This introductory unit explores the histories and cultures of Asia across time, up to the modern era. The curriculum aims to provide both the essential knowledge and intellectual skills necessary for more advanced study of Asia, and to lay the groundwork for comparative investigation of trans-Asian phenomena. Topics and themes may include: religion, ritual, and philosophical thought; sacred kings and capitals; hierarchy and social order; family, kinship and gender systems; art, architecture, and archaeology.

This unit looks at Asia's past, present and future in a global perspective. It makes use of the new approaches of world history and big history, and moves along large spatial and temporal scales. This unit prepares students to make sense of specific Asia-related subjects offered in more advanced units of study. In doing so, we will also examine some of the challenges Asia is facing today and think about Asia's place in our increasingly globalised world.

The Tibetan cultural sphere extends from the Himalayas to the tribal planes of Mongolia. This unit explores the civilisations of that region by examining shared cultural histories from the 8th century onwards, including religions, languages and customs. You will also learn how Tibetan myths shape today's perceptions of the orient.

The Tibetan language is an essential medium for understanding Buddhism and Asian history. This unit focuses on written Tibetan and some basic spoken Tibetan. You will learn important grammatical structures, the Tibetan script pronunciation and essential speaking skills. The unit also introduces cultural contexts of the Himalayan region.

This unit of study introduces key topics essential to understanding contemporary Chinese society and culture, including geography and environment, recent social and political change, art, literature and cultural practice, population and economic structure, education systems and issues of gender and sexuality. As a foundational unit in Chinese studies, it assumes no background knowledge of China or the Chinese language. It will be taught in English with an interdisciplinary approach.

The Tibetan language is an essential medium for understanding Buddhism and Asian history. This unit extends on Intro to Tibetan Language and Culture 1, focussing on written Tibetan and some further skills in spoken Tibetan. We will deepen grammatical knowledge, read short stories, and learn more about Himalayan cultures.

This unit explores important events and periods in Buddhist history, with an emphasis on the complex dynamism between Buddhism and the societies in which it took root, developed, and flourished. It will focus on the role these events and periods played in shaping Buddhism in Asia and elsewhere, and how these regions and their institutions are, in turned, transformed by it.

This unit presents multiple aspects of popular culture in South and North Korea, from K-pop to blockbuster movies, popular literature, internet culture, video games and socialist mass culture. It approaches Korea's cultural industries historically and critically, questioning their relationships to colonialism, militarism, social hierarchies, national identities, and economic globalization. Primary reading materials are drawn from a variety of genres and media to reflect the diversity of popular culture in the two Koreas. All reading materials are available in English translation and no knowledge of Korean is required.

This unit explores the history and development of Buddhism in East Asia, namely, China, Korea, and Japan, from its introduction at the beginning of the Common Era to modern times. The unit will focus on several of the most important and distinctive forms of Buddhism in East Asia, such as Tiantai/Tendai, Pure Land and Chan/Zen Buddhism, and the issues and themes that are common to them. Particular attention will be paid to notions of liberation, developments in practice, and ritual forms. The unit will also investigate Buddhism's relationship with the state in these countries.

This unit provides a survey of the major issues and core ideas of Buddhism from its beginnings to subsequent developments in others parts of Asia. Students will be introduced to Buddhist understanding of liberation, existence, and knowledge, with a focus on exploring how Buddhist thought and practices, such as ritual and meditation, shape each other in larger socio-cultural contexts.

This unit offers students the opportunity to explore China's major traditions of philosophy and practice through English translations of key texts as well as authoritative secondary studies. The main foci of the unit include the following major areas: diversity and polemics in early Chinese thought, developments in Daoism, Buddhist thought and influence, and Neo-Confucian (Daoxue) thought.

The history of the People's Republic of China comprises two periods. In the Maoist era (1949-1978), the Communist-led government attempted to build a centrally planned, socialist society in which politics dominated people's daily lives. In the post-Mao era (since 1978), by contrast, the socialist institutions have largely been dismantled in pursuit of a market-based alternative. This unit of study explores key social, political, cultural and economic features of both periods and analyses the problems and paradoxes of transition.

This unit introduces themes in South Asian religions from the Indus Valley Civilisation onward. Attention is paid to the social and cultural contexts in which Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism emerged. Goddess traditions are discussed, as are concepts such as tantra, yoga and meditation, karma and rebirth and dharma. Texts such as Bhagavat Gita are also introduced. A focus will be on the implications of Classical India for an understanding of contemporary Asian cultures, particularly those of South and Southeast Asia.

While India and China emerge as present-day superpowers, their historical inter-relations are not well known. This unit provides an overview of cultural interactions between Indian and Chinese civilisations, especially as these have shaped Tibetan cultural identity. A key focus is upon how pre-modern cultural interactions with India and China provide ideological contexts within which Tibetan religious and cultural traditions and political institutions developed. This is undertaken in order to understand interactions between all three cultures on the current global stage.

Tokugawa Japan (1603-1868) had a complex feudal structure articulated around the shogun, the feudal lords and their samurai retainers. It also had huge cities, birthplaces of some of the first modern ways of life. The tensions between the feudal framework and the embryonic modernity of Tokugawa society make a fascinating case study in the non-Western world of what is to be modern. To do so, we shall follow a cross disciplinary approach: history, politics, sociology, economy, religion, arts and literature.

This unit aims to introduce some of the major issues in the history of Korea in the late 19th century and the last century. Topics include contradictions of the late Choson dynasty society; opening of Korea to the West and Japan and the attendant wave of reforms and rebellions; Japan's colonial rule; Korea's fight for freedom; liberation and division of Korea in 1945 and the subsequent process of nation-building in the two Koreas.

This unit examines the history of Indonesia, the world's fourth most populous country, emphasizing the interaction between Islam, nationalism and democracy. The unit traces these forces impact on the formation of modern Indonesia from the late nineteenth century, highlighting the experience and legacy of colonialism, the independence struggle, and the rise and fall of military rule. Particular attention is given to changing notions of national identity, debates about the place of Islam in the polity and authoritarianism and democratisation.

This unit examines country-specific and transnational social movements in Southeast Asia, including those focused on labour, women, the environment, and identity. During the semester we will explore how these movements emerged, what they have sought to achieve and how successful they have been in promoting social change in the Southeast Asian region. The unit adopts a multidisciplinary approach based on contemporary case study material from Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines and Singapore.

This unit of study introduces Southeast Asia. It emphasises the importance of geographical, political, economic, social and cultural context to our understanding of complex real-world problems. Having gained insight into these aspects of contemporary Southeast Asia, students learn to apply an interdisciplinary approach to the analysis of challenges faced by the region such as economic and social inequality, environmental management, food security and urbanisation.

Students will travel to Southeast Asia to undertake supervised, in-country field study. Focusing on a complex, real-world issue, students will consider the issue from a multidisciplinary perspective, including geographical, political, economic, social and cultural. While in the destination country, students will work in multidisciplinary groups to conduct research.

This unit places the modern and contemporary history of Japan within its East Asian context. We will examine a number of key events and subjects pertaining to the relations between Japan, China and Korea. Doing so we will touch sensitive and controversial topics, become aware of differing views of history prevalent in these countries and understand why the historical question constitutes a major political issue in East Asia.

This unit explores contemporary art from across Asia since World War II. The unit places artistic developments, curatorial practice, and artworks within the context of rapid geo-political and socio-cultural change, particularly exploring the effects of nationalism and globalisation.

This unit explores the art, architecture and material culture of dynastic China (ca. 3000 BCE-1900), contextualizing works within the region's diverse social, political and cultural histories. The unit foregrounds focused interpretation of individual works through visual and material analysis.

What does it mean to be a woman or a man in a Chinese culture? We will explore this question as reflected in Chinese literary tradition, examining how Chinese ideas of gender influence literary representations of education, family, sexuality, life aspirations, class difference, and cultural others.

This unit will provide a survey of Chinese literature in cultural context from its earliest beginnings to the present day, including poetry, literary prose, drama, and fiction. All readings will be in English translation, with the additional option of consulting the original Chinese.

This unit introduces the modern genre of Chinese literature, the martial-arts fiction (wuxia xiaoshuo) and the role played by Chinese religion in shaping the features of the genre. With reference to works of the New School of martial-arts fiction, it investigates the religious contexts of martial-arts fiction, the impact of Chinese religious traditions on the genre, and the representation of traditional Chinese culture and spirituality in the modern world.

This unit examines the relationship between communication and social change in contemporary China, inclusive of mainland China, Hong Kong, and regional sites. Students will learn about selected major events and trends in Chinese societies. They will also learn about the use of communications, including new media, in selected major events. Theories that examine the consequences of communication on community development and democratic participation will be introduced.

This unit helps students understand China by encouraging students to familiarise themselves with what is reported in news about the country. It helps students understand what they learn from news is influenced by the institutions and processes of news production, which are discussed in the context of traditional news media and non-mainstream news sites, in China and in foreign countries. Concepts used in news analysis and evaluation will be introduced to guide students read and compare news reports critically. No Chinese-language skill is required in the unit.

In the 1920s, China was likened to a sleeping lion - one whose roar would shake the world when it awoke. This prediction has already proved true more than once. Why was China ever said to be "asleep"? How did a whole nation awaken, to what, and with what results? This unit of study traces the forces of nationalism and revolution through China's tumultuous twentieth century. We focus upon making sense, in Chinese terms, of events that outsiders have found baffling.

This unit of study provides a comprehensive overview of premodern Korean history and culture from ancient times to the 19th century. Students will study the emergence of prehistoric communal societies; formation of Three Kingdoms; politics and culture of Koryo and Choson dynasties. Topics of discussion include legends, cultural heritage, religious ideology, social customs, political organizations, gender relations, class structure, and social uprisings. Students will read scholarly works, study literary and historical texts in translation, and watch historical films and dramas.

This advanced unit explores key issues in the relationship between youth, language, and society in insular Southeast Asia. It equips students with the major theories and analytical tools for analysing youth language practices in a range of contexts and their relation to language use and cultural practices in wider society.

The buildings, technologies, gardens, symbols, weapons and arts of Asia reveal much about the region's history and culture. This unit examines these and other material objects with the aim of exploring sweeping traits that tie Asian societies together into cohesive cultural streams indicative of shared religions, languages, and practices.

This unit introduces you to the history of Japanese film production with a focus on theory, criticism and reception. Films will be discussed according to themes and genres, and read in their sociopolitical contexts. It provides an initiated understanding of one of the most important film traditions in an international perspective.

This unit of study introduces students to popular culture in Mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and the Chinese Diaspora. From film to television, from music to theatre, from print media to the Internet and from popular literature to visual arts, this unit explores popular Chinese culture as it is generated in Chinese societies and lived by Chinese people. It will cover a range of critical and theoretical perspectives to analyse these phenomena.

This unit explores the media industry, processes, policies and practices in selected countries in East Asia, namely Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. It takes a comparative approach to explore political, social, cultural and technological factors that affect the development of media in this dynamic region. The unit covers various aspects of old and new media in the region, such as the historical development of media, state-media and corporate-media relationships, the transformation of media industries, technological convergence and its implications.

This unit gives students the opportunity to undertake broad background reading in theory and methodology relevant to Asian Studies. The unit trains students to discuss published work exemplifying a range of approaches to humanistic and/or social scientific research. It thus provides models on which students can draw in creating their own research proposal.

This unit investigates key debates about the visual culture of East Asia in the early modern and modern eras. The impact of profound political and social changes on cultural identity will be explored in depth. We also consider the role of art in addressing evolving identities and increasing globalisation in the region.

This unit investigates issues of gender and sexuality in art, visual culture and art history in modern and contemporary Asia from the 19th century to the present. Students will explore women- and/or queer-centred histories of the production and reception of art, and the rise of feminist and queer art and art history in parts of Asia.

This unit examines a global range of Chinese-language literatures from the last forty years and from various regions of Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and the West, including Australia. Literary texts will be placed in social and political contexts.

This unit examines a range of Chinese-language works of fiction, poetry, and drama in the 20th Century including works by key figures such as Lu Xun, Eileen Chang, and Lao She. Texts will be placed in the social and political context of their period, when literature was considered a key tool for the modernisation of Chinese society.

This unit introduces students to the cinema of mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. We will view representative films of different periods and different regions, and read them within their historical and cultural context. We will explore how these films blend "traditional Chinese" and local elements -- plots, symbols, sound, music, performance styles and others -- with "modern" and "global" devices. We will also examine how Chinese cinema thus creates new definitions of Chinese identity and modernity.

Interdisciplinarity is a key skill in fostering agility in life and work. This unit provides learning experiences that build students' skills, knowledge and understanding of the application of their disciplinary background to interdisciplinary contexts. In this unit, students will work in teams and develop interdisciplinarity skills through problem-based learning projects responding to 'real world problems'.

This interdisciplinary unit provides students with the opportunity to address complex problems identified by industry, community, and government organisations, and gain valuable experience in working across disciplinary boundaries. In collaboration with a major industry partner and an academic lead, students integrate their academic skills and knowledge by working in teams with students from a range of disciplinary backgrounds. This experience allows students to research, analyse and present solutions to a real¿world problem, and to build on their interpersonal and transferable skills by engaging with and learning from industry experts and presenting their ideas and solutions to the industry partner.