University of Sydney

This course examines basic communication skills in understanding and speaking Japanese. Students will also learn to write the two Japanese syllabaries and approximately 60 kanji characters and to recognize at least 100 kanji characters in context. Relevant socio-cultural information is integrated with the language learning.

This course examines musical genres worldwide within their respective social and cultural contexts. It explores some of the most important ideas that have informed the thinking of researchers working in this field - such as the connections between music and gender, social structures, forms of capital, politics, identity, health and the environment. The course also interrogates notions of the nature and experience of music, why musical genres differ and why music has such important but diverse significance worldwide. 

This course examines the ways in which light interacts with surfaces, objects, and the human visual system. It covers some of the fundamental properties of light, mechanisms of human perception, and the ways that light interacts with surfaces. 

This course examines the economic transformation of less-developed countries from microeconomic and macroeconomic perspectives. It covers applied topics such as education, health, nutrition, demographics, labor, agriculture and the private sector, focusing on how policies attempt to overcome market and institutional failures that are particularly acute in the developing world. 

This course is a survey of the history and aesthetics of film music from the late 1890s to the present day. It covers the dramatic function of music as an element of cinematic narrative, the codification of musical iconography in cinematic genres, the symbolic use of pre-existing music, and the evolving musical styles of film composers.

Are time and space substances, or is there nothing more to them than the relations between objects or events? How is time different from space? Does time have a direction? If it does, what gives it its direction? If it doesn't, why does it seem to us that it does? Does space have a direction? This course investigates the nature of time and space and objects (including persons) within space and time.