Honours in English (Creative Writing)

Honours Thesis Proposal

The proposal requires you to outline your responses to the two components of your thesis so we are able to define the ‘What’, ‘Why’ and ‘How’ of your thesis:

The Creative Component

This section comprises 70% of your thesis – approximately 10,000 words. This could be a novella, a folio of short stories or a folio or sequence of poems. In your proposal you could respond to:

• ‘What’: What, as far as possible at this early stage, is the ‘horizontal axis’ – the story, plot and major crafting techniques of your project. Also, try to think of its ‘vertical axis’ - what broad theme, philosophy and sub-text may underlie your fiction/poetry?

The Exegesis

This section comprises (30%) of your thesis – approximately 5000 words, and in your proposal you’d respond to:

• ‘Why’ you are interested in this particular area of fiction. What 2 or 3 major questions in it would you investigate?
• ‘How’: How has other fiction and/or poetry inspired you? Try to outline also a theoretical framework which will provide a base for your creative project.

See also, Honours in English thesis proposal for guidance (content and format and bibliography) on the exegesis.

Scholarships and Awards

The Jennifer Strauss Prize for the Best Thesis in English (Creative Writing)

We are proud to introduce the annual prize for the best thesis in Honours in English (Creative Writing) from 2007.

Jennifer Strauss

Jennifer Strauss joined the staff of the Monash English Department in 1964 and has been an Honorary Research Fellow since 1999. With Philip Martin she set up the Department’s first courses in Australian Literature and continued to teach and supervise Honours and postgraduate theses in this, as well as several other areas, until her retirement in 1998. She has also examined several theses for postgraduate degrees in creative writing.

Her recent award of an AM in the Order of Australia cites her ‘services as an academic and scholar to Australian literature and poetry’. She is also a poet, with four published collections and representation in a wide range of literary journals and anthologies of Australian poetry. Some of her poems have been translated into Italian, Greek German, French and Slovenian.

In addition to numerous reviews, entries in literary bibliographies and reference works, articles and chapters in books, her publications include:

Poetry

• Tierra del Fuego: New and Selected Poems. Melbourne: Pariah Press, 1997.
• Labour Ward. Melbourne: Pariah Press, 1988.
• Winter Driving. Melbourne: Sisters, 1981.
• Children and Other Strangers. Melbourne: Thomas Nelson, 1975.

Literary Scholarship and Criticism: Books:

• The Collected Verse of Mary Gilmore Volume 2 1930–1962 (ed.). St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 2007.
• The Collected Verse of Mary Gilmore Volume 1 1887–1929 (ed.). St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 2005
• Family Ties: Australian Poems of the Family (ed.). Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1998
• The Oxford Literary History of Australia (ed. Bruce Bennett and Jennifer Strauss). Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1998
• The Oxford Book of Australian Love Poems. (ed.). Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1993.
• Boundary Conditions: The Poetry of Gwen Harwood. Studies in Australian Literature. St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1992, 2nd edn. 1996.
• Judith Wright. Australian Writers Series. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1995.
• Stop Laughing! I’m Being Serious’: Studies in Seriousness and Wit in Contemporary Australian Poetry. Townsville: Foundation for the Study of Australian Literature, 1990