Wellness (ARTS20004)

Undergraduate level 2Points: 12.5On Campus (Parkville)

You’re viewing the 2025 Handbook:
Or view archived Handbooks

Overview

Availability
June
FeesLook up fees

What does it mean to be well? Who or what defines wellness? And what happens when we all, inevitably, become unwell? This subject critically explores the concept of wellness through history and across Buddhist, comparative religious, biomedical, and philosophical traditions, positioning contemporary wellness discourse against other concepts of ‘the good life’, including sukha, eudaimonia, health, and happiness. The subject invites reflection on how wellness functions today simultaneously as a moral approach to life, a routine for daily living, and as part of multi-trillion-dollar industry.

Students will critically engage with wellness from a multidisciplinary perspective, analysing its promises of physical, mental, emotional and spiritual ‘well-being’ alongside its limitations, contradictions, and potential harms. The course further interrogates the commodification of wellness, online influencer culture, and the ways in which wellness discourses intersect with issues of privilege, inequality, and neoliberalism. Through experiential and object-based learning, students will examine new wellness techniques and texts and learn how to write for popular and academic audiences.

Intended learning outcomes

On completion of this subject, students should be able to:

  • Demonstrate detailed understanding of historical and comparative models of wellness, including biomedical, philosophical, and religious models
  • Critically analyse contemporary wellness claims, their intellectual inheritance, biases, and privileges
  • Articulate the influence of Buddhist thought and practice on global wellness trends
  • Analyse and explain the relationship between wellness, language, aesthetics, and power
  • Communicate ideas in both oral and written formats to a variety of scholarly and popular audiences

Generic skills

On completion of this subject, students should be able to:

  • Develop critical thinking skills to analyse and evaluate concepts, beliefs, considering multiple perspectives and supporting evidence
  • Cultivate cross-cultural awareness by appreciating diversity, understanding historical and cultural contexts, and recognising their impact on various societies
  • Enhance communication skills to effectively articulate ideas, concepts, and interpretations, both orally and in writing, with clarity and coherence
  • Acquire information literacy skills to locate, evaluate, and utilise reliable and scholarly resources including texts, academic articles, and online materials, thereby building a strong foundation for future research and learning

Last updated: 31 March 2025