Robin Hood around the world
Robbing from the rich to give to the poor- it’s a potent image of placing justice over the law, and from Hereward the Wake to Ned Kelly, from Juraj Janucik to Song Jiang, the legend of the Outlaw Hero has been told in many different cultures.
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History of Clothes in Australia
If “clothes maketh the man” then we can surely add that “times maketh the clothes”. The reciprocal relationship between the forces of the era, including the available textiles and technologies, and the clothes people wear can communicate a lot about the values and aesthetics of the time and help us decode an image to reveal the class, culture, status, and respectability of the wearer. Plus…they can look so pretty!
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Australian Rebellions
Are we a nation of rebels? When the British brought their people to this land they brought their laws too, but with mixed results. The social structure was penal not feudal, and the workers were more likely to be subversive than subservient. We’ve never had a successful revolution, the streets have never run red with blood, but time and again groups of people have resisted, rioted, and rebelled, denying the system its power over them, and doing their best to change their world.
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Great Australian Love Stories
What makes for true love in the lives people have really lived? When people talk of the great lovers of the world they rarely mention Australians – that image of the long, lean, laconic man of few words doesn’t quite match the roses and chocolates of Valentine’s Day advertising or the life and death theatricality of old Hollywood. But this land has known many couples who were greater together than they could have been apart, who formed a partnership of mind and body and heart that...
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Criminal Law for Non Lawyers
Delve into the fascinating world of criminal law. So you love real crime – you’ve binged on the podcasts and it’s all interrupting your dreams. Come along and hear how the courts really deal with criminal law, what they are looking for and the principles that underpin the courts' reasonings. In this hands-on course you will be presented with hairy conundrums that can make you squirm. Come and test your ideas against the others and see who can come up with the answers. Whether you...
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Forensics Detective
EARLY BIRD FEES apply for some courses! Love crime podcasts? Addicted to TV crime shows? Want to know what really goes on in the real world of detective sleuthing and forensics? Join our course to find out how forensics investigators catch killers, whether it be by old fashioned means, such as from a fingerprint, or modern methods, such as DNA. And find out more about how amateur sleuths and family historians are helping detectives catch killers through utilising...
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Great Escapes
From prison and asylum, castle and convent, from behind enemy lines or a powerful family’s constraints, we will look at some of the ingenious and courageous – or just plain foolhardy – methods people have used to gain their freedom over the years, mostly in Australia.
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Pirates – real and fictional
Piracy has existed for as long as ships have sailed the seas laden with goods to be plundered. Were they bold and dashing, scurvy and villainous, or desperate and dirty? Come aboard as we navigate between real pirates like Blackbeard, Henry Morgan and Anne Bonney, and their fictional counterparts, like Long John Silver and the Sea Hawk, whether they sailed the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast, the Caribbean, or our own Australian waters.
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World Rebellions
Wherever power builds walls, resistance will push through the cracks. Wherever an empire – British, Roman, French, or any other – oppresses and exploits, someone, somehow will rebel, even unto death. Join us in an exploration of just some of the dramatic revolutions that have spilt blood and razed fortresses over the centuries to see if we can find patterns in the causes, the ignition points, and the ways the victors behaved in the aftermath. And as the smoke blows away in the...
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This course has no current classes. Please the waiting list.