Subject Area: Australian Studies
This course can also be studied in the following specialisations: History

This interdisciplinary Australia Studies course examines the place of protest and resistance in Australian history and memory.

'Australia: Protest and Memory' introduces students to the nature and mechanics of key protest movements in Australian history then traces their repackaging in the public imagination. Focusing on the tension between historical events and their commemoration in memorials, political debate, school textbooks, film and other media, it investigates the ambiguous place of protest and resistance in Australian national discourse. It explains how it is that some sites of protest and resistance form core components of Australian identity and others do not. The Eureka Stockade and the Aussie Worker-Battler are all deployed to define ‘Australian Character’. Other protest movements, like the Waterfront strikes of the 1990s and the Aboriginal Tent Embassy and the Camp Sovereignty Movement in 2006 are remembered or forgotten as aberrations or markers of shame.