Learning Outcomes:
On completion of the module students will have developed a critical understanding of the role of history in the making of modern Australia; they will have explored popular as well as academic engagements with the Australian past; they will have developed an understanding of key debates in Australian history; and also enhanced their analytical, comprehension and writing skills in the process.
Indicative Module Content:
1. Founding figures and the statue wars
2. Commemorating nation: Australia Day and Saint Patrick’s Day
3. Convict origins
4. The frontier wars
5. Empire and colonial rebellion
6. War and nation-building: Australia, Ireland and conscription debates
7. Reading week
8. Indigenous rights: from the 1967 Referendum to parliamentary voice
9. Refugees and migration, post-WWI to the present
10. The rise of the new conservatism
11. Citizenship and the ‘values test’
12. Republicanism