AustLit

Aboriginal Land, Law and Philosophy will provide students who have completed the first year introductory Australian Indigenous Studies 100-181 subject with a more detailed and complex understanding of some of the key themes in this study area. It will utilise the physical, symbolic and metaphysical role of land and country in Australian Indigenous society as a starting point for the consideration of critical issues in Indigenous and Settler relations in contemporary Australia. Aboriginal Land, Law and Philosophy will enable the development of a deep and nuanced engagement with a selection of major issues. These may include land tenure, crime and punishment, political representation, social policy, cultural production, governance and economics. Using land and country as a base, these issues will be explored from Indigenous and non-Indigenous perspectives and from the interdsciplinary perspective of Literary Studies, Philosophy and Law. The interdisciplinary fusion of Literary Studies with Philosophy and Law will create a divergent interrogation of how land, possession and dispossession has influenced materially, legally and theoretically the experience of Indigenous Australians.

Objectives:

On completion of the subject students should have:

• developed appropriate skills in reading literary, legal and philosophical texts;
• an appreciation of the diversity of disciplinary content, forms and discourses and engage in critical analyses of interdisciplinary intersections on major issues in this subject;
• developed an informed position capable of critique yet sensitive to the politics of the Australian Indigenous experience of land. posession and dispossession.