Australian National University

This course examines archaeologies of world religions and determine the materiality of sacred and secular ritual expression. It explores rituals associated with death such as sacrifice, mummification and cannibalism; shamanistic practices as shown in rock art from Kazakhstan to cave art in France and Spain; the rise of "fertility cult" figurines from Czech Republic to Malta; totemic beliefs and ancestor worship in Torres Strait and ritual landscapes surrounding Stonehenge.

This course examines the purpose and application of theoretical paradigms in international relations. Theories provide frameworks to understand the behavior of actors in a complex and dynamic global environment. Distinct theoretical paradigms make central assumptions about primary factors that drive human action with implications for how we understand, explain, and predict issues and interactions in the international arena. Such factors range from scarcity and a drive for control (e.g., classical realism, neorealism, game theory); to a drive to cooperate for absolute gains (e.g., neoliberal institutionalism, liberalism), constructed identities based on historically-contingent meanings and values (e.g., constructivism), and unequal power relations that underpin a drive for autonomy, agency, and empowerment. (e.g., critical theories, feminist theory). The course teaches all theoretical paradigms with a focus on how they can be applied to better understand political issues and challenges in the contemporary global environment.

This course examines the subjects of political leadership and executive government theoretically, methodologically and comparatively. Theoretically, it covers the trajectory of the major approaches to the study of leaders and executives that includes institutionalism, feminism and rational choice theory. Methodologically, it covers different quantitative and qualitative methods that can be employed to address research questions pertaining to leaders and executives. It also looks at leaders and executives comparatively by assessing the leadership and executive experience geographically and institutionally. Additional topics to be addressed may include political communication, non-elected leaders (e.g. advisors and judges) and the executive experience at sub and supranational levels of government.

This course examines Australian politics from a historical perspective. It explores the foundation and working of democracy, the formation and transformation of the party system, and the relationship of politics to broader changes in society. The first part follows a chronological structure, beginning with traditional Indigenous government and extending through the colonial era to the present day, while the second examines a range of themes such as federation, nationalism and republicanism, women, gender and politics, rural politics, Indigenous politics and the media.

This course is a broad survey of the field of international business.

This course examines the construction of web sites and web interface/interaction design. There is a key focus on the on new media / multimedia and its delivery on the world wide web. The course introduces multimedia as a combination of text, graphics, video, animation and sound for the purposes of information access, storage and dissemination. Topics such as the nature and types of multimedia objects, components of a multimedia system, Web authoring, delivery tools, multimedia applications, spam, podcasts, RSS, web spam and societal implications of the web. Students will create multimedia applications using some or all of HTML, XHTML, JavaScript, animation, sound, video and 3D.

This course examines different philosophies and political theories of how to foster belief and fashion deception in politics, while asking how we might be more ethical and honest in a post-truth context and in the university.