131-243 Australian Cultural Landscapes

Usually 25 points of first year history.

The power of place has underpinned the development of collective identities, but has also generated division and suffering, throughout Australian history. This subject explores the complex and competing historical influences that have shaped the landscapes that diverse groups have claimed as their own. It highlights the contested visions and the uneven social outcomes that have been inscribed into the fabric of urban and rural Australia. There are clues in the present a now insistent indigenous voice, a green movement that demands ecological sustainability, a groundswell of rural nostalgia and grassroots activism as regional communities and industries struggle to survive, and social strains in the suburban fringes and inner suburbs of the big cities from which it is possible to tease out the hidden histories of belonging and dispossession that have shaped the cultural landscapes of Australia. In this subject we will follow a set of pathways into the landscapes of the past: the slum and the suburb, the pastoral frontier, the 'golden mile', and the wheat belt. Together, these case studies provide the framework for developing a comprehensive and broadly inclusive historical understanding of urban and regional Australia. This subject offers students the opportunity to undertake detailed local studies of particular landscapes, or to look more broadly at what Australian literature, art, mass media, and material culture can tell us about imagined landscapes.

• demonstrate research skills through competent use of the library and other information sources;

• show critical thinking and analysis through recommended reading, essay writing and tutorial discussion, and by determining the strength of an argument;

• demonstrate understanding of social, ethical and cultural context through the contextualisation of judgements, developing a critical self-awareness, being open to new ideas and possibilities and by constructing an argument.

Class participation 10%, a reflective essay of 1000 words 20% (due mid semester) and a research essay of 3000 words 70% (due in the examination period).

A subject reader will be available from the Bookroom at the beginning of semester.