Institution: Southern Cross University
Course: Bachelor of Arts
Course: Associate Diploma of Arts
Major: Culture and Communication
Institution: Southern Cross University
Course: Bachelor of Arts
Course: Associate Diploma of Arts
Major: Culture and Communication
Immerse yourself in studying issues and concepts that you really care about. The Bachelor of Arts will expand your horizons and challenge your preconceptions. It will empower you to investigate, create, critique, and celebrate the many achievements, ideas and values of our human world and the human condition.
This is a degree that enables critical thinking, community engagement and creative practices in a course that you can tailor to suit your interests and career goals. You can choose to focus narrowly on a single area or choose a broad program, selecting from a diverse range of majors and minors that span communication and politics, creative arts, secondary teaching areas, vocationally-oriented majors such as tourism or psychology or even science.
Regardless of the subjects you choose, the Bachelor of Arts fosters transferable skills valued by employers – including communication, analysis, critical thinking and problem solving. Graduates also develop cultural awareness and a deeper understanding of how to build their creative capacities.
The majors available in humanities and social sciences provide an overview of the humanities (or study of the human condition) and the study of human society and social relationships which contribute to the advancement of human understanding. These majors include:
Communication and Cultural Studies enables students to connect their everyday life, personal, community and vocational interests to the broader issues and challenges of the 21st century. It equips students with a combination of critical and creative thinking skills and abilities. Cultural studies offers an inter-disciplinary approach to the study of culture, communication and society through textual analysis, cultural theory, media analysis and understanding how meaning is made through power, identity and place. Cultural studies empower diversity, social inclusion and ethical and innovative scholarship that guides and informs how we live, work and learn.
Intellectual rigour
Apply critical analysis, reasoning and reflexivity to social and cultural situations and problems.
Demonstrate the ability to develop a persuasive independent argument incorporating a range of perspectives and evidence.
Creativity
Develop innovative and creative responses to contemporary and historical social, environmental and cultural issues.
Ethical practice
Investigate and evaluate issues with reference to principles of social justice and equity and according to ethical conventions.
Demonstrate understanding of cross-sector and cross-cultural differences in ethics and morality.
Knowledge of a discipline
Demonstrate a knowledge and understanding of society and culture in chosen disciplines of study.
Apply disciplinary knowledge to diverse contexts.
Lifelong learning
Access, interpret and evaluate information to inform decision-making and action.
Communication and social skills
Communicate effectively in a variety of forms, including in working autonomously or collaboratively.
Cultural competence
Demonstrate a commitment to multicultural perspectives.
Develop awareness of knowledge and skills needed to engage in a culturally competent way with Indigenous peoples.
Introduces students to active practices of reading and writing, different forms of writing and critical reading strategies that will enable them to analyse and critique meanings in the written word. Reading and writing skills are introduced with a particular emphasis on critical thinking and essay writing as forms of academic practice.
Introduces students to a critical analysis of media practices and uses in everyday life. From social networking to watching telly, from political campaigning to going to the movies; particular consideration is given to how we engage with media, and what impact it has on our perceptions of ourselves and the world around us. Students are encouraged to fashion their assignments around their own media interests and uses, thus making it clear that their studies are not something remote from their daily lives.
Introduces students to the ways in which media industries, production processes and ways of communicating interact internationally. Students study global events and confrontations, news and foreign correspondents, sports and press freedom in various media and regions of the world.
Introduces students to a critical understanding of the theory and practices of using digital communication techniques and processes to produce web-based convergent media productions. Students acquire skills in Web site design, construction and publishing with a focus on developing standards compliant online media content.
This unit uses a range of popular culture forms such as TV shows, films, literature, advertising and contemporary music. Students will study media and genre as well as advertising, music video, Disney and Pixar animation, kinder culture, and popular mainstream literature, and film, as well as interpretations of Shakespeare live performance, in order to examine how identities and ideologies are constructed and disseminated in society today. It will also explore the cult of celebrity, the role of genre and the power popular culture has to both uphold and challenge the status quo.
Provides students with foundational knowledges in the role that narrative plays in building communities, social histories, individual subjectivities and information networks. Enables students to identify the way narrative influences social practices and subjectivities. Prepares students for an active engagement in narrative practices within a broad social context.
Introduces students to skills in critical thinking and analysis through engaging with ideas and debates relevant to everyday digital devices and networked culture. Students will identify and critically engage with debates in the media and understand their philosophical, social and cultural contexts.
Introduces students to key ideas and discussions in philosophy through applying cultural analysis in the study of film and television. Students will identify and critically engage with philosophical debates in contemporary contexts and the media.
Introduces students to contemporary work around the formation and governance of subjects and citizens as they are articulated in time and place, in institutions and discourses of public and everyday life. Dominant discourses and structures that govern people’s subjectivity, identity and public life will be explored. This unit aims to address notions of active citizenship through mapping the relations between discourses and operations of power, including questions of selfhood and agency.
Introduces students to narratives of identity and location and their relation to ideas about space, place and memory in the context of cultural geography. Consideration will be given to how the coordinates of identity and belonging are mapped out across space and place. By undertaking a localized application of this imaginative and theoretical work with field trips, students will address their own landscape of belonging and their sense of place.
Aims to introduce students to theories addressing the interactions of nature and culture. Primarily the subject proposes to engage in environmental and ecological issues and discourses from the perspective of cultural studies. Students will explore the relationship between the human and non-human in respect to their socio-cultural and activist implications.
Introduces students to the relationship between gender, sexuality and culture. It adopts a cultural studies approach to understanding the debates and issues surrounding gender and sexuality through a focus on identity, socio-legal contexts, media, place, culture and power.
Introduces students to contemporary Cultural Studies. Students examine the value of knowledge and its relationship to cultural and everyday contexts. Through specific engagements with social, political and cultural understandings of identity, the unit focuses on power, place and ethics. Students are equipped with the necessary tools to critically engage in the complex world of the twenty first century.
Introduces students to the principles, objectives and methods of social research. Develops practical skills in reviewing literature, constructing research questions and writing up research for publication. Students practice reading published research and analysing and interpreting qualitative and quantitative data. They will conduct a small piece of research of their own design.
Introduces students to Australia, Asia and the World through a study of the historical, cultural, social and political implications of Australia in a globally interconnected world. By developing their contextual awareness and cultural competency, students orient themselves as citizens of the world.
Increases awareness of Aboriginal and other Indigenous peoples’ beliefs, understandings, histories, ways of living and social commitments whilst raising understanding of matters relevant to a shared Australian history and valued future for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples.
Introduces four central areas of psychological interest: biological bases of behaviour; the nature of consciousness; learning; and stress, coping and health. The unit focuses on the influence of biological processes and experience in the regulation of individual behaviour. This unit lays the foundation for Introduction to Psychology II, which is focused on the social milieu.