Here is some information about the undergraduate Literature courses that we offer. You can register in any of these courses in Online mode or you may register as a F2F student at the Laucala Campus.
The list of LT courses that you have to pass can be found here.
Offered: Semester 1, 2025
Coordinator: Dr. Matthew Hayward
Offered: Semester 2, 2025
Coordinator: Dr. Thomas Vranken
This course reveals literature’s role in shaping how we see children, and the teaching of children, today. We will begin by reading European stories about children written in the nineteenth century, when childhood first began being imagined as a special period of innocence and creativity. We will then think about how contemporary authors from Oceania are reimagining childhood through a twenty-first century Pacific lens. This course is for anyone who enjoys reading children’s and Young Adult literature or for anyone who would like to gain a deeper understanding of the assumptions underpinning the teaching profession.
Offered: Semester 2, 2025
Coordinator: Dr. Matthew Hayward
Offered: Semester 1, 2025
Coordinator: Dr. Thomas Vranken
Pacific scholars have long encouraged us to turn our attention away from islands and towards the ocean. In this unit, we will do just that, exploring a range of ocean-centric stories from this region. Over the first half of the course, we will read Witi Ihimaera’s classic 1987 novel, The Whale Rider. In the second half of the course, we will read a selection of experimental and futuristic stories by contemporary authors from across the Pacific. In reading these stories, we will reflect on the ways in which they portray the ocean and on the nature of ocean-centric perspectives.
Offered: Coming 2026
Coordinator: Dr. Thomas Vranken
In this course, we will read and watch a range of comics, manga, and anime – from popular international megahits, like One Piece and Spider-Man, to less well-known Pacific productions, like Sala Ni Yalo and Bera-Na-Liva. We will think about how pictures and words interact in these stories; about how visual forms of storytelling differ from stories written using only words and stories spoken out loud; about the moral panic surrounding children reading comics in twentieth-century America; and about the educational role of comics in twentieth and twenty-first-century Oceania. This course is for anyone who enjoys comics, manga, and anime, or who might want to use comics, manga, and anime as teaching resources in their classrooms.
Offered: Semester 2, 2025
Coordinator: Dr. Thomas Vranken
From Frankenstein’s monster, to Count Dracula, to the shark-men and telesa of the Pacific, this course explores the idea of the monster in literary fantasy and horror. How have different societies portrayed monsters over time? Why have some monsters proven more popular than others? Are monsters always the villain of the story or are they sometimes embraced? Through careful readings of novels, short stories, plays, poems and comics, this course will investigate the ways in which we engage with the fear, attraction and mystique that surround monstrosity.
Offered: Semester 1, 2025
Coordinator: Dr. Thomas Vranken
Take your protein pills, refuel your jetpacks, and set your ray guns to “stun”. In this course, we’ll take a deep dive into the weird and wonderful world of literary Science Fiction. We’ll begin by reading some of the genre’s Victorian classics, before turning to the pulp SF magazines of early twentieth century America, and finishing with the underground Science Fiction being written today in the Pacific. This course is for anyone who enjoys Science Fiction and for teachers wanting to learn more about an important and exciting youth-oriented genre.
Offered: Semester 2, 2025
Coordinator: Prof. Sudesh Mishra
Texts and commodities are closely interwoven entities. While cultural texts engage imaginatively with material worlds founded on the pursuit of commodities (such as sugar, slaves, spices, ivory, tea, oil and opium), they also circulate as commodities within a global marketplace. This course explores the relationship between texts and commodities in fiction and poetry from diverse commodity frontiers. Introducing students to new approaches in postcolonial, environmental and materialist criticism, it considers how different literary forms engage with the complex world history of various commodities.
Offered: Semester 1, 2025
Coordinator: Prof. Sudesh Mishra
The aim of this course is to give students guided experience in the writing of short stories, poems, plays, screenplays, memoir, travel writing and other imaginative genres. It is intended as a practical exercise in creative skills and is not restricted to students of literature. Students from any department or school within the university may register.
