University of New South Wales

This course examines a general introduction to six of the world’s major religions with a special focus on the way in which their specific laws and customs impact upon the behavior of their adherents. The religions studied are Hinduism, Buddhism, Daoism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Each week a specific practical theme will be traced across the six religions. The themes include sacred images; scriptural texts; ethics; the three life-cycle rituals of birth, death and marriage; food and clothing customs; the calendar; religious architecture and popular places of pilgrimage.

This course examines the world's most powerful film industry. It produces a historical and conceptual map of the institution that dominated the global film industry in the twentieth century, and which continues to do so today. In focusing on cinema as a socio-cultural and economic force, both in the United States and across the globe, it examines how Hollywood has historically produced and distributed a powerful cultural imaginary and devised methods to encourage audiences to consume it. The course considers Hollywood as an early example of a genuinely global industry that initially sustained itself through the implementation of a range of industrial, economic, cultural, legal, quasi-legal, and indeed illegal conventions and practices, i.e., the star system, the production code, the studio system, the genre system, monopolistic practices like vertical integration, and the Classical Hollywood style of film-making.

The course introduces the Japanese sound system, basic greetings as well as a number of basic Japanese structures and vocabulary expressed in Hiragana and Katakana syllabaries that are essential to basic Japanese communication. They are taught through five social/cultural topics following the textbook, Nakama Book 1a chapters, which include: greetings and introductions, discussion of daily routines, discussion of Japanese cities, discussion of Japanese homes, and discussion of leisure time. In each topic, while studying the language, students are challenged to discover different approaches to viewing the world around them linguistically and culturally, and are given the opportunity to understand current sociocultural issues in Japan. They are also inducted into the learning routine necessary to succeed in the fast-paced learning of a foreign language.

This course introduces students to the many layers of Aboriginal heritage which continue to occupy the Sydney region. Starting from within the literature and developing knowledge of the continuing presence of Aboriginal peoples, knowledge, voices, and perspectives, students engage with a deeper understanding and significance of "place." From rock art sites, place names and keeping places to traditional ecological knowledge, land management practices, and various forms of cultural expression, students learn about the presence of an ancient knowledge system in the local Sydney area as well as the importance this holds for Aboriginal people today. Students have the unique opportunity to visit specific places and sites of significance across Sydney throughout the course.

This course examines 20th century Australia from the time of Federation to the Apology in 2008. 20th century Australia was a period of vision and revisioning, a time of grand schemes and grand failures, and of intense questioning around notions of identity, place, race, and nation. This course examines the events that Australians lived through and the issues that preoccupied them, their cultural lives and the myths, legends, visions, and prejudices through which Australians imagined themselves and others. Major topics include: Federation, World War One, the Depression, World War Two, immigration, the Petrov Affair, Vietnam, the Dismissal, Mabo, the Tampa, and the Apology. These events become sites for analyzing concepts of nation, the politics of race, ideologies of domesticity and the family, social movements, the impact of modernity, the cinema, the experience of the cities and the bush, and importantly, Australia's place in the region and the world.

This course covers the basic principles of research and theory in social psychology, with a special emphasis on understanding how people relate to each other. Issues such as the nature of human sociability, the perception and interpretation of social behavior, ambiguities of interpretation of interpersonal behavior, verbal and nonverbal communication processes, impression formation and impression management, and related topics will be covered. The course also covers developmental psychology, including the age at which certain abilities or dispositions develop or are learned, and the processes by which developmental changes occur. Issues such as nature and nurture, continuity vs discontinuity, nomothetic vs ideographic approaches, and the methods and ethics of developmental research will be covered from various perspectives— psychodynamic, biological/ethological, environmental/learning, and cognitive-developmental.

This course examines traditions, perspectives and concepts of media studies. Starting with the familiar and the everyday, this course covers the breadth of contemporary media studies from television and the tradition of mass media studies, to telephony and the study of networked media and communication technologies. With an eye on the way that television and telephony have adapted to changing realities over the decades, this course explains how media and communication technologies have transformed the rhythms of everyday life, the organization of domestic space, the boundaries between private and public, and our sense of involvement with national and public collectivities. In addition, the course examines the concept of mediation by exploring how both television and telephony shape the experience of time, distance, immediacy and liveness.

This course provides an economic perspective on the environment and discusses the reasons behind why environmental problems exist, why unregulated markets sometimes fail in this context, and potential economic solutions to these problems, which include regulations, taxes, subsidies, and pollution permit trading schemes. Students investigate methods for determining the benefits and costs of environmental preservation.