Australian Studies

This course examines the history, politics and culture of Sydney. Students will explore the city through walking tours and from many vantage points, including its beaches, rivers, parks, subcultures and multicultural communities and will learn more about the past and present of Aboriginal Sydney, Western Sydney and Queer Sydney. Drawing on a vast range of historical and contemporary accounts, the course traces Sydney’s extraordinary urban transformation from a tiny penal outpost to a global city of international renown in only 200 years. 

This course examines popular music, Indigenous music, classical music, and the music of multicultural communities in Australia, as well as themes prevalent in the work of contemporary music scholars. These include gender and identity, ownership and appropriation, reception and transmission, colonialism and Empire, globalization, modernity, representation, and music and place.

This course examines representations of the Australia's sporting past through the lenses of memorials, museums, film and the internet. As part of this approach, there is a focus on Australian sporting icons including Les Darcy, Dawn Fraser, Eddie Gilbert, Peter Norman and Michael O'Loughlin as well as the Australian Sport Museum (Melbourne), the Ration Shed Museum (Cherbourg) and the Australian Paralympic Movement.

This course examines the Australian legal system, a common law system, and contrasts it with the civil law system. It covers the historical origins of the Australian legal system, some of the principles underpinning the legal system, including the importance of the concept of the rule of law. It also covers the operation of the principal institutions of the legal system, the legislative and executive arms of government and the judiciary and courts. This will include the jurisdiction of Australian courts, the process by which cases are decided and the doctrine of precedent, consideration of alternative methods of dispute resolution and an examination of the role of the legal profession. There will also be an overview of the main branches of law. Aboriginal customary law will be looked at and there will be a critical analysis of the circumstances of the adoption of the common law in Australia and the effect on the indigenous people. There will also be examination of the recognition of customary law and native title.

This course examines the diversity of Indigenous culture, epistemologies, practices and engagements with the contemporary world. It will also looks at traditional Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander societies, cultures, languages, history and prehistory in curricula, research and knowledge exchange.

This course examines Indigenous Australian peoples and their music making; diverse forms of Indigenous performance; and how Indigenous Australian performers simultaneously resist and use colonialist constructions of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander performance to create new and exciting forms.

This course examines the institutions, practices and principles of representative democracy and justice, within a comparative context. It covers the Australian constitutional framework, the separation of powers and the judicial system, the "unwritten constitution" of governing conventions, and human rights. It also considers the role of political parties, the media, and questions of citizenship in regard to sex and gender, race, and class. These elements of Australian representative democracy, as well as the controversial issues that they cover, are compared to their counterparts in other countries. 

This course examines the connection between land and culture to the continuity and well-being of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Students learn about Country and Indigenous relationships with, responsibilities to and care of place, and the maintenance of land, language and culture. A rights based perspective is used to explore Indigenous political history and activism in maintaining and protecting Country and culture.