English

This course examines Black (Afro-diasporic) music and its impact on society in America and Europe. It reveals how Black Music functions as a form of cultural politics, a philosophy, and a way of building identity and community. It shows how Afro-diasporic musical production has been a central force in political movements and social transformations from interwar anti-colonial activism to Civil Rights campaigns, which has continued in the recent #BlackLivesMatter movement. This course engages with genres of music such as blues and spirituals, jazz, gospel, afro-futurist pop, and hip-hop. This course situates these genres in their historical context, listens to and performs them, and shows how the music – both individual pieces and whole genres - makes political and philosophical claims. This treatment of music serves as a form of critical thinking and engagement with scholarly traditions that give primacy to textual work. The course combines readings, historical case studies and biography, and music listening and making. It therefore enacts and models radically interdisciplinary approaches that connect text-based and embodied learning.

The course examines the core phenomena of religious and spiritual belief and practice – faith, guilt and forgiveness, worship – through the lenses of different psychologies. Psychoanalysis, social, cognitive, behavioral, biological, evolutionary and positive psychology have all addressed these. Students explore their theoretical perspectives, methodologies, and the types of empirical data they have gathered. They also look at distinctive features of human culture that, while not specifically religious, are arguably fundamental to the experience of being human, such as art, fiction, and humor. Core to the course is consideration of multiple rationalities and the nature and status of different types and levels of knowledge – religious vs. scientific, psychological vs. sociological, evolutionary vs. humanistic – in understanding the human condition.

This course provides students with a comprehensive overview of the history and culture of Pharaonic Egypt from the Neolithic and the formation of the Egyptian state at the end of the Predynastic through to the arrival of Alexander the Great and the incorporation of Egypt into the Hellenistic World. Alongside the historical overview, students study aspects of Pharaonic culture such as royal iconography, mortuary, and sacred landscapes as well as modern reception of the Egyptian civilization in a series of seminars built around specific textual sources or scholarly articles providing a starting point for discussion and debate. 

From illegally spray-painted stencils to secret exhibitions in abandoned warehouses to exclusive multi-million dollar art fairs, this course explores the rise of street art in the contemporary city. The course examines the diversity of artists, materials, and political impulses that drive street art and graffiti and its shift from an illicit subculture to a mainstream practice. Using examples from Melbourne and other key cities such as New York, Rome, and Berlin, the course investigates how the meaning and impact of street art derive from spatial and social contexts and how street art can provide new ways of understanding a city. It also covers broader debates about art, public space, and urban development. Students develop skills in identifying, mapping, and designing street art in Melbourne’s laneways.

The study of the structure and function of eukaryotic cells at the molecular level has been one of the major growth areas in biology over the past decade. Our understanding of many complex processes such as cell division, differentiation, movement and cell-cell interactions has been greatly extended by use of a combination of biochemical, molecular genetic and immunological methods. This course takes as its starting point the material covered in several of the first-half 3rd year courses and 1st and 2nd year courses, and applies that knowledge to a detailed study of five major topics in molecular cell biology: the cytoskeleton, signal transduction, cell cycle, membrane trafficking and nuclear domains. As the pace of research in these areas is very rapid, the course concentrates on techniques and experimental designs used to dissect and analyze these complex processes, and it looks at current ideas about how they occur. An important element in the course is the opportunity for students to develop the skills of an active learner through taking part in the courses exercises.