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

This course examines twentieth century Australia from the time of Federation to the Apology in 2008. Twentieth century Australia was a period of vision and revisioning, a time of grand schemes and grand failures, and of intense questioning around notions of identity, place, race and nation. This course examines the events that Australians lived through and the issues that preoccupied them, their cultural lives and the myths, legends, visions and prejudices through which Australians imagined themselves and others. Major topics include: Federation, World War One, the Depression, World War Two, Immigration, the Petrov Affair, Vietnam, the Dismissal, Mabo, the Tampa and the Apology. These events become sites for analysing concepts of nation, the politics of race, ideologies of domesticity and the family, social movements, the impact of modernity, the cinema, the experience of the cities and the bush, and importantly, Australia's place in the region and the world.