Specialisation

Major - Cultural and Social Analysis

Western Sydney University Major Code: M1007.1

Available to students in other Western Sydney University Courses : YES, if the specialisation is available on your Home campus. Please ensure your course structure allows space for enrolment in the units in this unit set. Students must also meet any pre-requisite requirements. Consult your Course Advisor for further advice.

Cultural and Social Analysis is an interdisciplinary major aimed at developing knowledge, research skills and analytic capacities relevant to understanding and interpreting landscapes of cultural diversity and social difference in our contemporary world, both in terms of the broad contours, as well as specific micro-social environments. A key starting point is the idea that our individual identities are not created by us alone, but are formed within specific cultural, social, material and spatial environments. This major provides a grounding in contemporary debates and methodologies in cultural studies and social theory, and draws on various disciplines including history, sociology, communications, and linguistics. Topics include globalisation, popular culture (including film and literature), everyday urban life, cultural and social impacts of scientific theories and new technologies, multiculturalism, contemporary spirituality, the body in culture, and theories of feminism, postmodernism and postcolonialism. Study in this area is relevant for work involving commentary and analysis of contemporary social issues and cultural practices (e.g. journalism, teaching, activism) and fields concerned with designing, delivering and evaluating cultural and artistic productions, and education, communication, welfare or health services, in culturally diverse communities.

Major Structure

Students would be eligible for this major having successfully completed 80 credit points which includes the units in the following recommended sequence.

Bankstown Campus

Students completing a major in Cultural and Social Analysis must complete the Level 1 unit:

100897

Everyday Life

Students may also select the following Level 1 unit to contribute to their major area:

100846

Analytical Reading and Writing

Students may also select the following Level 3:

400087

Applied Critical Methods

Students must also complete no less than six units from the following list of Level 2 and 3 units:

Level 2 and 3 Units

Note: Not all units will be offered each year. Units will be offered on a rotational basis.

Level 2 units

101409

Aboriginal Cultural Texts

102192

Cinema and Censorship

100854

Contemporary Popular Cultures

SS238A

Genres

100964

Introduction to Film Studies

101251

Introduction to Psychoanalysis

100871

International Texts and Contexts

100273

New Ethnicities, Old Racisms

100882

Politics of Sex and Gender

G2006

Race, Community and National Identity in Australia

100884

Social Inequalities

100886

Special Topics in Cultural and Social Analysis

101990

The Racial State

100291

Urban Life/Urban Culture

100298

Youth Cultures and Moral Panics

Level 3 units

400087

Applied Critical Methods

100988

Chaos and Communication

101265

Children's Culture

100992

Communication: Power and Practice

100994

Consumer Culture

100858

Culture and Globalisation

102185

Culture, Discourse and Meaning

100996

Death and Culture

100998

Evolutionary Thinking

100866

Film and Drama

100999

Gender At Work

100961

Humanities Internship

101468

Islam, Media and Conflict

100877

Multicultural Studies

101252

Psychoanalytic Criticism

101253

Public Memory and Commemoration

102191

Queer Culture

101003

Religion and Culture

101005

Representing Crime

101006

Social Semiotics

101007

Story Links and Indigenous Knowledge

101008

Technologies of Racism

101009

The Body in Culture

100970

Understanding Power

101898

Violence in Everyday Life

101010

What is the Human?

Penrith Campus