Nature/Culture/Colony (CULS20020)

This subject explores the interwoven and interdependent cultural practices attached to nature and culture in colonial and postcolonial Australia. Drawing specially on the work of First Nations scholars as well as the work of First Nations and other scholars in Cultural Studies, History and Anthropology, and drawing on comparative scholarship, we will begin by considering how natureculture is foundational to the colonial project in Australia. The subject will map how nature and culture have constituted ‘the primitive and the civilised’, modernity and wilderness, the creation and management of land, water and property, conservation and ecological crises, and multispecies relations. Students will undertake fieldwork lead by First Nations guides to sites where naturecultures have been configured in particular colonial contexts. Students will have the opportunity to produce engaged research concerned with the energies unleashed in the collisions of nature/culture/colony.