976001 Foundations in International Studies

Warning: The information on this page is indicative. The subject outline for a particular session, location and mode of offering is the authoritative source of all information about the subject for that offering. Required texts, recommended texts and references in particular are likely to change. Students will be provided with a subject outline once they enrol in the subject.

Subject handbook information prior to 2019 is available in the Archives.

Subject level:

Undergraduate

Description

This subject provides students with an introduction to international studies that locates students' particular place and identities in relation to contemporary local, national and international issues, positions and perspectives. The subject has a strong focus on transcultural and national comparisons. Key concepts covered include Indigenous knowledges, transculturation, migration, languages, empires, and nation-states, alongside case study discussions of religion, food, music, sport, and the environment. The subject guides students towards an ethical and self-reflective awareness of how the international starts here, where we are now, while building students' critical thinking capacities, and their academic research, presentation, and writing skills.

Subject learning objectives (SLOs)

Course intended learning outcomes (CILOs)

This subject engages with the following Course Intended Learning Outcomes (CILOs), which are tailored to the Graduate Attributes set for all graduates of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (INT = International Studies CILOs):

• Graduates will have the capacity to operate appropriately in intercultural professional contexts (INT.1.1)
• Graduates will have a broad and coherent understanding of the historical, political, cultural, social and economic situations in other countries (INT.1.3)
• Graduates will be able to creatively design and conduct independent, engaged and ethical research in and about other cultural contexts and societies (INT.2.1)
• Graduates will possess critical problem-solving and research-led analytical skills in international and intercultural change (INT.2.2)
• Graduates will have the capacity to reflect upon and contextualise Indigenous peoples' experiences and circumstances to professional and social situations as and when appropriate (INT.4.1)
• As informed and engaged international citizens, graduates will demonstrate cosmopolitan openness, with an awareness of, and commitment to, ethical practices (INT.5.1)
• Graduates will possess a high level of oral and written communication skills in English and, where relevant, a developed level of oral and written communication skills in at least one language other than English (INT.6.1)

Teaching and learning strategies

International Studies as it is taught in the Bachelor of Arts in International Studies (BA IS) constitutes a practice of ethical, self-reflective and critical approaches to different societies and peoples. In this subject, learning springboards from the premise that the international begins here, where we are now. Students establish competencies in the basic concepts needed to understand and question their place in the world, and to consolidate the methodological skills needed for reading and thinking critically, building an argument, and using academic and non-academic materials in research.

Learning is based on students preparing before tutorials each week through lectures, set readings and online materials. Students extend this learning in tutorials, through structured learning activities, class discussion and workshopping of assignments. Pre-class preparation is needed in the tutorials to participate in class discussions, and engage with assignment workshops. Every week there will be a tutorial and independent study. Most weeks there is a live lecture; in some weeks there is also a video lecture or other online materials for students to view.

Students will receive informal feedback from tutors through class discussions on their use of subject ideas and content, and their ways of expressing opinions and evidence. In the assignments students extend their learning further, and demonstrate their capacities in relation to the subject’s learning objectives. Formative feedback about the first assessment task, Mapping Our World, will be provided in assignment workshops in tutorials from week two through to week five.

Content (topics)

This subject aims to increase and desimplify students’ understanding of the international, and what it means to be an internationalised student and a global citizen in the contemporary world. This aim is framed and managed pedagogically through the conceptual lens of transculturation. Transculturation is applied and reconfigured across numerous disciplines and sociocultural and geographical settings, and has given rise to, or influenced, important attendant concepts such as contact zones and borderlands. Expanding out from transculturation are the subject’s other key concepts (to be embedded in the content on a weekly basis, and signposted gently from week one), noted below. The subject is divided into two parts:

1) week one to week seven introducse students to key concepts and historical developments (Indigenous knowledges, migration, languages, political histories of empires and nation-states, borders and borderlands);

2) week eight to week twelve present a set of engaging case study discussions that convert the subject’s implicit theoretical and conceptual approach to the international into accessible, real world and student-relevant/engaged topics: religion, food, music, sport, environment.

Content (topics)

Indigenous knowledges, migration, empires, de/colonisation, nation-states, transculturation, cultural identities, contact zones, borderlands, cultural mixings

Assessment

Assessment task 1: Mapping Our World

Assessment task 2: Group Presentation: Worldviews and Indigenous Peoples

Assessment task 3: Essay

Minimum requirements

Tutorial attendance is compulsory in this subject because it is based on a collaborative approach which involves essential workshopping and interchange of ideas with other students and the instructor. Receiving formative feedback is essential and can only be provided in class. An attendance roll will be taken at each class. Students who miss more than 2 classes without valid documentation will not have their final assessment task marked (see Rule 3.8).

References

Please see the list of readings for each week in the relevant folder of FIS subject on UTSOnline. They are free to download from the UTS Library Subject Resources eReadings for the subject.