Cultural Studies in Asia

This subject has the following teaching availabilities in 2011:

For the purposes of considering request for Reasonable Adjustments under the disability Standards for Education (Cwth 2005), and Students Experiencing Academic Disadvantage Policy, academic requirements for this subject are articulated in the Subject Description, Subject Objectives, Generic Skills and Assessment Requirements of this entry.

The University is dedicated to provide support to those with special requirements. Further details on the disability support scheme can be found at the Disability Liaison Unit website: http://www.services.unimelb.edu.au/disability/

This subject focuses on the emergence of cultural studies as a distinct disciplinary formation in Asia over the past fifteen years, and introduces students to this new field's key approaches to the analysis of contemporary cultures. It introduces recent work on intra-Asian cultural flows, colonial histories, postcoloniality, neo-colonialism and cultural globalisation in the Asian region, and explores cultural studies' engagement with emergent Asian public cultures. Students will learn about current approaches to sites and practices including television drama, popular and new-wave cinemas, new social movements, popular music and urban space across locations that may include South Korea, China, Taiwan, Japan, Singapore and India. On completion of this subject students should have an understanding of the major directions in cultural studies scholarship in Asia today.

Students who complete this subject will:

• be able to comprehend the emergence of Asian cultural studies as a distinct disciplinary formation over the past ten years;
• be able to demonstrate familiarity with key methods within this new field, including new critical and historical approaches to colonialism, post-coloniality and neo-colonialism in Asian contexts, analysis of intra-Asian cultural flows, and cultural studies' engagement with emergent Asian public cultures; and
• appreciate key conceptual concerns within Asian cultural studies, including relations among local, national, global and regional levels of cultural organization, and the transforming meaning of 'Asia', itself in today's world.

A subject reader will be available.

This subject is not available as a breadth subject.

Students who successfully complete this subject will acquire the following skills:

• social, ethical, and cultural understanding of self and others through detailed analysis of contemporary culture in its various local, national and transnational contexts, the reception of new ideas and the contextualisation of judgments, the adaptation of knowledge to new situations;
• critical analysis and synthesis through the study of competing theories of contemporary culture and their application to diverse examples, the engagement with and processing of different critical perspectives across the interdisciplinary field of cultural studies, the development of independent thought and arguments;
• effective written and oral communication through seminar discussions and debates, the preparation and execution of written assessment exercises, exposure to and emulation of competing genres and protocols of critical writing;
• information management and information literacy through the practice of library and archival research and engagement with electronic databases;
• teamwork, flexibility, and tolerance through group discussions in seminars, reception of new ideas and opinions, engaging and cooperating with other people from diverse backgrounds; and
• time management and planning through managing and organizing workloads for recommended reading, seminar presentations, and assessment requirements.