religious, and ethical implications of texts drawn from, and related to, Modernity.
3. Critically evaluate and synthesize knowledge, concepts, and theories connected to modernity from diverse sources and communicate complex ideas with sophistication and confidence.
4. Research, develop, and apply disciplinary theories and practices to a range of bodies of knowledge drawn from key texts in Modern Western Thought.

Unit Content

Topics and/or texts may include:

• Changing ideas of the human and human authority
• Autonomy and the Modern Self
• Technology and the Human
• Changing perspectives on human responsibility toward environment and society
• Liberalism, Communism, Progress, and Conservatism
• History, Industrialization, and Urbanization
• Comparison of premodernity, modernity, and postmodernity as forms of Western thought
• Study of late modern political thought, including thinkers like Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud
• Critical reflections of modern culture and society
• Literary expressions of modern life, including works by Woolf, Mann, Joyce, Kafka, and Lawrence
• Visual and artistic reflections of modern culture
• The problem of colonialism and its effect on colonial subjects, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples
• The place of Indigenous Knowings within modernity and modernist culture and thought

Assessment Strategy and Rationale

The unit includes assessment tasks that build content knowledge and higher-order research and analytic skills. The tasks are designed to contribute to high-quality student learning by helping students learn and measuring explicit evidence of their learning.

Assessments

1. Close Reading: Challenging disciplinary norms (50% weighting)
2. Research Essay: A theoretically acute, graduate-level, interdisciplinary analysis of key texts or authors in modern Western thought (50% weighting)

Learning and Teaching Strategy and Rationale

The unit is designed and delivered in a small-group attendance mode, facilitating the use of the Socratic method to promote active and receptive dialogue. Students will engage in close reading, writing activities, interpretation and evaluation of texts, and critical and argumentative debates.

Representative Texts and References

• Blumenberg, Hans, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age
• Latour, Bruno, We Have Never Been Modern
• Linett, Maren Tova, The Cambridge Companion to Modernist Women Writers
• Maleuvre, Didier, The Legends of the Modern
• Marx, Karl, Das Kapital
• Pippin, Robert, Modernism as Philosophical Problem
• McLean, Ian, "Indigenous Modernisms"
• Mbembe, Achille, The Critique of Black Reason
• Weber, Max, The Vocation Lectures
• Woolf, Virginia, Mrs. Dalloway

Locations and Credit Points

• Location: North Sydney
• Credit Points: 10

Year

2026