This subject is thematic in its focus and introduces students to broad questions of war, its nature, its impact on society and its representations through specific examples and using different perspectives.
Issues discussed include the definitions and causes of war, biological and social arguments about the existence of war, religion, dispossession, bereavement, commemoration, winners and losers in war, media, propaganda, war crimes, insurgency, genocide, women in combat, war as represented in popular culture and images of war.
The specific themes covered vary from year to year.
The subject concentrates on war from the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries and includes contemporary issues.
On the lands that we study, we walk, and we live, we acknowledge and respect the traditional custodians and cultural knowledge holders of these lands.