Week 1

Module 1 - Global environmental consciousness and the Reef: from ‘pristine wonder’ to the bleached barometer of climate change

This module introduces you the biological and cultural complexity of the Great Barrier Reef, providing insight to its ecological complexity and its relationship with different human communities.

• How has this relationship changed over time?
• What have been the implications of western modernity and industrial development?
• Has the Reef ever been truly ‘wild’?

In exploring the power of narrative in understanding the modern history of the Reef, this module also provides a broader conception of the Reef as an ecological phenomenon – how it has evolved over ‘deep time’ and what this tells us about how the Reef is now responding to human impacts and, in particular, climate change.

Required reading

J.E.N. Veron, A Reef in Time: The Great Barrier Reef From Beginning to End (Cambridge: The Belknap Press, 2008), Chapter 2, “The Great Barrier Reef. An Overview", pp. 12 – 25.

 J.E.N. Veron, A Reef in Time: The Great Barrier Reef From Beginning to End (Cambridge: The Belknap Press, 2008), Chapter 16, “The Ocean's Canary", pp. 221 – 232.

Other reading

Iain McCalmain, The Reef: A Passionate History (Melbourne: Penguin, 2013), pp. 302 – 341.  

Module 2 – Torres Strait: Cultural history and ecology on the northern edge of the Great Barrier Reef

This module concentrates on the specific relationship between the people of the Torres Strait Islands and the Reef over thousands of years. What specific cultural practices does this relationship entail? What animals nurtured and sustained by the Reef have specific significance for Torres Strait Islander people? In engaging such questions this module asks you to consider the historical and contemporary threats experienced by different Torres Strait Island communities as they have adapted to European economies and technologies and the impacts of climate change.

Required reading

Scott, Colin H. ‘“Our feet are on the land, but our hands are in the sea’: knowing and caring for marine territory at Erub, Torres Strait." Woven histories, dancing lives: Torres Strait Islander identity, culture and history (2004): pp.259-270.

Other reading

Carter, Melissa, Anthony J. Barham, Peter Veth, Doug W. Bird, Sue O'Connor, and Rebecca Bliege Bird. “The Murray Islands archaeological project: excavations on Mer and Duar, eastern Torres Strait”, Memoirs of the Queensland Museum, Cultural Heritage Series 3 (2004): pp.163-182.

Green, Donna. "How might climate change affect island culture in the Torres Strait", CSIRO (2006).

Green, Donna, Jack Billy, and Alo Tapim. "Indigenous Australians’ knowledge of weather and climate.." Climatic Change 100, no. 2 (2010): pp.337-354.

End of 0cp version with completion of quiz

Week 2

Module 3 – Seeing is Believing: Underwater perceptions and sense experiences on the Reef. An ethical responsibility for beauty?

Introducing the concept of the ‘sensorium’, this module begins a discussion of the value of the Reef for humans and non-human animals beyond the ecological and the biological. As much as coral reefs globally meet the sustenance and other needs of myriads of living organisms, what is at stake when the threats posed to the Reef are considered in terms of multi-sensory experience? What does it mean to lose the sounds, colours, feelings and other phenomenal experiences which are unique to the Reef? Using aesthetics as a platform for environmental conservation, this module is asking you to engage your senses with the natural world around you. What would it be like to be deprived of this experience? Can such questions be extended to the experience of non-human animals?

Required reading

Killian Quigley, “Report from Underwater Worlds: Bringing the Reef into view”. Sydney Environment Institute.

Other readings.

Anna Tsing, 'Arts of Inclusion, or, How to Love a Mushroom', Australian Humanities Review, 50 (May 2011). 

Killian Quigley – Sydney Environment Institute blog series, 4 parts.

— “Report from Underwater Worlds: Saltwater Sublimity” 

— “Report from Underwater Worlds: Oceanic Thought” 

— “Report from Underwater Worlds: Seeking Buoyancy” 

— “Great Barrier Reef Stories, Chapter 1: A Plan, Some Citizens, and Chasing Coral” 

Week 3

Module 4 – A Reef for Humanity? World heritage, environmental justice and policy in the age of the Anthropocene.

Placing the threats posed to the Reef’s ecological integrity in the age of the Anthropocene in broader focus, this module will build on the range of approaches the humanities can bring to environmental issues introduced in module three. What is the 'environmental humanities'? How does it differ from traditional approaches to disciplines such as history in how it approaches questions of how human cultures adapt to environmental change?
Turning to questions of environmental justice and governmental policy, the video component of this module examines the Adani project. What are the arguments being put forth for the importance of the mine going ahead at various levels of the community both locally and globally? Are these benefits compatible with a future in which global warming is kept below the two degrees mandated by many scientists if catastrophic climate change is to be avoided? What does this level of warming mean for the survival of the Reef given the increasing incidence of coral bleaching in recent years?

Required reading

Libby Robin, 'Environmental humanities and climate change: understanding humans geologically and other life forms ethically', Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, 9: 1, 2018, e449.    

Other Reading

Dipesh Chakrabarty, ‘The Climate of History: Four Theses.’, Critical Inquiry (Winter 2009), pp.197–222.

Tim Flannery, "In Hot Water" The New York Review of Books, 24th March 2022. 

Cameron Allan McKean “The Scientists Who Speak for Corals and Future Earths” Anthropology Now (2018) 10;3, pp.110-117.

Week 4

Module 5 – Indigenous Knowledge and the Great Barrier Reef: Captian James Cook and the Guugu Yimithirr, Cooktown, July 1770.

This module guides us through an important moment in the early contact between Europeans and Indigenous people in late eighteenth century northern Australia. Embodying the uncertainties and misunderstandings that invariably accompanied early cross-cultural encounters, Captain Cook’s meeting with the Guugu Yimithirr at once promises a narrative of reconciliation. What different meanings transpire from this series of events according to different perspectives? What can we learn about the relationship between the Guugu Yimithirr, and the Great Barrier Reef from this story? How did the presence of Cook’s party and their actions challenge the cultural expectations and patterns of sustenance that formed the basis of this relationship? How far does this story go in offering a contemporary basis for the movement towards Indigenous and non-Indigenous reconciliation?

Required reading.

Mark McKenna, 'On Grassy Hill: Gangaar (Cooktown), North Queensland', in From the Edge: Australia's Lost Histories, Melbourne: The Miegunyah Press, (2016) pp.189 – 212.  

Other Reading.

Inga Clendinnen, “Spearing the Governor”, Australian Historical Studies, 33: 118, (2002) pp.157-74.

Grace Karskens, “Encounters in Eora Country”, in The Colony: A History of Early Sydney, Allen & Unwin, (2009), Chapter 2, pp 32-60

Iain McCalman, The Reef: A Passionate History, Melbourne: Penguin, (2013), pp.15 – 38.

Module 6 – Industrial development and the Reef: from gold diggers to Adani.

This module compares the various historical and contemporary industrial developments which have risked the health of the Reef through local and global environmental impacts. The dual threat of a coal mine and port expansion proposed by the Indian company Adani and the Queensland government is not the first time that the environmental degradation of the Reef has instigated political activism. What do stories such as the efforts to gain World Heritage status for the Reef in the 1960s tell us about how individuals and communities have considered the ethical implications of the Reef’s survival? Of what relevance are such stories given the contemporary threats posed by large-scale developments such as the Adani coal mine on both local and global scales?

Required reading.

Iain McCalman, The Reef: A Passionate History (Melbourne: Penguin, 2013), pp. 276 – 301.

Anna Krien, “The Long Goodbye: Coal, Coral and Australia’s Climate Deadlock”, The Quarterly Essay, no. 66, May (2017), pp. 1 – 21. 97 – 116.

Other Reading.

Judith Wright, The Coral Battleground. North Melbourne: Spinifex Press, (2014 [1977]), pp. 34 – 43.

David Ritter, Dirty Coal to Dirty Politics: Everything is Connected Through a Malformed Political Economy", The Guardian, 21 July (2017) 

Graham Redfearn, “Australia is spending billions on the Great Barrier Reef. Will it do any good?”, The Guardian, 13th February (2022).

Clive Hamilton, Scorcher: The Dirty Politics of Climate Change (Carlton: Black Inc, 2007).

David Ritter, The Coal Truth: The fight to stop Adani, defeat the big polluters and reclaim our democracy (Crawley: UWA Publishing, 2018).