Recommended Study Sequence

This unit is designed as an introduction to Art History. It outlines some of the principal terminologies and methods employed within the discipline of art history through a chronological introduction to important periods, movements, and figures in European art from the Renaissance to the late nineteenth century. In particular, the unit encourages students to think about the practice of art history with reference to the questions asked by art historians and the interpretive techniques they employ. Theoretical and methodological aspects of the discipline are examined, while specific emphasis is given to developing skills in visual analysis and interpretation.

This unit aims to develop and refine students' skills in analytical writing, critical reasoning and the analysis of argument, especially within the context of Cultural and Social Analysis. It aims to develop students' understanding of how arguments are made, along with their ability to analyse and evaluate arguments, while at the same time helping them develop the capacity to make sophisticated arguments in essay form. Sample topics from which students can choose include: advanced database use, Endnote, techniques of visual analysis, punctuation, grammar, and advanced Internet use.

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.

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 examines early nineteenth-century American modernism by studying a variety of social and political issues, including: politics and vision, nationalism, constructions of the American frontier and feminism. A number of approaches are incorporated: semiotics, poststructuralism, feminism and formalism. The unit also examines the major architectural technological and theoretical developments of the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. Architectural topics include: The new American democracy and the quest for an 'Athenian America'; and American medieval-revival styles of the early nineteenth century.

This unit investigates themes in Australian art in the late eighteenth, 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 Britian are explored through the contests over the Australian 'eye' with particular focus on the Heidelberg school, Federation and the First World War. The unit finishes with the debates over a newly arrived Modernism.

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.

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.

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 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.

This unit aims to provide third year humanities students with first-hand knowledge of workplaces or research processes related to their chosen filed of study (major), such as art galleries, museums, libraries, local and state government, tourism and administration or in academic contexts. The units 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 need 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.

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 examines recent debates concerning cinematic representations of masculinity. Although the unit addresses aspects of film theory and analysis, its primary goal is to use cinema to examine the constitutive effects of representation (both iconic and textual) and identification in the formation of gender identities. The unit provides an introduction to various accounts of the formation of masculine subjectivity, giving particular attention to psychoanalytic theory. These theoretical models are developed through a reading of film genres with a specific focus upon film noir and the detective narrative. The unit is structured in three parts: theories of masculinity and film analysis, the cinema of Alfred Hitchcock, and contemporary cinema.

This unit will engage with the question of how social and aesthetic issues might be seen to interact in films by examining specific questions which are related to cinema history. These issues include the following: aesthetic questions and the relation of art history (and modernism in particular) to cinema history 'between wars' in Europe; the notion of landscape (both physical and psychological) and its relation to modernity in post-war British and American film; post-war European 'art house' films and the way philosophical ideas can be conveyed through images; the movement from modernity to post-modernity, focussing on how 'truth' and 'the real' are both established and undermined in American documentary and fiction films from the late 1960s to the late 1990s.

This is an intensive project based unit in which the main piece of assessment is a piece of applied Multimedia. Students are introduced to advanced functionality of Multimedia software, including basic programming, functions and variables, image manipulation and compression.

This unit deals with the uses of photography in picturing the new social subjects/objects of emerging industrial and colonial societies in the nineteenth century. A critical discussion of photography's employment in the discovery and 'fixing' of identities will accompany a focus on the archive and its collections of instrumental photographs. Students are encouraged to work closely with available archives in Australia. This unit is designed for photography/new technology students and for those engaged in critical studies of the image.

This unit looks at the relation between photography and the representation of cultural life and society with a particular emphasis upon twentieth century American documentary photography (from the 1890s to the 1960s). The unit is taught in two parts. The first half examines some recent debates and methods within photo theory , and the second half addresses specific instances of American photography (Jacob Rils, Lewis Hine, Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Robert Frank, and Diane Arbus) giving particular attention to the discursive and ideological meanings of photographs.

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.

This unit explores the histories and theories of animation, from its origins to its contemporary critical practice. The unit covers independent and experiemental 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.

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.

This unit explores various theories of representation and visual analysis. It considers a variety of historical methodologies pertaining to the nature of visual representation and issues regarding visual depiction.

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.