Admission and Unit Information - Bachelor of Arts (Media and Visual Cultures)

Three modules focussing on different media and methods of analysing visual culture provide a multidisciplinary foundation unit for students’ study in the major area of Media and Visual Cultures. The modules will vary from year to year based on the expertise of staff co-teaching the unit. Media to be studied will include, for example, film, television, digital media, “fine arts” such as paintings, engravings and sculpture, including commemorative sculpture and monuments.

The major philosophies of art will be examined. The Western tradition will be surveyed from the Ancient Greeks through medieval and Renaissance theories of art to modern and postmodern aesthetics beginning with Kant. Marxist and feminist aesthetics will be especially emphasised. The artistic material will primarily come from the visual arts.

This unit studies several key Asian cinemas and also examines the work of diasporic film-makers and audiences, with a discussion of the film and video work of Asian-Australian film-makers. Aesthetic trends - questions of form, style, narrative and genre, are explored as part of a study of the historical evolution of these cinemas and the ways in which they address issues of cultural importance. The unit encompasses questions of cultural difference, nationalism, and the hybridisation and globalisation processes at work in contemporary cultures. It will also present a critical evaluation of the assumptions that inform much of western scholarship on Asian cinemas.

This unit investigates themes in Australian art in the late eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Topics covered are: images of the colonial world; the contexts involved in reading this new world, maps, illustrations as well as topographical images. The cultural relationships with Great Britain are explored through the contests over the Australian ‘eye’ with particular focus on the Heidelberg school, Federation and the First World War. The subject finishes with the debates over a newly arrived Modernism.

Note: The unit offerings for the 1H Teaching Period at Bankstown and Penrith campuses listed above are available only for students enrolled in course 1670 - Bachelor of Education (Birth - 5 years). Please note that enrolments will be monitored and students who are NOT enrolled in course 1670 will be required to withdraw from 1H and enrol in one of the alternative Teaching Periods listed above. This unit focuses on the interrelationships between image and text in children's literature. The unit examines both picture books and other image-based children's texts, including electronic texts and graphic novels. The unit will examine children's texts as cultural artefacts, theories of visual literacy and how image and text combine to create meaning. Students will have the option of creating their own picture book for their final project or undertaking a critical analysis of a number of contemporary picture books.

This unit examines the role of digital technologies in contemporary cultural production, exploring the impact digital technologies have had on the design and construction of images, spaces and bodies in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The unit traces the development of technologies from analogue, to electronic, to digital, and analyses key topics in media studies including the cyborg, virtual reality, artificial life and simulation. The unit contextualizes conceptual issues with reference to design, film, art and new media works.

This unit considers the intimate relationship between film and philosophy through close examinations of key philosophical and theoretical writings on film (incorporating hermeneutic, phenomenological, ontological, psychoanalytic, cognitivist and aesthetic approaches). Treating cinema as a philosophical medium in its own right, the unit explores the ways in which philosophical concepts have been taken up and addressed by film, as well as considering the ways in which cinema has in turn influenced philosophy.

This unit views the avant-garde as a changing set of conditions and concerns. This is illustrated through an examination of major European and North American art movements from Cubism to Abstract Expressionism. Although the unit is organised chronologically, emphasis is placed on the critical analysis of key premises. In particular, the discourse of originality has been central to avant-garde theories, policies and practices. Originality has appeared in diverse forms: as violent rupture, transgressions, or through related organicist metaphors referring not so much to purely formal invention as to sources of life.

The unit will introduce students to the key theoretical strands of film studies and key concepts in the analysis of film. The unit will explore techniques of narrative, performance, genre, realism and spectatorship, as well as introducing methods to analyse the use of editing, cinematography and sound. A case study of several key historical film movements or genres will introduce students to the study of cinema in its cultural contexts. The unit will also address the transformations in screen cultures as a result of digital technologies and new media.

This unit explores the histories and theories of animation, from its origins to its contemporary critical practice. The unit covers independent and experimental animation: digital animation and special effects; anime; and the subversive impulse in adult animation. The lectures involve viewing a broad range of works from these areas, followed by tutorial-based close readings of the works. These close readings will facilitate an understanding of the artform’s aesthetic, socio-cultural and technological aspects, contextualising it within the history and theory of art and design—live action cinema, photography, painting, video, TV—and popular culture more generally.

This unit studies the history and development of museums and issues related to the collection and display of art, and the role of the museum within contemporary culture. It surveys critical writings and discussions currently surrounding museums and their audiences.

Landscape as a subject has been one of the major pre-occupations of artists throughout time. This unit examines the Western artist's perception of the natural environment and humankind's changing relationship to it in both two and three dimensional forms. The various theoretical and pictorial constructs governing the ways in which this has been exposed are explored as well as the many ways landscape has been used metaphorically, politically and philosophically.

The Musical will involve the examination of the history and development of the stage musical in its social and cultural context. The unit will also explore the structure of the musical as a ‘text’ and performance genre, looking closely at narrative structure, the structure of songs and the construction of character types and interaction. ‘The Musical’ will also involve students in the critical analysis of the representation of gender and race in the stage musical.

This unit examines selected historical, philosophical and critical writings that have influenced the writing of art history. The unit provides a relevant background to aesthetic and cultural theory, based on visual arts practices, texts, and models. While covering many of the issues and debates raised in literary theory, its emphasis is on the visual arts.

This unit gives students knowledge of research methods relevant to humanities disciplines. Modules provide advanced instruction in developing a research topic, evidence-based research and Human Research Ethics processes and policy.

This unit investigates the major aesthetic and theoretical events of Australian art in the Twentieth century. Beginning with post First World War art, significant themes surrounding modernism, parochialism, internationalism, conceptualism and contemporary artistic concerns are explored together with aspects of the international art market, museology and indigenous art making.

This unit explores the idea of realism in both fiction and non-fiction film as it has been articulated in film theory and explored in various film movements. The unit will start from early actuality film, will examine the principles which animate documentary cinema, and will explore the idea of realism as it has developed in fiction film. The unit will discuss a range of approaches to documentary realism, and explore contemporary challenges to the documentary idea in arguments that fictive elements exist in all documentary film. The unit will also examine various historical schools of realist filmmaking in the fiction film, such as Italian neo-realism. By the juxtaposition of ideas of realism in documentary and fiction, the subject will explore the blurred boundaries of non-fiction and fiction in contemporary cinema.

This unit will examine the role of cinema in forming images of national and cultural identity. The unit will study approaches in film theory to national cinemas, and will explore the development of indigenous and postcolonial cinemas. The unit will discuss political debates and issues in national cinemas, and will raise questions about the nature of memory as it is mediated by cinematic experience, the representation of history, and the history of representation of indigenous cultures and peoples. The unit will introduce these questions and examine them within the framework of a case study of one national or postcolonial cinema.

The concept of affect refers to intense feeling or emotion, and this unit examines different ways that affect has been understood in cinema. The unit explores the way that diverse cinematic genres have developed very different strategies to engage the spectator in this intense way, and discusses conventions, such as techniques of narrative, cinematography and performance. The unit examines models of affect derived from early film, the transformation of these models with the development of narrative, and the evolution of affective strategies in contemporary cinema. Examples may be drawn from early cinema, experimental cinema, political cinema, documentary or mainstream genres such as melodrama or horror. Through an analysis of the strategies used in various genres, we will raise broader questions about the nature of spectatorship in different historical and cultural contexts.

This unit offers a survey of one or more of the following: drama, drama on film and film drama. It will examine key concepts in cinema theory, dramatic form and film production. Comparison may be made between theatre texts and film adaptations related to the work of specific dramatists; or drama texts may be considered in themselves (often with the screening of filmed versions of these dramas). Alternatively, film itself will be considered as a disinct dramatic form whose contours will be traced in relation to the work of important directors. Viewing films will form an integral part of this unit and students will be expected to attend screenings of films as well as a lecture and tutorial.

This unit aims to provide third year humanities students with first-hand knowledge of workplaces or research processes related to their chosen field of study (major), such as art galleries, museums, libraries, local and state government, tourism and administration or in academic contexts. The unit will introduce students to various fields in which the skills developed over two years of study in humanities can be applied. It will augment their study and provide much needed work experience. The internship placement and/or project will be chosen by the student in consultation with the staff member responsible for the major area and the placement will be overseen and the academic work assessed by the member of staff responsible for the major area of study relevant to the internship.

Provides students with an understanding of global, regional and local news media production and representations of Islam and Muslim societies. It discusses new, emerging and alternative forms of media discourses of conflict in the Muslim world, and analyses selected news reports as forms of case studies. Taking the notion of ‘Orientalism’ as its starting point, the subject/unit critically examines the extent to which the mediatisation of conflict impacts relations between Islam and the West vis-a-vis debates on Orientalism, 'Asian values' and Islamic world views.

This unit examines critiques of power in relation to everyday media cultures and the uneven development of modernity. The history of concepts of power is considered in terms of the relationship between socio-cultural, technical, political, and economic conditions shaping media cultures in the context of the everyday. Working with the concept of 'uneven modernities', this unit provides students with an understanding of the shift from industrial production to flexible accumulation and the impacts of this on media cultures globally.

This unit investigates the relationship between the media and forms of political resistance constructed as ‘violence’ or ‘terrorism’. Practices and representations of political violence have transformed in the shift to post-modernity and raised questions about the connections between the media, political agency, and processes of globalisation. We will consider traditional and current debates about the media’s relationship to violence; the importance of spectacle in global cultures; the media’s role in the reproduction of hegemony; the changing relationship between the media and the public sphere; and the media’s perceived role in counter-terrorism policy and practice.

This unit will engage with the question of how social and aesthetic issues interact in films by examining specific questions which are related to cinema history. Issues of identity will be used to focus upon the ways in which historical contexts interrelate with artistic practice. The unit will consider the process of creating emotions, the consideration of techniques of production and the manipulation of cinema language, the use of narrative or non-narrative form to convey the sense of reality, (or the unreal, the uncertain).

In the past and present, vision has been both privileged as a metaphor for truth, and denigrated as the source of distortion, illusions, and lies. This unit begins by situating the contemporary fascination with ‘visual cultures’ within the context of a long tradition of philosophical discourse on vision and sight. It traces the relationship between the emergence of visual technologies and the language used by philosophers to discuss truth and falsehood. It explores the manner in which current visual cultures call for both to repeat and to rewrite our philosophical inheritance.

Throughout history various forms of material culture (such as art, architecture, sculpture, objects and photographs) have been used to memorialize individuals as well as to commemorate events, both personal and national. As such, an examination of commemorative works offer valuable insights into the production of public memory and history. This unit explores the particular contexts of such memorials; their meaning, design and, politics. The diverse expressions of commemoration in Australia and the consequent production of public memory provides the arena for such considerations.

Students doing social semiotics will learn a variety of skills in social and textual analysis. These skills are vital to an understanding of communication, society, and culture. The unit will offer insights into the history of the rise of semiotics, especially from the work of Roland Barthes onwards. The unit combines theory with practice in analysing and producing text in a variety of media. It also looks at the contexts of textual production, ranging from general examples to issues of multicultural and postcolonial social analysis.

The content of this elective will be taught on campus, utilizing field trips, major collections and occasional visiting lecturers. The focus of the content is both the history of art fraud, theft and forgery and the implications of current art crime. This unit reflects the interest in and ramifications of the growth in art crime both domestically (particularly in the realm of indigenous art) and internationally. It will provide students with a lively knowledge of this area of the art domain, an area that is contemporary in its relevance.

This unit studies the period 1850-1900 and examines the distinct art of the time in relation to changing notions of modernity. A major strand is analyzing the complexity of realism; questioning the so-called objectivity of vision and discussing realism as a social issue, as a threat to existing values and power structures resulting in the depoliticisation of artists. Another strand is feminine visual culture and women's experience of modernism in the 19th century. The unit also includes French architecture of the period and aims to acquaint students with a broad range of buildings and innovative construction techniques, as well as theoretical and philosphical debates and issues relating to 19th century architecture.

A multidisciplinary approach to Italian Renaissance visual culture. Topics to be studied include Italian Renaissance art, architecture, as well as their transmission across cultures and nations through travel, heritage, tourism, religion, food and fashion.

This unit surveys contemporary world cinema in a range of languages in order to address a range of linguistic and cultural issues, including the role of subtitling and dubbing in cross-cultural communication. The unit allows students majoring in a Language other than English to enrol in a language specific tutorial (Arabic, Chinese, Italian, Japanese or Spanish) and other students to enrol in a tutorial conducted in English.