Program Overview

Unit Overview

The unit HIST253 - Underbelly Australia: Crime and Social History explores Australia's past 'from below' through a focus on criminal cases, controversies, and marginalized characters between the early colonial period and the late twentieth century.

Unit Rationale, Description, and Aim

Social historians are keenly interested in studying the past 'from below': that is, from the perspectives of the criminalized or marginalized, and from other people whose voices are difficult to find in the historical record. The aim of this unit is to provide students with a sound appreciation of issues relating to crime and marginalized people in Australia's past, and with a wide range of methods and sources used by 'historians from below'.

Learning Outcomes

To successfully complete this unit, students will be able to:

• Discuss theoretical and factual knowledge relating to the development of crime and social history in Australia, and an awareness of historical debates surrounding these aspects of Australia's past
• Communicate clearly in written and/or oral form, in a style appropriate to a specified audience
• Locate, use, and appropriately reference a variety of primary and secondary materials relevant to the history of crime and marginalized people in Australia to develop an evidence-based historical narrative or argument
• Apply critical reading skills to their understanding of the history of crime and marginalized people and the methods that historians have used to research these aspects of Australian history
• Interpret and reflect on key ethical and historical debates relating to the history of crime and marginalized people

Unit Content

This unit uses a selection of Australian criminal cases, controversies, and marginalized characters to explore 'history from below' and crime and punishment in Australia's past. The topics considered in relation to these characters may include:

• Events in the convict transportation and gold rush eras
• Issues related to the death penalty
• Frontier violence
• The treatment of young people
• Policing
• The rise of organized crime, and perceived rises in crime
• Crimes related to sex and sexuality
• Gun ownership
• The relationship between crime and all or some of the following: gender, the media, race, ethnicity, and class

Assessment Strategy and Rationale

A range of assessment procedures will be used to meet the unit learning outcomes and develop graduate attributes consistent with University assessment requirements. The assessments have been developed sequentially to this end. The first two assessments take the form of knowledge and skills development tasks. The last assessment is a research project that draws on insights and techniques acquired during the previous tasks.

Assessment Tasks

• Assessment Task 1: Knowledge Development Task: The purpose of this task is for students to develop critical reading and listening comprehension skills, and to apply knowledge from readings and lectures. (Weighting: 25%)
• Assessment Task 2: Historical Skills Development Task: The purpose of this task is for students to build up skills working with primary and secondary sources to produce an evidence-based historical argument or narrative. (Weighting: 30%)
• Assessment Task 3: Research Task: The key purpose of this assignment is for students to produce an evidence-driven written, digital, material, or oral argument relating to Australian 'history from below', in the process demonstrating critical reading skills, an awareness of relevant historical debates, and of the methods used by social historians. (Weighting: 45%)

Learning and Teaching Strategy and Rationale

This unit fosters active learning through face-to-face activities that support students in developing a deep understanding of the unit's content and building core skills essential to the discipline of history. Active-learning techniques in this unit include reading, writing, discussion, and debate, alongside advanced methods for identifying and interpreting primary and secondary sources.

Representative Texts and References

• Bellanta, Melissa, Larrikins: A History (Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 2012)
• Cunneen, Chris and White, Rob, Juvenile Justice: Youth and Crime in Australia, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007)
• Evans, Tanya, Fractured Families: Life on the Margins in Colonial New South Wales (Sydney: NewSouth, 2015)
• Frances, Raelene, Selling Sex: A Hidden History of Prostitution (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2007)
• Lincoln, Robyn and Shirleene Robinson (eds), Crime Over Time: Temporal Perspectives on Crime and Punishment in Australia (Newcastle-on-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2010)
• McCalman, Janet, Struggletown: Public and Private Life in Richmond (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1984)
• Nettelbeck, Amanda and Robert Foster, In the Name of the Law: William Willshire and the Policing of the South Australian Frontier (Kent Town SA: Wakefield Press, 2007)
• Poynting, Scott and George Morgan, Outrageous: Moral Panics in Australia (Hobart: ACYS Publishing, 2007)
• Reynolds, Robert and Shirleene Robinson, Gay and Lesbian, Then and Now: Australian Stories From a Social Revolution (Melbourne: BlackInc Books, 2016)
• Stubbs, Julie and Stephen Tomsen (eds), Australian Violence: Crime, Criminal Justice and Beyond (Sydney: Federation Press, 2016)

Unit Details

• Credit points: 10
• Year: 2026
• Location: Strathfield