ATS3996 · Anxieties and apprehensions: Asian and European perspectives

Overview

“East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet” is the infamous line by Rudyard Kipling that has underpinned relations between the two geopolitical and ideational spheres of Asia and Europe. Though the two spheres came into existence through processes of mutual influence and interaction, centuries of conquest and colonisation have locked them into a dynamic of apprehension and anxiety about each other. You will explore the roots of these anxieties and how they are expressed through popular cultural forms, like crime, disease, dystopian, ecological, environmental, horror and zombie narratives. These popular culture texts can perpetuate or transcend entrenched oppositional perspectives through commonalities of genre and stylistic techniques while also producing innovations. In engaging with these narratives, you will be encouraged to examine your own planetary worldview.

Areas of study: Comparative Asian and European studies

Offerings

The Handbook publishes no offerings for this unit.

Assessment

The Handbook does not list a final examination among the assessment items. That is not a guarantee there is none.

Within semester assessment: 100%

Assessment details may change. Please refer to the assessment information in Moodle closer to the start of the teaching period.

Requisites

The Handbook lists no prerequisite, corequisite or prohibition for this unit.

Learning outcomes

1. Compare and critically analyse how Asia and Europe continue to view each other through anxiety and apprehension in the modern world, despite having constituted each other through ongoing historical practices and discourses;
2. Apply advanced comparative methodologies to evaluate and critique popular culture discourses in which East and West articulate apprehensions and anxieties about each other;
3. Independently research and critically evaluate primary and secondary sources relevant to ideas of East and West to support sophisticated and well-contextualised critical insights;
4. Use academic language perceptively and effectively.

Workload

Minimum total expected workload to achieve the learning outcomes for this unit is 144 hours per semester typically comprising a mixture of scheduled learning activities and independent study. Scheduled activities may include a combination of teacher directed learning, peer directed learning and online engagement.

Student experience, not official rules. Nothing here changes what the Handbook says.