Australia

This course examines the relationship between media, society and politics by examining the ways in which information is mediated between social, cultural and political institutions. It develops a conceptual framework from which to analyze the dynamic technological and regulatory environment in which the media operates and to investigate the consequences of changes in these areas for media practitioners, politicians and ordinary citizens. Topics covered include media ownership and regulation; the media and society; the media and politics; the media and social movements; the politics of spin; censorship, freedom of speech/press; new media and democracy; global media and global politics.

This course examines the intricate links and parallels between the arts, science, philosophy, architecture, mysticism, medicine (both western and eastern), law, and economics, through understandings of the human body.

This course examines the fundamentals of creativity, writing and storytelling for communication professionals and media producers.

This course examines how social and cultural factors influence language, and the role language plays in structuring and representing social categories across cultures. It examines how culture and language shape each other, particularly how language represents and enables culture and how cultures influence the form individual languages take. Specific topics include socially determined variation in language styles and registers, language varieties reflecting social class, gender, and ethnic group, factors affecting language choice such as, bi- and multilingualism, as well as the relation between language, culture, and thought, and universalist versus relativist views of language. Students also explore changes in language status over time.

This course examines key literary texts and genres of postmodern literature in terms of their formal qualities and/or in their representation of the culture of late capitalism. It covers topics such as "From the modern to the postmodern", "Postmodern culture and the commodity form", "Gender, writing and the postmodern", "High and mass culture", "history and the postmodern", and "the simulacrum".

This course examines the study of Australian film and television. Beginning with post-war Australian film and television, it will trace the emergence of the modern entertainment industry in Australia locating it within national and international frameworks and examining the growing debates around what constitutes a national cinema and television industry. The focus will be upon examining specific films and a range of media in television locating products within local and global contexts, analyzing cosmopolitan and nationalist impulses that drive the industry forward. It covers a range of indigenous and non-indigenous products and genres including feature films, video, documentaries, television series, sitcoms and news programs. Road movies, comedy, history films, animation, romance and melodrama are among the genres studied.