Five disciplinary / thematic clusters
Students majoring in Asian Studies are encouraged to take at least one unit of study that has an inter-area approach, and at least one unit on another area besides their selected area of focus.
- Politics, Economics and Environment
- History and the Present
- Religion and Philosophy
- Arts, Culture and Media
- Society, Gender and Sexuality
1. Politics, Economics and Environment
This cluster is an extremely important area of inquiry, for both premodern and especially for the modern colonial and post-colonial world of global capitalism. Most premodern Asian societies had highly developed monarchical state systems going back to ancient times. In the modern period, anti-colonial nationalism produced new nation-states, militarism, and a new interest throughout the region in state-led economic development. Asia is the only place in the globe outside the modern West where manufacturing, banking, and economic development have rivalled and may even surpass Western Europe, North America, and Australia.
Asian Studies UG units:
2612 Chinese Religions in Modernity
2618 Remaking Chinese Society
2632 Modern Japanese Social History
2634 Samurai and Merchants
2636 The Enigma of Japanese Power
2642 Modern Korea
2660 Islam, Trade and Society – Arabia to SE Asia
2661 History of Modern Indonesia
2663 Social Activism in SE Asia
2664 Southeast Asia Transformed
2672 Japan in East Asia from 1840 until Today
3617 Citizens and Politics in China Today
3619 China and Globalisation
Cross-listed UG units:
GOVT 2774 Islam: Democracy, Development, Gender (has Government pre-requisites)
HSTY 2606 China and Its World in the Nineteenth Century
HSTY 2681 Colonialism in Modern Asia
HSTY 2640 Twentieth-Century China
ECOF 2001 Contemporary Economics and Political Science
GEOG 3201 Asia-Pacific Field School (Asia-Pacific Development)
GOVT 2119 Southeast Asia: Dilemmas of Development
GOVT 2208 Environmental Politics in the Asia-Pacific
GOVT 2402 Government and Politics in Modern China
GOVT 2411 Capitalism and Democracy in East Asia
SCPL 2603 Development and Welfare in East Asia
2. History and the Present
Like the Middle East, Europe, and Africa, Asia is part of the Old World, and has a very long prehistory and recorded history of ancient civilisations, monarchical orders, sacred cities, religious traditions, large peasantries, commercial and maritime trade networks, and highly developed cultural productions in the arts, handicrafts, and printing industries. In the modern period, the region experienced European and Japanese colonisation, anti-colonial nationalist movements and revolutions, formation of modern nation-states, capitalist and state socialist industrial production, land reforms, mass education, language reforms, Westernisation, the destruction of traditional cultures and kinship systems, religious and artistic revivals, consumer cultures, and participation in global and regional mediatized cultures. All Asian Studies students must be exposed to some of this rich Asian history and traditions, and be able to trace for themselves the historical continuities and disjunctures that have taken place.
Asian Studies units:
1101 Introduction to Chinese Civilisation
2611 China’s Last Dynasties
2618 Remaking Chinese Society
2623 India: Tradition into Modernity
2619 Origins of Japanese Tradition
2633 Modern Japanese Social History
2635 Samurai and Merchants
2641 Traditional Korea
2642 Modern Korea
2660 Islam, Trade and Society – Arabia to SE Asia
2661 History of Modern Indonesia
2664 Southeast Asia Transformed
2672 Japan in East Asia from 1840 until Today
2675 Gender in East Asian History and Culture
Cross-listed Units:
ARCA 2616 Early East and SE Asian Cultures
ANTH 2601 Ethnography of Mainland SE Asia
CHNS 3640 Chinese History through Chinese Eyes
HSTY 2606 China and Its World in the Nineteenth Century
HSTY 2639 Hong Kong in Modern China
HSTY 2621 Greater China
HSTY 2606 China and its World: 1839-2008
HSTY 2681 Colonialism in Modern Asia
HSTY 2640 Twentieth-Century China
3. Religion and Philosophy
The history of Asian religions stretches back to prehistoric and ancient times, and includes shamanic, sacrificial, scriptural, meditative, ritual, monastic, alchemical, healing, sacred kingship, and polytheistic traditions. These diverse religious traditions have experienced major transformations in modernity, from Christian missionisation, Weberian-style rationalisation, de-ritualisation, commercialisation, and state secularisation campaigns, and integration into modern nationalist movements, as seen in Hindu fundamentalism, Japanese state Shintoism, and Sri Lankan nationalist Buddhism. Therefore, the Asian Studies program seeks to present these religious cultures not only in terms of their classical scriptures, rituals, and historical development, but also through their modern transformations and adaptations. These units will provide students with a sense of the transnational spread or movement of religious culture across linguistic, cultural and political boundaries, whether in ancient, medieval, or modern times. They cover the major religious traditions that have moved across Asian societies: Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, and Confucianism.
Asian Studies units:
2612 Chinese Religions in Modernity
2627 Classical Indian Philosophy
2621 Buddhist Philosophy
2623 India: Tradition into Modernity
2624 Understanding Buddhist Literature
2625 Buddhism in Modern Asia
2660 Islam, Trade and Society – Arabia to SE Asia
2671 The Confucian Cultures of East Asia (proposed new unit)
2626 Religious Traditions of South Asia (proposed new unit)
Cross-listed Units:
ARCA 2616 Early East and SE Asian Cultures
ANTH 2664 Cosmology and Power in South Asia
CHNS 3641 Chinese Philosophy
GOVT 2774 Islam: Democracy, Development, Gender (has Government pre-requisites)
RLST 2630 Daoism: Potency and Immortality
RLST 2609 Theravada Buddhism
RLST 2611 Mahayana Buddhism
RLST 2623 Meditation and Self-transformation
RLST 2629 Confucian Spirituality
RLST 2637 Engaged Buddhism
4. Arts, Culture and Media
The different forms of modern mass media, whether film, television, radio, or the Internet all have vital connections with the long historical traditions in Asian societies of mythology, literature, drama, and the visual arts. Asian media narratives often address and express the ongoing social problems, political-economic issues, and the changing worldviews of each Asian society. Our approach to teaching about Asian forms of media is informed by an approach that seeks to link media products with Asian history, culture, literature, the arts, and society.
From India’s Bollywood films, to Hong Kong’s martial arts films, to Japanese animation, to the IT industries (both software and hardware) of India, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, and China, Asian media products are exported around the world and are an important component of global media culture. Asian films have won repeated prestigious awards at international film festivals, and Asian films are increasingly examined in film journals, and Film Studies classes in the West, which have traditionally been Eurocentric. Within Asia, the youth and popular culture industries of Japan, China, Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong are engaged in a dynamic interaction of joint productions and mutual copying and mutual stimulation. Television, Internet access, and mobile telephone usage in all Asian countries have all experienced a huge spurt of growth in the last three decades.
Asian Studies units:
2640 Mass Media in Korea
2670 Mass Media in East Asia
3618 Popular China
2677 Beyond the Geisha/Samurai Binary(proposed new unit)
Cross-listed Units:
ANTH 2665 South Asian Popular Culture
ARHT 2640 Modern and Contemporary Asian Art
ARHT 2645 China: Art and Empire
ARHT 2646 Art and Visual Culture of East Asia
ARHT 2044 Asian Film Studies
ARHT 2641 Art and Archaeology of South East Asia
ARHT 2642 Art in the Age of Samurai
ARHT 2643 The Art and Architecture of Modern Japan
ASLT 2605 Reorientations in Australian Literature
ASLT 2616 Australian Stage and Screen
CHNS 3639 Chinese Cinema (need language background)
CHNS 3633 Lu Xun and China's Modern Literature (need language background)
JPNS 2672 Japanese Media Culture and New Japan (need language background)
JPNS 3676 Monsters and Ghosts: Japanese Fantasy and SF (need language background)
MUSC 3606 Topics in Asian Music
PRFM 3024 Performing Asia
5. Society, Gender and Sexuality
Since its beginnings in the 1970’s in the form of “women’s studies,” the study of gender has given birth to new fields of inquiry such as masculinity studies and gay and lesbian or queer studies. Literary and media studies now expect students to be able to analyse the gender and erotic symbolism and narrative strategies of texts, and historians know that gender struggles define one of the major shifts from patriarchal traditions to modernity.
Premodern Asia witnessed many different social systems that promoted patriarchal power through family and kinship systems, and monarchical systems based on paternal kingly figures and male domination of officialdom and the court. However, in many traditional cosmologies, this patriarchal kinship and state control was relieved by powerful goddesses, female creators, queens and empresses, yin-yang forces of the cosmos, Chinese Daoist valorisation of feminine forces, and Hindu androgyny of gods. Some Asian traditions also gave social prestige to gender ambivalent occupational roles, such as Indian hijras, Indonesian bissu and warias, and Thai kathoey.
Across modern and contemporary Asia, there have been vast transformations affecting gender roles of men and women: changes in traditional family and kinship structures; nationalist movements drawing women out of the domestic sphere; the absorption of women into the industrial labour force; changes in marriage and divorce laws; state provision of welfare, maternity leave, and childcare; mounting militarisms and nationalisms that promote hypermasculinity; the increasing commercialisation of sexual entertainment; prostitution and sexual trafficking across national boundaries; feminist, gay and lesbian movements; and increasing media dissemination of gender and sexual images.
Asian Studies units:
2675 Gender in East Asian History and Culture
2676 Gender and Sexuality in Modern Asia
2677 Beyond the Geisha/Samurai Binary
2632 Modern Japanese Social History
Cross-listed Units:
ANTH 2623 Gender: Anthropological Studies
GCST 3601 Gender, Race and Australian Identities
GOVT 2774 Islam: Democracy, Development, Gender (GOVT prerequisite)
CHNS 3634 Gender in Modern Chinese Literature (need language background)