Cultural studies explores everyday life, media and popular culture. It shows us how we can make sense of contemporary culture as producers, consumers, readers and viewers, in relation to our identities and communities. How do various cultural texts and practices convey different kinds of meaning and value? Drawing upon key approaches in the field, students will learn how to analyse cultural forms such as advertising, television, film and popular music.

How does gender organise lives, bodies, sexualities and desires? How does gender relate to sex and sexuality? Are there really only two genders? How and why is gender such an integral part of how we identify ourselves and others? This unit introduces students to foundational concepts in the study of gender and critically engages with questions of identity, sexuality, family, the body, cultural practices and gender norms in light of contemporary gender theories.

The idea of the 'animal' infuses western knowledge about what constitutes the 'human'. From 'humanism' to 'posthumanism', this unit teases out various animal/human connections; classifying, seeing, domesticating, eating, making pets, writing, thinking about rights, rhetoric and representation. How do gender, race and class play out in the realm of the animal/human? What cultural formations support and also challenge the line between animal and human?

This unit introduces students to cultural theories about race and ethnicity and uses these theories to examine representations of racial minorities across a range of media such as film, literature and performance within multiple national contexts. By interrogating the relationship between these representations and those of other identity categories including gender, sexuality and class, it provides a complex understanding of how 'race' as an institutional force and lived experience helps shape perceptions of ourselves and others.

This unit examines academic and popular cultural ideas about youth and practices of youth culture. It will introduce students to some of the current parameters for studying youth cultural forms, practices and theories by drawing on research with young people. Points of focus will include discussion of youth, youth subcultures, filmic depictions of youth cultures, youth arts and critical perspectives on schooling. These seemingly diverse narratives and sites are brought together by the fact that they all play roles in shaping the lived experience of contemporary youth culture.

Cultural Studies was widely discussed as one of the "New Humanities" in the 1990s, but a long history of debates about and theories of culture precede the discipline, and the processes of deciding what are the key texts and concepts of Cultural Studies is ongoing. This unit overviews core and the most frequently referenced critical and theoretical texts from the Cultural Studies "canon". Students will also undertake reading and analysis exercises designed to help them come to grips with using "theory" in their own work.

In this unit students will apply advanced methods from gender and cultural studies to examine experiences of belonging and formations of community. Students will analyse how power produces and regulates communities, identities and belonging. They will question the assumption that community is based on the unity and similarity of citizens and their location in specific cultures and places, and critically examine alternatives such as difference, diaspora, and other forms of sociality. Students will evaluate different theories of community in local, national and international contexts, and in relation to feminism, democracy, cosmopolitanism and hospitality.

The Honours program in Cultural Studies consists of:
1. a thesis written under the supervision of one or more members of academic staff
2. three seminars, each seminar meeting for 2 hours per week for one semester
3. non-assessable participation in an Honours "mini-conference" usually held one month prior to thesis submission.
The thesis should be of 15,000 words in length. Each seminar requires 6,000 words of written work or its equivalent.
The thesis is worth 40% of the final Honours mark and each of the seminars is worth 20%.
The following seminars are on offer in 2014:
Arguing the Point (Dr Ruth Barcan) (Sem 1)
Philosophy in the Feminine (Sem 1)
Key Thinkers for Cultural Studies (Prof Meaghan Morris) (Sem 1)
Modernism, Modernity and Modern Culture (Sem 2)
Identity, Place and Culture (Prof Meaghan Morris) (Sem 2)
Natures and Cultures of Bodies (Dr Kane Race) (Sem 2)
For more information, contact Dr Ruth Barcan, Honours coordinator.

Refer to GCST4011

Refer to GCST4011

Refer to GCST4011