Victoria University of Wellington

This course provides an introduction to the scientific study of abnormal behavior. The course encourages the critical examination of the underlying theoretical models involved and to the empirical evidence for their support. Topics: some of the philosophical assumptions and methodological issues in defining abnormality; some major psychological disorders of childhood, adolescence and adulthood; major models to explain these disorders (biological, psychological, and social); introduction to therapy.

This course explores aspects of visual anthropology and concentrates on different cultural perspectives as captured in visual media. Students study early depictions of indigenous peoples, and the history and presence of ethnographic photography and filming. The course also examines the theoretical aspects of visual anthropology, the analysis of scripts and picture composition, and practical issues of archiving. The course includes visits to research institutions in Wellington.

This course surveys the origins, implementation, experience, and aftermath of the Holocaust. Students consider the legacy of the Holocaust, by considering post-war efforts to seek justice, understand, memorialize, and artistically represent the Holocaust, and to prevent it from happening again. This course utilizes visual documents and documentaries as source material and disturbing images are to be expected.

The course considers issues of current criminological concern in New Zealand and globally looking at the full range of crimes and social harms associated with these issues. Human rights are introduced as a way of thinking about harms perpetrated by the state. There is a focus on applying theory and research. The course aims to develop students who know how to interpret and respond to real life events in ways that promote security and social justice.

This course examines the definition, development, and normalization of ubiquitous media. Students trace the genealogy of ubiquitous media by examining the emergence of the network society, the development of social media, mobile media and apps, and the pervasiveness of big data and algorithms. Students also examine the relationship between ubiquitous media and a range of sociocultural issues including identity, space/place, digital labour, and commercialization.

This course introduces the relationship between education, society, and change. It analyses the ways in which political and cultural beliefs influence children’s and young people’s experiences of education in multiple settings with a particular focus on Aotearoa New Zealand and the Oceania region.

The course introduces the fundamentals of engineering statistics. Topics include probability mass and density functions, random variables and functions of random variables, confidence intervals, statistical tests, and regression.

This course examines how cinema represents issues such gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality and/or class in a critical manner. Topics vary but may include women’s screen authorship and innovative approaches to gender, race and sexuality in global and world cinema. The course introduces theories of representation and spectatorship central to feminist film studies, surveys their applications to a wide range of films, and examines how queer and postcolonial theorists have adapted them to address provocative depictions of sexuality and social inequality onscreen.