Australia

This course provides a rich and panoramic survey of the early Twentieth Century’s most dynamic and aesthetically invigorating cultural movement. Moving back and forth between select cinematic and literary texts, the course opens pathways between these two critical Modernist media. It demonstrates how writers were adopting technical ideas from the new mechanical medium, even as artists and poets turned to the cinema to exploit its poetic capacities. Navigating a pathway though some of the most exciting avant-garde currents in Europe and America, the course blends primary documents with key critical materials in order to instill a thorough understanding of Modernist cultural forms. It also considers the phenomenon of vernacular modernism in mainstream Hollywood films, and interrogates both Hollywood’s popularisation of certain experimental features and its patronage of hungry writers in the Great Depression. The course is structured around three intensive modules: (1) Avant-garde Modernism in film and writing, (2) High Modernism, the moment of masterpieces, (3) Vernacular Modernism, the vulgate of modernity.

This course examines the major philosophical themes to be found in the works of Plato and Aristotle, with close attention to a few central works. This course emphasises understanding the philosophers' way of thinking rather than learning a body of doctrine.

For good practical and theoretical reasons, risk and uncertainty have emerged as central themes in social science. More flexible labor markets, greater freedom to divorce, cohabit and re-partner and greater diversity in lifestyles erode the certainty with which people can map out their futures. Step-changes in the complexity and scale of technological innovation enable rapid rise in living standards, and, at the same time, bring the possibility of major catastrophes closer. Unexpected disasters, from the Challenger Space Shuttle to Chernobyl, from the Herald of Free Enterprise to Exxon Valdez remind us of the limits to our capacity for control. This course gives an overview to interdisciplinary and sociological approaches to risk and a better understanding why we are concerned about risks and how we can deal with risks and uncertainty as a society but also individually in everyday life. It shows the limits of objectivist understandings of risk and explores the involvement of values, power, knowledge and emotions in the realm of risk.

This course offers a compelling story of drugs that provides insight to us as individuals and as a society. Drugs impact our lives in many different ways. Social responses to their use have shaped our laws, the health system, commerce – even foreign policies. In Australia the use of therapeutic drugs is carefully regulated to maintain cost and safety, some recreational drugs are taxed heavily to provide government income, while others are banned and huge costs are incurred attempting to prevent their use. Other countries have a different blend of risk, responsibility and regulation. Using a case-study approach, the course explores the scientific, social, historical and legal issues associated with alcohol, opiates, tobacco, penicillin and thalidomide.

Operations management is concerned with producing goods and services effectively and is a core functional area within all organizations, critical to performance outcomes, and competitiveness. This course examines the link between strategy and operations for both manufacturing and service organizations. It covers broad issues such as strategy, quality, inventory systems, service levels, capacity and demand management. The course also considers some of the latest concepts such as virtual and e-operations, supply chain management and lean and agile operations.

Topics covered in this course include polymer matrix, metal matrix, and ceramic matrix composites; nanocomposites; mechanical behaviour of composites; physico-chemical characterisation; fabrication techniques; design with composites; applications; fundamentals of semiconductor physics; material processes used in the fabrication of electronic devices such as single crystal growth, implantation, lithography, etching, and thin film growth; sources of failure and methods of fault diagnosis in devices; and application of dielectric materials in semiconductor devices.

This course introduces students to some of the central theoretical questions surrounding inequality, investigates the historical development of inequality within and between countries, and examines some of the key mechanisms through which inequality is produced in modern societies. The course concludes by considering possible alternatives and responses.