HENA03831U English - Free topic: Australia: The Dream and the Reality

Volume 2014/2015
Content
Today Australia is one of the most multi-cultural nations in the world. All those who came to visit or to settle, came with an idea of Australia and an associated set of expectations and goals. This subject explores the gap between an imagined Australia and an Australian ‘reality’ from earliest maps and exploratory trips, through European ‘settlement’ and ‘contact’ with Indigenous peoples, the Chinese on the goldfields and the White Australia policy, to post WWII immigration and recent experiences of ‘boat people’. This history will be investigated though a wide range of textual evidence – maps, diaries & journals, letters, newspaper articles, cartoons, visual art, autobiography/ memoir/life-writing, short stories, film and novel. Why did these various peoples come to Australia? What were their expectations? What were their first impressions? How did they adapt to culture shock? How did they reconcile the dream with the reality? How did those ‘already here’ respond to the ‘strangers’? How might the tensions in today’s Australia in relation to questions of ethnic and cultural difference and migration policy have been shaped by this history of ‘gap’ between the imagined Australia and the reality of Australia? What is the relationship between media representation, public reaction, political response and policy making? I will also ask students to consider Australian colonisation, immigration, multi-cultural and refugee policy in relation to conditions in Europe in general and Denmark in particular.
  • Category
  • Hours
  • Lectures
  • 28
  • Preparation
  • 176,75
  • Total
  • 204,75