The following is a list of course offerings for NYU Sydney's inaugural semester. Please email global.academics@nyu.edu if you have questions about the curriculum.
Please review the NYU Sydney Registration Guidelines for important information before registering for classes.
A list of all courses offered at the Global Academic Centers, organized by department, can be found here.
Australia is a place of tensions: the ‘lucky country’ founded on the theft of Indigenous people’s land;
the ‘land of the fair go’ with mandatory detention of refugees; a place with a noticeably sentimental
culture coupled with a satirical sense of humour; a multicultural nation with a history of a ‘white
Australia policy’; a place proud of its traditions of egalitarianism and mateship with rules about who
is allowed in ‘the club’; a place with a strong sense of a distinctive local traditions which takes many
of its cues from global culture; a place with a history of anti-British and anti-American sentiment
that also has had strong political allegiances and military pacts with Britain and the USA; a place of a
laid-back, easy going attitude with a large degree of Governmental control of individual liberties; a
highly urbanised population that romances ‘the bush’ and ‘the outback’ as embodying ‘real’
Australia; and a place with a history of progressive social policy and a democratic tradition, which
has never undergone a revolution. Through readings, discussion and research we will attempt to
reconcile these contradictions.
This course will focus on the way in which culture –i.e.music, journalism, history, literature,
comedy, cinema, food and sport –has reflected and created these tensions. Where possible, it will
look at how major issues in Australian culture and society have played out or been embodied in its
largest and oldest city: Sydney.
This course offers an introduction to some of the current and classical issues in the anthropology of Indigenous Australia, considering a range of Aboriginal Australian forms of social being, ranging historically and geographically, and giving signigicant focus to the changing relationship between Indigenous people and the settler nation of Australia. The role of anthropology in the representation and governance of Indigenous life is itself an important subject for anthropological consideration, considering that Indigenous people of Australia have long been the subject of interest and imagination by outsiders for their cultural formulations of kinship, ritual, art, gender, and politics. This course will explore how Aboriginal people have struggled to reproduce themselves and their traditions in their own terms, asserting their right to forms of cultural autonomy and self-determination. In this course, through the examination of ethnographic texts, art novels, autobiographies, film and other media, we will consider the ways in which identity is being challenged and constructed.
This course is a survey of some of the principal themes and issues in the development of Indigenous Art in Australia. It focuses on some of the regional and historical variations of Aboriginal art in the context of the history of a settler nation, while considering the issues of its circulation and evaluation within contemporary discourses of value. Topics include the cosmological dimensions of the art, its political implications, its relationship to cultural identity, and its aesthetic frameworks.
Sample Syllabus *Please note: This syllabus has been adapted to 10 weeks for the Fall 2012 semester. This course will run the standard length of 14 weeks in subsequent semesters.
This course is a survey of some of the principal themes and issues in the development of Indigenous Art in Australia. It focuses on some of the regional and historical variations of Aboriginal art in the context of the history of a settler nation, while considering the issues of its circulation and evaluation within contemporary discourses of value. Topics include the cosmological dimensions of the art, its political implications, its relationship to cultural identity, and its aesthetic frameworks.
Sample Syllabus *Please note: This syllabus has been adapted to 10 weeks for the Fall 2012 semester. This course will run the standard length of 14 weeks in subsequent semesters.
In this creative writing class students will produce work informed by their experiences of exploring, learning about, and being in Sydney. Students are encouraged to contemplate how a sense of place can be conveyed through writing, and to consider the palimpsestic environments (natural, urban, cultural, historical etc.) they interact with and within. Students will engage with a diverse range of readings, identifying their technical elements and discussing their affective poetics to learn how to ‘read as a writer’. Students shall workshop their works-in-progress during the course, learning how to effectively communicate critical feedback and how to be receptive to constructive critique during the drafting process. At the end of the course students will have the opportunity to collectively self-publish their work as a physical zine and/or an online blog.
This course is an introduction to the literatures of Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific region, with a focus on indigenous, migrant and diasporic writing. In addition to major texts from Australia and New Zealand, we will also encounter a range of works from Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, and the Pacific islands. Some questions we will tackle include: How have the cultural, historical, and economic processes of colonialism, diaspora and migration connected and shaped this diverse region? How have issues of race and indigeneity been central to various discourses of nationalism? What particular roles have Australia and New Zealand, as sub-imperial powers, played in the region? Finally, what can the latest generation of migrant writing in Australia show us about new forms of interconnections across the globalizing Asia-Pacific? Students in this course will examine novels, poetry, films and theoretical texts to develop critical thinking, reading and writing skills. Along the way, they will gain a solid grounding in the problematics of postcolonialism, race, diaspora, indigeneity, nationalism and gender.
How do we read ‘nature’? Is there a ‘natural’ way to understand the ‘real’? This course explores issues in the textual mapping of relationships between the environmental, the ecological and the semiotic. It assumes that however 'natural' nature itself may be, the human understanding of it is necessarily constructed. We trace the origins and development of key tropes in ecological philosophy: including wilderness, pastoral, pollution and apocalypse. Principle texts in this course include American and Australian novels, films and documentaries, read alongside supplementary sources in literary, audio and artistic mediums. We ask how literature—one of the richest arenas for the practice of human imagination—does, has, or could shape environmental thought and action. How does the non-human world enter into literature? What are the historical and structural obstacles to admitting different forms of consciousness into text? What literary genres and styles are called forth by the huge ecological challenges of our times?
In this hybrid reading / writing class, we will explore environmental journalism from an Australian perspective. Each week we will read and discuss work that explores this journalistic tradition, its forms and its themes and the place it takes in the new media world. Drawing our inspiration from great writers, we will find our own stories, our own voices and learn to tell our own tales.
How do we read ‘nature’? Is there a ‘natural’ way to understand the ‘real’? This course explores issues in the textual mapping of relationships between the environmental, the ecological and the semiotic. It assumes that however 'natural' nature itself may be, the human understanding of it is necessarily constructed. We trace the origins and development of key tropes in ecological philosophy: including wilderness, pastoral, pollution and apocalypse. Principle texts in this course include American and Australian novels, films and documentaries, read alongside supplementary sources in literary, audio and artistic mediums. We ask how literature—one of the richest arenas for the practice of human imagination—does, has, or could shape environmental thought and action. How does the non-human world enter into literature? What are the historical and structural obstacles to admitting different forms of consciousness into text? What literary genres and styles are called forth by the huge ecological challenges of our times?
In this creative writing class students will produce work informed by their experiences of exploring, learning about, and being in Sydney. Students are encouraged to contemplate how a sense of place can be conveyed through writing, and to consider the palimpsestic environments (natural, urban, cultural, historical etc.) they interact with and within. Students will engage with a diverse range of readings, identifying their technical elements and discussing their affective poetics to learn how to ‘read as a writer’. Students shall workshop their works-in-progress during the course, learning how to effectively communicate critical feedback and how to be receptive to constructive critique during the drafting process. At the end of the course students will have the opportunity to collectively self-publish their work as a physical zine and/or an online blog.
In this hybrid reading / writing class, we will explore environmental journalism from an Australian perspective. Each week we will read and discuss work that explores this journalistic tradition, its forms and its themes and the place it takes in the new media world. Drawing our inspiration from great writers, we will find our own stories, our own voices and learn to tell our own tales.
This course brings together diverse issues and perspectives in rapidly evolving areas of international/global communication. Historical and theoretical frameworks will be provided to help students to approach the scope, disparity and complexity of current developments in our media landscape.
Students will be encouraged to critically assess shifts in national, regional, and international media patterns of production, distribution, and consumption over time, leading to analysis of the tumultuous contemporary global communication environment. Key concepts associated with international communication will be examined, including a focus on trends in national and global media consolidation, cultural implications of globalisation, international broadcasting, information flows, international communication law and regulation, and trends in communication and information technologies. The focus of the course will be international, with a particular emphasis on Australia.
Ultimately, we will examine the ways in which global communication is undergoing a fundamental paradigm shift, as demonstrated by the Arab spring, the Olympics coverage, and the creeping dominance of Google, Facebook and Twitter.
Upcoming Application Deadlines
Priority: February 15
Regular: March 15
Applications received after March 15 will be reviewed on a rolling basis. Admission will be granted only when space is available and time allows for required travel documents to be attained.
