Undergraduate courses

Indigenous Australia is the gateway course to the Indigenous Studies Major.

In this course students will gain an understanding of the diversity of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures, peoples and societies.

A central focus of the course is the ways in which the philosophical frameworks of Indigenous knowledge systems continue to inform contemporary Indigenous practice that continues to shape Indigenous identities today.

Taught from a range of perspectives, students will develop an understanding of social, cultural, political, economic, and ecological aspects of Indigenous Knowledge, which are key foundational elements to the Indigenous Studies Major.

Prerequisites: None

Credit Points: 6

Offering Term: T1, 2025

Delivery Mode: Multimodal

Indicative Contact Hours: 4

This course aims to develop student understanding of the role of public policy in shaping Indigenous communities.

It considers case studies of policy development by Australian Commonwealth, State and Territory authorities. It provides students with a theoretical framework for understanding policy and policy development processes and observing how key actors and institutions shape policy outcomes.

The course considers opportunities for participation and engagement in policy formulation, and reflects on past policies which have contributed to Indigenous disadvantage and marginalisation.

Students will critically analyse past and current policies and develop their understanding of the important role that policy plays in shaping community.

Prerequisites: 30 units of credit at Level 1

Credit Points: 6

Offering Term: T1, 2025

Delivery Mode: Online

Indicative Contact Hours: 4

This course explores Australia's Indigenous histories and their contemporary resonance.

It offers students an overview of relationships between settlers and Indigenous peoples, focusing on contact zones and tracing some of the ways Indigenous people have made their own histories in varied contexts of violence and settler colonialism.

The course material will cover nineteenth century Indigenous travellers and Indigenous judicial proceedings, examine violence and friendship, study reserves and resistance, and historicise displacement and the many novel articulations of land rights.

Students will engage with controversies attached to representing Indigenous histories in the present, and complete in-depth and independent historical research.

Prerequisites: 36 units of credit

Credit Points: 6

Offering Term: T1, 2025

Delivery Mode: In person

Indicative Contact Hours: 4

Representations and misrepresentations of Australian Indigeneity as part of the national identity are most often portrayed through forms of popular culture.

Popular Culture of Indigenous Australia will focus on the participation of Indigenous people in these fields and how that involvement influences national identities.

The course will explore the complexities of Indigenous identities and the nuances in the way these identities are expressed.

Students are encouraged to reflect on Indigenous place and space as part of their own identities and further reflect on the place of indigeneity in the national consciousness.

Prerequisites: 18 units of credit at Level 1

Credit Points: 6

Offering Term: T2, 2025

Delivery Mode: Multimodal

Indicative Contact Hours: 4

The course explores the ways in which gender, sexuality and variants of colonialism intersect in the past and present both in Australia and elsewhere.

It encourages students to reflect on the entanglements between heteronormativity, colonialism, and settler colonialism.

The course material covers a range of issues involving gender, sexuality, including land, art and popular culture, activism, Indigeneity, feminism, violence, and race.

Particular attention is paid to gender and gender roles in colonial processes.

Prerequisites: 18 units of credit at Level 1

Credit Points: 6

Offering Term: T2, 2025

Delivery Mode: Multimodal

Indicative Contact Hours: 4

There are (at least) two sides to the colonial relationship. In this class we focus on the ways in which colonialism is enmeshed with White knowledge traditions and cultures so that we can better understand the complex relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australia.

Students will be introduced to key concepts and thinkers in the fields of Critical Race and Whiteness theory and together we will apply them to everyday experience and popular culture.

At the theory and application learning stage of the Indigenous Studies Major, this course will help students develop their understanding of identity politics that are deeply entangled with a variety of political and intellectual debates in Australia.

Prerequisites: 36 units of credit 

Credit Points: 6

Offering Term: T2, 2025

Delivery Mode: Multimodal

Indicative Contact Hours: 4

In this course students are introduced to Aboriginal Sydney through local written and oral histories, as well as notable works in film, performance, television and art, seeking to make visible Aboriginal experiences, lives and connections to place in the city.

Different approaches to urban history and to understanding the relationship between identity, memory and place are discussed against the broader context of imperial and colonial history and the marginalisation of Aboriginal land and heritage.

With a specific focus on doing place-specific research, students are encouraged to get outside of the classroom and visit the places they are learning about.

Prerequisites: None

Credit Points: 6

Offering Term: T3, 2025

Delivery Mode: Multimodal

Indicative Contact Hours: 4

Indigenous Political Thought explores the history of Indigenous resistance, activism and political organisation in Australia during the twentieth century, and its ongoing legacies. It studies ideas and ideologies, such as self-determination and Black Power, that influenced Indigenous political leaders and movements, situating these within wider contemporary social, political, and economic contexts.

During the course, students analyse relevant contemporary texts produced by Indigenous political activists revealing recurring themes, directions, tensions, successes and legacies of Indigenous political thought and activism. 

Prerequisites: 30 units of credit at Level 1

Credit Points: 6

Offering Term: T3, 2025

Delivery Mode: Multimodal

Indicative Contact Hours: 4

This course explores Indigenous perspectives on the management of country, waterways, culture and heritage in Australia.

By exploring intersections between cultural heritage management practices, the environment, Indigenous knowledges and the contemporary space, students will gain an insight into best practice models for cultural heritage management and associated practices of sustainability and maintenance of Australia's rich cultural heritage and the environment.

A compulsory field trip for this course incurs an additional cost.

Prerequisites: 36 units of credit 

Credit Points: 6

Offering Term: T3, 2025

Delivery Mode: In person

Indicative Contact Hours: 3

This is the Capstone course for students completing the Indigenous Studies Major.

The course draws on content, themes and theories from all levels of the Indigenous Studies Major to consolidate understandings of the convergences that characterise the relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australia.

Students in this course will learn how to explore the deeper complexities of their chosen disciplines and Indigenous Australia, and practise ways to productively engage their boundaries, limits and agendas.

Students will have the opportunity to refine their analytical and communicative capacities to navigate these boundaries as their preparation for professional practice or further study.

Prerequisites: 120 units of credit overall, enrolment in a major in Indigenous Studies and enrolled in the final term of an Arts Faculty single or dual degree program

Credit Points: 6

Offering Term: T3, 2025

Delivery Mode: In person

Indicative Contact Hours: 3

Taught by Humanities and Languages

UNSW’s 2025 strategy offers a framework for addressing social justice aspirations of disadvantaged and marginalised communities.

This course will give you the research tools to understand the cultural, social, and political dimensions of environmental problems like poor air and water quality caused by industrial pollution.

You will learn about the environmental justice movement which has sought to rectify the ways that environmental harm is disproportionately experienced by groups of people who live with structured social inequality.

Exploration of a range of key historical and contemporary case studies will give you the opportunity to consider the contradictions, dilemmas and complexities of environmental issues.

Key questions running through this course include:

• What does justice mean?
• Who benefits from particular ways of imagining and interacting with the environment?
• What do practices of responsibility and care look like in situations where slow violence is taking place?

This course will consider these questions with respect to people who are living with complex global entanglements and who are impinging upon the worlds of other species. The course is taught with an interdisciplinary approach that draws on materials from anthropology, multispecies ethnography, development studies, gender studies, human geography, political science, science and technology studies, and sociology.

Prerequisites: 48 UOC including 6 UOC at Level 1 and 6 UOC at Level 2 in one of the following specialisations, Environmental Humanities, Geographical Studies, Indigenous Studies, or International Studies

Credit Points: 6

Offering Term: T3, 2025

Delivery Mode: Multimodal

Indicative Contact Hours: 4