Nature/Culture/Colony

This subject explores the interwoven and interdependent cultural practices attached to nature and culture in colonial and postcolonial Australia. Drawing specially on the work of First Nations scholars as well as the work of First Nations and other scholars in Cultural Studies, History and Anthropology, and drawing on comparative scholarship, we will begin by considering how natureculture is foundational to the colonial project in Australia. The subject will map how nature and culture have constituted ‘the primitive and the civilised’, modernity and wilderness, the creation and management of land, water and property, conservation and ecological crises, and multispecies relations. Students will undertake fieldwork lead by First Nations guides to sites where naturecultures have been configured in particular colonial contexts. Students will have the opportunity to produce engaged research concerned with the energies unleashed in the collisions of nature/culture/colony.

• 1Demonstrate critical thinking in relation to traditions of scholarship in ecocritical cultural studies
• 2Engage reflexively with a site-specific contemporary articulation of nature/culture/colony
• 3Demonstrate a capacity to produce theoretical informed empirical research in the field of ecocritical, decolonial cultural studies
• 4Employ the ability to contextualise interwoven and interdependent cultural practices attached to nature and culture in colonial and postcolonial Australian
• 5Develop and portray a deep understanding of nature and culture and its connection with postcolonial Australia.