Australian Studies

This course considers progressive developments that are being generated through Indigenous and non-Indigenous dialogue and intersections in the context of Australian environmental thought. Students critique and reconsider aspects of dominant Western ways of knowing and understanding, particularly deep-rooted assumptions surrounding the 'nonhuman'. Students gain awareness of how these assumptions shape our lives and relationships with the world, and examine connections between epistemology, life practices and environmental ethics. Through a study of Australian Indigenous and non-Indigenous environmental thinkers, and drawing from Indigenous and non-Indigenous relationships with the land, students think about ethical, social and political issues in relation to the ecology.

In this course, students follow Australian protest movements across the last century. They examine struggles over labor rights and working conditions in the 1900s, women's suffrage, Aboriginal land rights, race relations and the White Australia Policy, homelessness during the Great Depression, freedom of speech during the Cold War, the Vietnam Moratorium, sexual liberation in the 1970s, the environmental movement, refugees and asylum seekers, and LGBT rights today. Students explore changing ideas about government, community, and identity while conducting individual research projects through local archives.