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Racism has been a central component in the foundations of Australian society since the time the British invaded and conquered unceded Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander lands. This course offers advanced critical and theoretical knowledge and skills, essential for engaging with the historical development of racial and discriminatory beliefs and structures from the late-eighteenth century to today. Students engage with racial inequality and the episodic nature of racially-motivated outbursts in Australia’s history by applying several theoretical frameworks, which resonate with other settler societies and our current world. By investigating the treatment of First Nations Australians, forced indentured labourers and ethnic-migrant communities, students explore the construction of ‘race’ and the diversity of Australia’s cultural, political and social heritage throughout history. The course facilitates an appreciation of how contemporary Australia functions for skills in professional and public engagement which is highly relevant to students in the History major or minor, and in the Bachelor of Secondary Education (BSED), and contributes to the study of other disciplines.

In this course you will explore how the historical development of racial ideas and structures has affected numerous peoples over Australia's history and impacted Australia's reputation internationally. By researching Indigenous-European relations and case studies on indentured South-Sea Islander, Melanesian, Irish, Chinese, German, Italian and post-war migrant communities, we unpack the historical layers of individual and institutional racism from the late-eighteenth to the twentieth-first centuries. You will engage with episodes of frontier violence, `responsible government' in the post-1856 era, dispossession, institutionalised racism, the White Australia policy, gender/race coercion and exploitation, and social crises and scapegoating, and empowerment. Can an overarching pattern be discerned? The course provides a theoretical lens to assist in answering this question through the overt and covert impact of racial beliefs on and the resilience of First Nations Australians, Pacific Islanders and migrants.