University of Melbourne

This course examines knowledge of core business functions and analytical tools and applies these to the problems faced by modern organizations and decision-makers. There is a strong focus on the need to collectively arrive at decisions within decision groups, and to argue for these choices through typical business communication formats (e.g. business plans, slide packs, formalized reviews).  

This course examines the ways in which contemporary practices of visual communication are being reshaped by digital media. It provides an overview of the digitization of key visual media such as photography, cinema and video, and addresses the social and political implications of the growing use of digital networks as primary forms for the distribution and consumption of images. Students will engage with key issues for 21st century media industries including: how professional organizations such as news media and institutions such as courts deal with the changing ground for claims to truth and realism by media such as photography, film and video; the implications of photo-sharing and social networking websites as new cultural forms for the circulation of images; the blurring of lines between amateur and professional media production, and the growing use of visual communication by activists and NGOs.

Drawing principally on Marxist anthropology, post-structuralism and post-colonialism, this course looks cross-culturally to explore the interrelationships between diverse forms and sources of power, the roles of colonialism and corporate globalization in configuring and sustaining local relations of inequality, and the rise of resistance movements that explicitly challenge exclusions based on class, gender, and ethnicity. Special attention will be paid to the effects of multinational corporations on local power relations and patterns of inequality throughout the world via brand marketing, legal reform, and corporate social responsibility. Case studies will be drawn from Latin America, North America, Africa, Australia, and Southeast Asia.

This course examines the creation and the reception of the work of art. It commences in 15th century Italy with an examination of the organization of artists' workshops and concludes by analyzing the relationships between contemporary artists, their materials and markets. Topics in the subject are varied but will focus around certain key issues: the changing status of the artist, the determination of authenticity and value, and the role of materials and markets in the construction of meaning.

This course is an introduction to history and theory in architecture and landscape architecture. To understand the making of built places, from the scale of the house to that of the city, the course is built around three questions: what is the built environment and how is it formed and transformed; how do we analyze built places and how might we imagine and create better social and environmental outcomes in our built places through design. Using a contemporary city as its key case study, location for student fieldwork and the mapping of places, the course is organized into four parts, addressing in turn: infrastructures, housing, health, and knowledge institutions.

This course will introduce the perspectives of the major, and the scales at which the varied scientific disciplines of Evolutionary Biology, Physiology, Psychology and Geography understand ‘the human’. A question will be identified, that will be analyzed by each of the four disciplines in turn. For example, questions chosen for study in the subject might be: how does a particular disease, in a certain time and place, spread from being an epidemic to a pandemic; what is the relationship of humans to particular natural disasters; over the next century, should (and will) most humans become vegetarian? In the final week of semester, the views of ‘the human’ that are held by the four disciplines will be compared and contrasted, in light of what has been revealed in studying the question chosen for focus. This concluding discussion will demonstrate the aspects of the human to which each discipline gives priority, and at which scales.

This course examines differences in diverse people’s experiences of urban life, the opportunities and challenges it offers them, and their ability to shape the city. It looks at how how social differences such as class, gender, ethnicity, race, and disability have been understood in urban studies from varied theoretical perspectives, including liberalism, Marxism, feminism and postcolonialism. It explores these themes with case studies from many cities around the world, with a particular interest in Melbourne, where students will undertake independent field research. Specific issues to be investigated include: the social and cultural lives of rich, poor, middle-class and gentrifying neighborhoods; the negotiation of gender roles and relations in the private and public spheres of the city; intergenerational conflicts in urban housing and labor markets; inequalities in the spatial distribution of urban infrastructures such as roads, transport, education and health services; racial segregation and conflict; the displacement and marginalization of Aboriginal communities in Australian cities, and their activism. 

This course uses logic and discrete mathematics to model the science of computing. It provides a grounding in the theories of logic, sets, relations, functions, automata, formal languages, and computability, providing concepts that underpin virtually all the practical tools contributed by the discipline, for automated storage, retrieval, manipulation and communication of data.

This course examines video games, including the great games, the history, the techniques, and the future of this developing medium and industry. To understand the full picture of video games it is impossible to separate the commercial elements from the artistic and the technological from the social and mental. A wide range of disciplines need to be explored and the connections between them as well as looking at the game industry itself and how it is transforming. Each week will combine the issues that surround games and an overview of the best and most complex games from multi million dollar blockbusters to the new ‘art games’ and independent games that re-invent the concept of a game. 

Making Micro Documentaries immerses students with little formal filmmaking or arts backgrounds in the process of shooting short unscripted films or documentaries. It examines methodologies for devising, producing and distributing short films, and how they can be used to support and enhance the student's own academic output. The course asks participants to use their own devices for audio and video capture, editing and post-production. During the course, students will shoot a series of micro movies to explore how moving images engage with, and represent, the real world. The practice-led program will be framed by critical analysis and historical contextualization.