This five-year degree offers a comprehensive and flexible combined degree program that qualifies you as an accredited social worker, while also allowing you to enhance your qualification with majors and minors that complement the Bachelor of Social Work. While this combined degree requires a major or minor in Sociology, or a minor in Social Policy, you can choose another major or minor in various interest areas such as diversity studies, gender studies, Aboriginal Studies, or philosophy. You'll undertake integrated studies in social sciences, social policy and social work theory and practice, with a strong emphasis on Australian and comparative social welfare studies. In the last two years of the degree all students undertake the professional social work program, which includes two fieldwork placements supervised by highly skilled and experienced practitioners in a variety of settings. We develop field education learning expectations across the program and aim to develop values, skills and knowledge for levels from beginner to a practitioner capable of meeting the Australian Association of Social Workers (AASW) Practice Standards.
An English major will introduce you to a wide range of literary and cultural works including poems, plays, novels and films that extend from medieval times to the present day. You will encounter the richness, breadth and depth of the department's research and teaching culture, allowing you to customise your study according to your interests. Areas of specialisation include Old and Middle English (800-1500); Early Modern (1500-1750); Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century; Modern and Contemporary; Australian, American, British and World literatures; literary theory; cultural, gender, postcolonial and transnational studies; film, multimedia, linguistics and language studies; and creative writing. Whatever pathway you choose, you will explore questions about genre, period and place across a wide spectrum of works in English. You will learn to analyse and explain the formal and linguistic features of texts, aspects of their genre and history, and their dynamic role in local and global cultures. You will formulate and pursue meaningful theories of critical analysis, reading communities and literary value. We offer a broad and dynamic discipline that will prepare you for a career in teaching, the media, public and community service, and academia, and in any vocation or area that demands intellectual flexibility and versatility, critical thinking and the ability to communicate. The cultural knowledge and analytical skills provided by an English major are not only marketable for this variety of vocations but will enrich you, and carry you through your life.
