Imaging Australian Spaces

This subject is not offered in 2011.

The way we think about space matters. Images and ideas of national and local space have a particular power to shape our history, our politics, our understandings of the world, and our attitudes to others. This subject allows students to examine the ways in which Australian space has been represented in a variety of forms. The subject explores how these spaces - conceived in a visual, literary, historical, sociological and physical sense - have developed, and how these have been represented and promoted in various contexts. Through a series of case studies, the subject examines topics and issues such as national space, spaces of silence and emptiness, legacies of colonial inscription on landscape, badlands and 'trauma-scapes' public space, the intersections of globality and locality, spaces of exclusion and of belonging, the imaging of home and community space, as well as spaces of power and the built environment, ruins and 'terrain vague'. Key and recurring themes will be the spaces that 'haunt' the Australian imagination: cross-cultural, migrant and racialised spaces, anxieties about spaces and places and belonging, transnational understandings of Australia's place in the region and world, and how all these are shaped and affected by cultural memories of the past and the cultural politics of the present.

Students who complete this subject should be able to:

• comprehend and engage with a range of interdisciplinary approaches to the imaging of Australian space, including historical, sociological, political and cultural texts and debates
• demonstrate a critical understanding of key arguments in spatial analysis and about the creation of images
• develop a case study approach to issues of space in Australia, based upon engagement in an active reading group and then the application of these ideas to a specific site
• exhibit a capacity for critical thinking about Australian culture and society
• demonstrate interdisciplinary skills in research, analysis, and written and verbal communication that draw upon materials and concepts presented and discussed in seminars

A subject reader will be available.

This subject is not available as a breadth subject.

• be able to demonstrate that they can take responsibility for their own learning and academic endeavour. be able to think in theoretical and / or have strong foundation for empirical research
• be able to demonstrate the time-management skills required for conducting a sustained and developmental piece of independent study.
• be able to demonstrate skills of information retrieval, management of ideas, and orchestration of diverse sources in the process of research construction and presentation.
• be able to situate the significance of their research in the context of broader social, ethical and cultural contexts.
• be able to communicate their research findings in a clear and intelligible manner.