AIH383 - Global Disasters

Unit details

Note: You are seeing the 2021 view of this unit information. These details may no longer be current. [Go to the current version]
Year:

2021 unit information

Important Update:

Unit delivery will continue to be provided in line with the most current COVIDSafe health guidelines. This may include a mix of on-campus and online activities. To find out how you are impacted, please check your unit sites for announcements and updates. Unit sites open one week prior to the start of each Trimester/Semester.

Thank you for your flexibility and commitment to studying with Deakin in 2021.

Last updated: 4 June 2021

Enrolment modes:Trimester 2: Burwood (Melbourne), Waurn Ponds (Geelong), Online
Credit point(s):1
EFTSL value:0.125
Unit Chair:Trimester 2: Sarah Pinto
Cohort rule:

Nil

Prerequisite:

Nil

Corequisite:

Nil

Incompatible with:

Nil

Typical study commitment:

Students will on average spend 150-hours over the trimester undertaking the teaching, learning and assessment activities for this unit.

Scheduled learning activities - campus:

1 x 2-hour weekly seminar

Scheduled learning activities - cloud:

1 x 2-hour weekly online seminar

Content

How can we understand and survive a more disastrous world? In the twenty-first century, disasters are becoming more common, more frequent and more dangerous all around the globe. This unit examines catastrophic events in the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries to help us better understand disasters, and be more prepared for our future. We begin with the eruption of Krakatoa in the Sunda Strait in 1883, which is still one of the deadliest volcanic eruptions on record. Over the course of the trimester we investigate a series of disasters around the world, including the 1918 influenza pandemic, London's Great Smog of 1952, the Bhopal industrial disaster in India in 1984, Hurricane Katrina in the United States in 2005, and the Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria in 2009. Each disaster offers us a case study in the experiences, impacts, and long-term effects of catastrophic events. They demonstrate the way that disasters can make a society's divisions, inequalities and vulnerabilities both more visible and more pronounced. They also show that disasters can be disruptive in a range of other ways, including by prompting major social, political and cultural change. This unit concludes with an examination of the world's most recent disaster in global and local contexts: the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. 

ULO These are the Learning Outcomes (ULO) for this unit. At the completion of this unit, successful students can: Deakin Graduate Learning Outcomes
ULO1

Understand global disasters in historical and contemporary contexts.    

GLO1: Discipline-specific knowledge and capabilities

GLO8: Global Citizenship

ULO2

Evaluate the causes, experiences, impacts and long-term effects of global disasters.    

GLO1: Discipline-specific knowledge and capabilities

GLO4: Critical thinking

GLO8: Global Citizenship

ULO3

Critically analyse understandings of vulnerability, risk and responsibility before, during and after a disaster.     

GLO4: Critical thinking

GLO8: Global Citizenship

ULO4

Research and write a Ministerial Brief to provide advice on how catastrophic events in the past can inform current disaster response.    

GLO2: Communication

GLO3: Digital literacy

GLO5: Problem Solving

ULO5

Demonstrate the way that historical knowledge can be used to inform present and future action.     

GLO1: Discipline-specific knowledge and capabilities

GLO5: Problem Solving

GLO8: Global Citizenship

These Unit Learning Outcomes are applicable for all teaching periods throughout the year.

Assessment

Assessment Description Student output Grading and weighting
(% total mark for unit)
Indicative due week
Assessment 1 - Seminar/Online Exercises 1000 words
or equivalent
25% Week 12
Assessment 2 - Report  1000 words
or equivalent
25% Week 6
Assessment 3 - Research and Writing Exercise 2000 words
or equivalent
50% Week 11

The assessment due weeks provided may change. The Unit Chair will clarify the exact assessment requirements, including the due date, at the start of the teaching period.

Learning Resource

Recommended Learning Resources

Disasters are the subject of a large body of scholarly research across a range of fields, including history, anthropology, geography, sociology, and political science. A sample of some of the most relevant scholarship for this unit is listed below.

Atkinson, CL 2013, Toward resilient communities: examining the impacts of local governments in disasters, Routledge, New York.

Bankoff, G 2003, Cultures of disaster: society and natural hazards in the Philippines, RoutledgeCurzon, London.

Bankoff, G 2013, Mapping vulnerability, Routledge. Bogard, W 2019, The Bhopal tragedy: language, logic, and politics in the production of a hazard, Routledge, London.

Cooper, G 2019, Reporting humanitarian disasters in a social media age, Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, New York.

Curato, N 2019, Democracy in a time of misery: from spectacular tragedies to deliberative action, Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Davis, DL 2004, When smoke ran like water: tales of environmental deception and the battle against pollution, Basic Books, New York. Dickel, S 2015, After the storm: the cultural politics of Hurricane Katrina, Transcipt, Bielefeld.

Enarson, E & Pease, B (eds) 2016, Men, masculinities and disaster, Routledge, Abingdon.

Fortun, K 2001, Advocacy after Bhopal: environmentalism, disaster, new global orders, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

Hartman, C & Squires, GD 2006, There is no such thing as a natural disaster: race, class, and Hurricane Katrina, Routledge, New York.

Hoffman, S & Oliver-Smith, A (eds) 2002, Catastrophe & culture: the anthropology of disaster, School of American Research Press, Santa Fe.

Hyland, A 2011, Kinglake-350, Text Publishing, Melbourne.

Janku, A Schenk, GJ & Mauelshagen, F (eds) 2012, Historical disasters in context: science, religion, and politics, Routledge, New York.

Kelman, I 2012, Disaster diplomacy: how disasters affect peace and conflict, Routledge, Abingdon.

Kenny, R 2013, Gardens of fire: an investigative memoir, UWA Publishing, Perth.

Kierner, CA 2019, Inventing disaster: the culture of calamity from the Jamestown colony to the Johnstown flood, The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill.

Koritz, A & Sanchez, GJ 2009, Civic engagement in the wake of Katrina, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor.

Lynteris, C 2020, Human extinction and the pandemic imaginary, Routledge, Abingdon.

Oliver-Smith, A & Hoffman, SM (eds) 2020, The angry earth: disaster in anthropological perspective, Routledge, Abingdon.

Peltonen, H 2013, International responsibility and grave humanitarian crises: collective provision for human security, Routledge, Milton Park.

Phillips, H & Killingray, D (eds) 2003, The Spanish influenza pandemic of 1918-19: new perspectives, Routldge, London.

Raab, N 2017, All shook up: the shifting Soviet response to catastrophes, 1917-1991, McGill-Queen's University Press, Montreal.

Samuels, A 2019, After the tsunami: disaster narratives and the remaking of everyday life in Aceh, University of Hawai'i Press, Honolulu.

Stanley, P 2013, Black Saturday at Steels Creek, Scribe, Melbourne.

Tamura, A 2018, Post-Fukushima activism: politics and knowledge in the age of precarity, Routledge, New York.

Walters, LM, Walters, T & Wilkins, L (eds) 2020, Bad tiding???: communication and catastrophe, Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, London.

Watson, SD 2020, International order and the politics of disaster, Routledge, New York.

Winchester, S 2003, Krakatoa: the day the world exploded, 27 August 1883, Penguin, Melbourne.

Yablokov, AV Nesterenko, VB & Nesterenko, AV 2009, Chernobyl: consequences of the catastrophe for people and the environment, Blackwell, Boston.

 

Unit Fee Information

Click on the fee link below which describes you: