Australia

This course examines the history and theory of photography from the 19th century to the present. It considers several key critical debates on the role of photography as both an art form and a social medium of visual communication. It explores central figures and key episodes in photography's history giving particular emphasis to critics, photographers, scientists, media and art historians' writings on the medium. Students will consider seminal controversial debates about the ways in which photography has been historicized and conceptualized. Is photography an art or is it media? Is it evidence or fiction? Is photography an empowering medium? How can photography create change? The course includes an examination of the development of Australian photography in the 19th and 20th centuries and considers the new phenomenon of Instagram photography and its implications.

This course is an introduction to Differential Geometry, one of the core pillars of modern mathematics. Using ideas from calculus of several variables, it develops the mathematical theory of geometrical objects such as curves, surfaces and their higher-dimensional analogues. 

This course examines the rise of novel reading in English as an educative, aesthetic and passionate practice from the 17th century to the present. The course moves chronologically to examine how novels and the world came to be understood as mutually constitutive, how novels create and sustain attachments amongst their readers, how the genre of the novel became available for interrogations of national, gendered, racial, sexual and class identity, of liberty and intellectual emancipation, and of pleasure.

Recent events in global politics have forced the memory of empire into the public domain. Equally, changes in the international system have prompted analysts of various stripes in the public domain to refer to the US, China, Europe or Russia as ‘empire’. These changes have been reflected in political science with American Empire Debate, a turn toward history and critical voices calling for the decolonization of the discipline and a call for a recognition of the importance of empire in shaping global politics. A sub-discipline of comparative empire studies has emerged that overlaps history with IR and calls for ‘epistemic decolonization’ have arisen alongside scholarship which offers colonization as a viable policy option. With the disciplines of the social sciences being largely oriented around the state, this course takes as its focus empire as its referent object and asks: why has political science paid it so little attention? What is an empire and how do we theorize it and study it? What does the introduction of empire as a field of study mean for political science and how we understand the international system? This course takes empire as its object of inquiry and provides students with an interdisciplinary map for the various ways it has been theorized and understood. The aim of the course is to examine and assess in comparative frame the different kinds of analytical tools and methodological problems that might be applied to the study of empire. It will pose the theorization of empire as a problem which will be explored conceptually, methodologically and empirically. Finally, we explore what empire as a political form or category of analysis contributes to our understanding of global politics

This course examines the pressures of technological change on contemporary media institutions and communications practices. Students will be introduced to key debates about media convergence, the relationship between technological change and media practices, and the shift from mass communication to networked communication. A range of case studies drawn from different media sectors including photography, the music industry, television, cinema, and the Internet will be complemented by examination of emerging practices such as video games, digital art and surveillance.

This course examines applied animal behavior theory, and the responses of animals to common interventions that arise in the context of interacting with humans and the environment. It covers a framework for animal welfare assessment, and applies it across a range of contexts for domesticated, wildlife and captive animals. Animal welfare will be critically evaluated through the integration of behavioral, physiological, cognitive and emotional responses. Methods for assessing and enhancing animal environments and husbandry systems are explored. Finally, the design and conduct of scientific experiments are assessed with a focus on animal ethics and current welfare issues.

This course examines mathematical language and techniques to unravel many seemingly unrelated problems. The course content addresses five major pillars of discrete mathematics: set theory, number theory, proofs and logic, combinatorics, and graph theory. 

The course aims to give students the analytical skills to compare and contrast the multiple paths to prosperity and critically assess the prospects and challenges for Asian economies and their citizens to thrive in the future. It moves beyond the mainstream approach to assessing country-level economic performance by incorporating seven ways to think like a 21st-century economist, as explained in the book Doughnut Economics, in a holistic exploration of the economic growth and development patterns in the dynamic Asian region. These include shifting the goal beyond GDP to broader measures of sustainable development and human wellbeing; understanding the importance of economic and political systems beyond the textbook 'free market'; recognizing the critical role of governments in supporting equitable and regenerative development; and questioning whether the 20th-century obsession with economic growth is compatible with 21st-century development challenges.

This course introduces the technologies of computer graphics and human-computer interaction along with the biological, psychological and social aspects of human perception and action that inform the application of those technologies. The emphasis is on 2D and 3D computer graphics and the geometric modelling techniques used for representing and interacting with objects in dynamic scenes. Techniques considered include transformation geometry, illumination models and the real-time rendering (shading) models. The course is centered on developing Apps for tablet computers based on natural user interfaces (NUIs), a term used by developers of human-machine interfaces that effectively become invisible to their users through successive learned interactions. Technologies likely to be considered are: virtual reality, computer games, augmented reality, tele-presence, or other modalities such as interaction through the sense of touch, audio or image processing and analysis. 

This course is designed to help students to deepen their understanding of key concepts in security studies and then apply them to real world situations. Students will be provided with a series of case studies from the post 1945 era and contemporary conflicts to develop their knowledge of concepts and theories introduced in this course.