Why does America have so much influence globally? What is the nature of this influence? And what are the consequences of this influence? What are the nature and consequences of the influence of the rest of the world on America? Why given America's global influence, and globalisation in general, does America remain such an insular society? This unit takes an interdisciplinary approach to these questions with a focus primarily on the United States in the 21st century.

This unit examines the scope and impact of American media. Google, Twitter, Netflix, Reddit, Instagram: the American nation is constructed and consumed through its media technologies, beamed around the world as "content. " This unit will consider the relationship between US media industries and the stories we consume. It surveys multiple forms and formats, including cinema, television, radio, podcasts, literature, and social media. Students will be encouraged to examine their own media habits and practices, as well as understand how the US projects an image of itself through its media industries.

In this unit we explore major American social issues by comparing them with similar issues in Australia. What makes America different? How do personal rights, from gun rights to LGBTI rights, work differently in the two countries? What differences and similarities exist on issues like race and mass incarceration? How much do we either exaggerate or downplay political differences between the United States and ourselves?

This unit introduces students to US political institutions and political culture. The unit will examine the electoral system and recent presidential elections as well as presidencies from 1960 onwards. It will explore US public policies in the area of race, welfare, and criminal justice and analyse how policy ideas and proposals come into law. It will also introduce the dominant ideologies in US politics. By the end of the unit students will have a comprehensive understanding of American Domestic politics.

This unit explores the cultural history of and intersections between sexuality, race and rock music in the United States from Elvis to Beyonce. Influenced by black and working-class cultures, and with sexuality embedded in its form and practice, rock music challenged and transformed existing norms of family, sex and gender. Through subjects including Black women, glam rock, and disco, we will learn that rock music, far from frivolous, provided a realm for rebellion, freedom, community and profit.

This unit introduces students to the complex richness of 'Americanness' and prepares them for the Major in American Studies. Divided into historically grounded modules (Race; Religion; Gender; Politics; Region), the unit will approach each from a variety of angles: the historiographical, the literary, the cultural, the political, the cinematic. It will open lines of interrelation between historical and imaginary forms in the construction and ongoing redefinition of the United States.

From Mark Twain to Dave Chappelle, this unit charts comedy's discussions of race, class, gender, and sexuality, and of party and identity politics in the form of parody and satire. Influenced by ethnic, minority, and working-class cultures, comedy challenged and transformed existing norms of American family and institutions, and American identity, sex, and gender. Through forms such as literature, television, stand-up, cinema, and new media, students will learn that comedy provided a space for resistance, profit, and community.

This unit of study introduces students to the key global transformations of the contemporary era, focusing on the role of the United States amid the challenges posed by: globalisation, free trade, the rise of Islamic extremism, nuclear proliferation, and the emergence of China and India as world powers. The unit is designed to give students the ability to look behind today's news headlines to understand the underlying forces driving them, particularly the behaviour and views of key policy makers and opinion leaders.

This unit introduces students to US political institutions and political culture. The unit will examine the electoral system and recent presidential elections as well as presidencies from 1960 onwards. It will explore US public policies in the area of race, welfare, and criminal justice and analyse how policy ideas and proposals come into law. It will also introduce the dominant ideologies in US politics. By the end of the unit students will have a comprehensive understanding of American Domestic politics.

This unit explores the cultural history of and intersections between sexuality, race and rock music in the United States from Elvis to Beyonce. Influenced by black and working-class cultures, and with sexuality embedded in its form and practice, rock music challenged and transformed existing norms of family, sex and gender. Through subjects including women of colour, glam rock, disco and hip hop, students will learn that rock music provided a realm for rebellion, freedom, community and profit and has transformed the United States.

This unit explores the relationship between cinema and sexuality in classic films through detailed, historicised readings. Questions to be investigated include the erotics of cinematic genre and form; the sexual politics of representation and spectatorship; stardom, scandal and cult appreciation; cinema and sexuality as technologies of modernity; cinema, sexuality and pedagogy.

In this unit, we study a variety of American literary and visual texts to consider what it means to read "nationally". We first examine the rise of literary nationalism to look then at the ways in which exigencies of empire, race and ethnicity, and gender and sexuality, for example, have exerted pressure on the fantasy of a cohesive national culture. We will also consider the transnational turn of recent decades to understand the nation's function in a global context.

From fashion, food and music to speech patterns and protest methods, African-American culture has had a profound effect both on America and the wider world. In this unit we survey race relations after the end of slavery, focusing on the emergence of black communities across the North and South, the spread of black music, literature and film, the history of the civil rights and black power movements and the role of race in the contemporary America.

The Civil War had momentous consequences for America - realigning the nation's political culture, ending slavery and forever transforming millions of lives. This unit analyses the social, cultural and political history of the Civil War and Reconstruction. We begin by looking at combat experience, civilian mobilization and state formation, the war's effects on gender and race relations and the causes for Reconstruction's failure, and we end by focusing on how and why this war continues to resonate in American culture.

This capstone unit will present key texts in the shaping of an American intellectual tradition. It considers classic and contemporary debates in American society, and the way American Studies, as a field, deals with these long-standing arguments in innovative and challenging ways. Drawing perspectives from history, literature, politics and sociology, it prepares students to do sophisticated research work, to analyse complex
cultural issues, and to employ the diverse methods of American Studies toward an in-depth understanding of the nation in a global context.

This unit explores political beliefs and behaviour in the United States. Using survey studies, we explore what Americans know and believe about politics, how their attitudes are formed, and how and why they vote. We look at voting patterns in recent elections and examine how these have been affected by attitudes towards race and party identification.

This unit surveys the long history of social movements and protest in the U. S. . Beginning with 19th Century movements against slavery, the course charts the way everyday Americans came together to make demands on the state, the economy, and American culture. From abolitionism, students move onto close study of the history of American feminism, Civil Rights, agrarian revolt, the labor movement, antiwar politics, gay liberation, Chicano rights, and grassroots conservatism with an eye toward commonalities and divergences in protest strategy and a close attention to the historical contexts in which various movements arose and their long-term effects on American society. The unit will utilize the insights of the disciplines of history, sociology, political science, anthropology, communication studies, and philosophy in order to build on inter- and multi-disciplinary studies of social movement in the U. S. -one of the main subjects of deep fascination that has engaged the multitude of the humanistic social sciences and encouraged debate between them as well as interdisciplinary cross-fertilization.

Students have the opportunity to apply their knowledge to real-world problems through an internship in an American-based or affiliated business, government, or non-government organisation located in Australia or the US. Assessment includes a research project with proposal, essay and presentation tied to the internship experience.

Students will apply advanced literary methods to address the broad ways in which American Literature in the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries has engaged with the opening of transpacific space. Themes will include the nature of westward exploration, the emergence of planetary perspectives and how these have affected US culture. Students will build on their knowledge of literary study to consider the key methodological question of how relationships between nation and narrative should be defined.

We examine a range of African American-authored texts, including films, from the 18th century to the present to consider the relationship of race and writing, and the ways African American cultural expression contributes to and interrogates American cultural history. Issues covered include enslavement and freedom, and segregation and Civil Rights.

This unit provides an overview of the American political system and the formulation of foreign policy. The unit considers how foreign policy is made through the interaction of executive, legislative and judicial branches and with other elements of civil society, with a special emphasis on the post-Cold War period. It seeks to answer: (a) what is the influence of domestic politics on US foreign policy; and (b) how does the US system cope with the apparent contradictions between its ideals and the imperatives of global power?

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.