Gender and Cultural Studies -- Postgraduate projects
Click on the names below to see current research projects and publications for postgraduate students in Gender and Cultural Studies.
Hongwei Bao
Queer Performances: Sexuality, Space and Affect in Postsocialist China
This thesis examines different forms of queer performances in postsocialist China (from 1978 to present): from diary writing to cinematic representation, from queer film festivals to 'gay weddings', from queer urban spaces to fan communities online. Drawing on textural analysis of queer representations and my field work in queer public cultural events, I wish to unravel the manifold ways of how queerness has been performed and how it manifests 'structures of feeling' in postsocialist Chinese society.
Originally from mainland China, I hold degrees in linguistics and literature (Xi'an International Studies University) and intercultural communication (Peking University). I worked as a teacher at the National Academy of Chinese Theatre Arts, Beijing, before I came to Sydney to conduct my Ph.D. research in 2006. My academic interests include gender and sexuality, modern Chinese history and historiography, media and popular culture, fan studies, cultural geography, postcolonial studies, and theatre and performance studies.
Publications:
- Bao Hongwei (forthcoming) 'Digital Video Action: Narrating History, Memory and Trauma in Cui Zi'en's Queer China, Comrade China'. Other Stories / Missing Histories: Reflections from the Jiu Year in China. Stephanie Hemelryk Donald, Tina Schilbach and Ivan Cucco (eds) Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.
- Bao Hongwei (forthcoming) 'In Search of Lesbian Existence: Queer Aesthetics in Women 50 Minutes'. Mikako Iwatake (ed.) New Perspectives on Japan and China. Helsinki: University of Helsinki Press.
- Bao Hongwei (forthcoming) 'Enlightenment Space, Affective Space: Travelling Queer Film Festivals in China'. Mikako Iwatake (ed.) Gender, Mobility and Citizenship in Asia. Renvall Institute Series. Helsinki: University of Helsinki Press.
- Bao Hongwei (in press) 'Haunted "Chinese Gay Identities": Space, Time and Politics of Memory in A Story in Beijing'. Conference proceeding of the Second International Conference on Sexuality in China, Renmin University of China, Beijing.
- Bao Hongwei (2009) 'LGBT Culture in China' (encyclopedia entry) in Chuck Steward (ed.) The Greenwood Encyclopedia of World LGBT Issues. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC CLIO.
- Bao Hongwei (2009) 'Query Difference in Theatre History' (book review). New England Theatre Journal.
- Bao, Hongwei (2006) 'Decentering Ethnocentrism in Theatre Education'. Xiqu yishu (Classical Chinese Theatre Studies). 27, 3: 109-113.
- Bao, Hongwei (2006) 'Intercultural Communication in Classical Chinese Theatre History'. Zhuoyuji. Beijing: Xinhua chubanshe.
Esther Rose Berry
Fat, Hair, Skin, Bone
Avatars of Empire: A Treatise on Postcolonial Biopoiesis
My research asks: Recycled into both art and commodity, how do transnationalized fat, hair, skin and bone metonymically re-enact the fragments of empire within which they are revivified as avatars of cultural and economic capital? It unpacks how the ontological liminality of all four parts - their precarious relationships to life - dislocates them from being seen as (bio)politically viable 'ways in' to unpacking processes of continuing colonization at work upon the transnationalized body. Subsequently, my dissertation contributes to growing interpretative terrain on what counts as productive and reproductive (theoretical) matter. It does so using what I call postcolonial biopoiesis, a methodology of contiguity. The latter considers how the postcolonial might 'be made more visible' within scholarly critique of body parts in global trade through an analysis, to borrow from Foucault, 'in which the biological and the historical are not consecutive to one another...but are bound together in an increasingly complex fashion' (1978:152).
Publications:
- Berry, E. (2005) 'Philip Pullman: Postcolonial Dark Materials, the Daemon and the Search for Indigenous Authenticity' in Chris Hartney and Frances Di Lauro Eds. The Buddha of Suburbia, Sydney: RLA Press, pp. 270-80.
- Berry, E. (2008) 'The Zombie Commodity: Hair and the Politics of Its Globalization' Postcolonial Studies 11(1): 63-84.
- Berry, E. (2009) 'The Ethics of A/aestheticising Transnationalized Hair: Envisaging Difference in the Knitted Sculptures of Helen Pynor' in Meredith Jones and Suzanne Boccalatte Eds. Hair, Sydney: Trunk Books, pp 98-103.
Anita Bressan
The identity of the Italian women who migrated to Australia in the 1950s
With this research I would like to assess which factors - both external and interior - affect the lives of women migrants, and how such factors communicate with, interact and eventually modify the ensemble of beliefs, customs and traditions that constitute the identity that one brings with her from her old "home" to the new. I plan to do so by exposing the patterns of my own modern-time migrations to different places of the world, by investigating the social conditions that women migrants had left compared to the ones they had arrived to, and by conducting interviews through which I will get women migrants to have their voice about themselves.
Sarah Cefai
Critical Feeling in the Queer Feminist Fold: A Genealogy of Feeling in Feminist Knowledge and Lesbian Public Culture
This thesis is an experiment in the politics of knowledge that prioritises the task of making feelings matter; of rendering the specificity of feeling – the corporeal specificity of the feeling of feeling – consequential to academic inquiry, particularly to the study of power and identity. To do this, it develops a conceptual framework to recognise and politicise the enfolding of feeling and knowledge. Genealogical analysis of queer and feminist discourses as nuanced fields of feeling brings the articulation of feeling into a different discursive register, inspiring new understandings of lesbian representation. The corporeal lucidity of feeling is philosophical in its germination, but engages specific lesbian cultural sites in its fruition.
Kyra Clarke
Teaching Pleasure Pleasurably: Sexuality education, pedagogy and film
Given the pervasive nature of sexuality in popular culture and film, this thesis proposes that the study of popular culture, namely film, should be incorporated into sexuality education programs. Current sexuality education programs exclude information relating to relationships, sexuality and pleasure. It is argued that sexuality education should be broadened to include information with regards to pleasure and sexuality rather than simply focussing on negatives such as risk. In particular, I consider the pedagogical strategy of critical thinking and how it could be utilised in the sexuality education classroom to create a safe and supportive environment in which to discuss such issues. By considering the intersection of pedagogy, film and affect it is suggested that sexuality education may become more relevant and better engage high school students in a vitally important subject.
Kerryn Drysdale
The Relationship between Performer and Audience in Drag Kinging
My research will look at the Sydney Drag King scene, specifically focusing on regular performance nights in order to look at the relationship between performer and audience members. I propose an alternative approach to the conventional psychoanalytic tradition that sees desire as a 'lack', instead look to the philosophy of Deleuze. I argue that desire is productive as the event in the context of drag kinging that creates the ‘body-becoming’ in the performer and audience constitutive acts. I seek to understand the nature of desire in constituting the body and the way sexual identities are formed and reformed through engagement within the drag king performance.
Carina Garland
"From simple girl to complex woman": A discursive history of girlhood from the nineteenth century to the present day
This project aims to consider the becoming-woman as girl and the possible implications that thinking about feminine adolescence this way might offer feminism. Whilst an idea of "woman as subject" has been discussed since the beginnings of modern feminism/s, the girl as feminine-subject-in-process has not been largely neglected. Whilst the reproductive and heteronormative expectations of the feminine body as woman's body are certainly present in discourses and histories surrounding girlhood, they manifest differently in representations and mediations of feminine adolescence as opposed to feminine adulthood and thus they ought to be considered in different ways.
My work traces a genealogy of late-modern girlhood, analysing legal, social and political debates surrounding feminine adolescents. I also focus on contintental and feminist theory, specifically Deleuze, Guattari, Baudrillard, de Beauvoir, le Doeuff and Irigaray. To illustrate my arguments I draw upon textual examples such as Lewis Carroll's "Alice" texts, "Tess of the D'urbervilles", "Lolita", Disney's "Alice in Wonderland" and Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy.
Inez Gershonowitz
After Ellen
In this project I critically consider the increasing visibility of lesbians and gays on television, by examining representations of Ellen DeGeneres, both on and off screen after she famously came out on the sitcom, Ellen in 1997. I focus on the production and reception of the sitcom, The Ellen Show (2001), which followed Ellen and the daytime talk show, The Ellen DeGeneres show (2003-present) to show how DeGeneres has helped to normalise the presence of lesbians on television and by extension, dominant culture. I maintain that based on her high ratings and evident popularity, Ellen is America's sweetheart - entertaining people of all sexes, genders, sexual orientations, and ages. While the decision to come out would have a huge impact on DeGeneres' life and career, the coming out of the actress and her character led to an international discussion of the presence of lesbians and gays in prime-time television and lead to an increase in lesbian visibility and representation on television.
Liam Grealy
"Examining Australian Imprisonment"
My research considers the roles of, and explanations for, imprisonment in N.S.W. I am concerned, in part, with the possibility of justifying legal punishment, and the first part of my thesis examines the Hegelian justification for punishment, particularly the relationship he establishes between punishment and rights. From here, I examine the relevance of a number of traditional sociological theses for explaining punishment/imprisonment and attempt to contextualise the role(s) of imprisonment in an economy of punishments in contemporary N.S.W. Why is imprisonment increasingly favoured as a sentence? Who do we imprison? And, on what grounds? As my thesis progresses, I intend to explore the notions of free will and criminal culpability as these relate to mental health and imprisonment, as well as the limits of justifications in relation to morally and socially heterogeneous communities.
Luz Hincapié
Pacific Transactions, Identity, Race, Hybridity: Japanese immigrants to Colombia
This project centres on the immigration of Japanese to Colombia to understand the fluid identities and hybrid subjectivities that are born of the experience of immigration. For this purpose, the project will use methodologies from ethnography, oral history and life writing in order to interview Colombians of Japanese descent. The study explores how processes of identity formation are shaped by the uniqueness of being Colombians of Japanese descent and how a sense of belonging is constructed. It asks what is invested in the immigrants' strategies of identification. It also asks how the discourses on race and racial identity constitute the relationship between the Japanese descendents and the Colombian population at large. A multi-disciplinary perspective will be adopted, to 'get at' the affective and cultural dimensions of being a Colombian of Japanese descent through a theoretical framework from related disciplines such as anthropology, cultural studies, and literary studies.
Publications:
- Hincapié, L. (2011 forthcoming). "She Speaks with the Serpent's Forked Tongue: Expulsion, Departure, Exile and Return." Life Writing Journal. Vol 8, No 2.
- Hincapié, L. (2010 forthcoming). "Pacific Routes, Identity, Race and Hybridity: Asian Immigrants to Latin America." Mapping the World: Migration and Border-crossing. National Sun Yat-Sen University, Center for the Humanities and Social Sciences.
Maria Elena Indelicato, PhD Student
The difficult duty of being woman
My research seeks to understand how women relate themselves and deal with the psychological and self-help discourses embedded in the mainstream popular culture. In particular, I aim to understand how the complex and contradictory discourses produce and shape femininity are inhabited and embodied by women that are trying to manage and resolve the contradictions of being women in societies more and more characterized by female "individualization". To accomplish this aim, I am delving into both the problem of identity and gender, class and ethnicity. Besides that, I will particularly focus on post-feminism concept since most of popular discourses are articulated on the base of a post-feminist identity that implies and denies feminism at the same time.
Melissa Iocco
Psychic Traumas, Social Belongings: Perverse Masculinity in Contemporary Film
This thesis examines filmic constructions of masculinity, perversity and sexual difference in the films Bad Boy Bubby (1993), Crash (1996), Fight Club (1999) and The Wrestler (2009). These films present similar preoccupations with the limits, boundaries and excesses of masculinity, corporeality, and the psyche in contemporary contexts. Utilising theories from within gender and cultural studies on subjectivity, sexuality and cinema, I use these films to test the limits of feminist psychoanalytic theories of perversity, masculinity and sexual difference. In particular, this thesis examines closely the role of psychoanalytic film criticism that deals with relationship between gender and horror, particularly Julia Kristeva’s theory of the abject. Utilising critiques of psychoanalysis put forward by Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari and perspectives on postmodernism and late capitalism in relation to masculinity and perversity, I examine the ways in which these films offer new ways of thinking about perversity and masculinity in contemporary cinema.
Tim Laurie
Deleuze, Music and the Politics of Cultural Criticism
Tim Laurie's PhD thesis examines the politics of writing cultural histories, with a focus on music as both an object of history and a resource for reorienting historical discourses. This project draws on a range of disciplines involved in music criticism and history, including anthropology, ethnomusicology, postcolonial studies, sociology, historiography, bibliography and aesthetics, but focuses primarily on Gilles Deleuze's post-structuralism as a possible way of renegotiating issues of cognition, memory, writing and aesthetics. My own case studies include the cross-marketing of r&b singles in the 1950s, covers of Motown songs by rock artists and hip hop producers, and heavy metal versions of blues and folk songs. This includes an examination of authority and expertise when constructed through different mediums - 45s, LPs, magazines, journals and books - and opens onto wider discussions around the politics and history of writing as a means of securing cultural knowledge."
Nancy Lee
Masculinity in the kitchen
My research examines the masculinities produced in kitchens by different generations of Sydney chefs. I ask how a career as a chef contributes to gender identity, and if understandings of what it means to "be a man" has changed over different generations. I investigate masculinities in a contemporary, post-feminist context and inquire whether or not feminism impacts on personal ideas of gender identity and gender role.
I focus on the contribution of 'work' and 'career' to the masculine identity, and consider the ways in which Sydney chefs manage contemporary expectations of masculinity. Taking into account various food media, including the popularity of food entertainment such as MasterChef, I offer an in-depth analysis and history of the Sydney chef community.
Mian Liu
Childhood in Childcare Centres and Disney Theme Parks
This project examines the concept of “childhood” constructed in childcare centres and Disney theme parks. In the analysis of the two fields, I stress the co-existence of adults’ imagination and children’s interaction. Childhood is neither children’s own life nor a solely adult-designed concept. It is a process in which adults’ imagination and children’s reactions shape and influence each other. On the one hand, the built environment is a carrier of an adult-defined concept of childhood. It forms the ways of children’s play to some extent. On the other hand, children interact with the environment designed for them through their play. Children, childhood (as adult-designed through environment), and children’s play are mixed in such a process of forming concept of childhood as each is influenced by others. Therefore, a key goal of this project is to facilitate my observation of the ways in which adults’ concepts of childhood are reflected in the environments they build for children, and children’s acceptance of, or resistance to, material objects and spaces designed for them. It aims to look at the complexity of children, childhood, environment designed by adults, and children’s play in it.
Remy Low
The effects of neoliberal discourse on the policy and practice of Christian 'parent-controlled' schooling in Australia
The impetus behind my research is the increasingly vigorous public debate in Australia over 'religious' and 'secular' schooling and, more generally, the broader debate over the 'new visibility of religion' in the public sphere. My project focuses on the theology and practice of 'religious education' within a 'Capitalist Type of State' (Jessop, 2002; 2007), in particular the relationship between neoliberalism and the Christian 'parent-controlled' (CPC) schooling movement in the educational apparatus of the Australian state. By means of a critical case study of a CPC School, I complicate the framing of the education debate as simply 'secular' versus 'religious', bringing to the fore its mediation on a complex cultural terrain permeated by the effects neoliberal discourse.
Li Meng
From Perplexity to Escape: Tragic Fictional Representations of 1980s Chinese Intellectuals in Huang Beijia's Nine Novellas
The 1980s witnessed a crucial interim during which China was recovering from the trauma of The Cultural Revolution while adapting itself to the changes brought by its Reform Era. The Chinese intellectuals of the 1980s, susceptible to the vicissitude as always, impressed the history and narratives of intellectuals with various responses, among which, the tragic and melancholic response was one of the most prominent.
The thesis highlights the tragic representations of intellectuals in 1980s in nine novellas of Huang Beijia, woman writer well-known for her concern over Chinese intellectuals. By studying the intellectual sexuality, intellectuals' social engagement, their transgression and connection of the West and self-orientation in the Reform Era, the author argues that perplexity is the major trigger of tragedies of the 1980s Chinese intellectuals who resort to escape in response to their adversity and trauma.
Wei Miao
Diasporic Chinese American Identities in China Men and A Free Life
My dissertation tries to interweave historical, social and cultural backgrounds into the study of Diasporic Chinese American identities in Maxine Hong Kingston's China Men (1980) and Ha Jin's A Free Life (2007). Wei Miao obtained M.A. in Foreign Linguistics and Applied Linguistics (Specialty: intercultural communication) from English Department, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, China in July 2003. Then she taught English in Shanghai Jiaotong University from August 2003 to February 2009. From February 2009, she is a Ph.D. candidate with Department of Gender and Cultural Studies, the University of Sydney. Her academic interest includes diasporic identities, Chinese American literature and immigrant literature.
Publications:
- Wei Miao. 'On the English Translation of the Chinese Phrase "Hai Xuan"'. Journal of Zhengzhou Institute of Aeronautical Industry Management (Social Science Edition), 2008, (1): 128~9. (in Chinese)
- Wei Miao. 'Design of Simulation Activities in College English Classes'. Journal of Inner Mongolia Agricultural University (Social Science Edition), 2006, (4): 583~4. (in Chinese)
- Wei Miao. 'Symbolism in The Scarlet Letter'. Journal of Shaanxi Normal University (Philosophy and Social Sciences Edition), 2003, (25): 254~8.
- Wei Miao. 'Critical Linguistic Analysis of President Bush's Speech on "9.11"'. Foreign Languages Teaching, 2003, (24): 233~4. (in Chinese)
Mark Steven
Genocide and Media Systems
I graduated from the University of Sydney with joint Honours in English and Cultural Studies (H1M) in 2008 and commenced my doctoral candidature in 2009. Within the Department of Gender and Cultural Studies I have taught about media and popular culture and, for the United States Studies Centre, I have lectured on the significance of certain US cities in relation to what we might call the "American Dream".
My PhD research combines two areas of particular interest: politicized and extreme forms of violence, especially the organized murder of civilians, and the situation of humanity within a rapidly evolving media ecology of our own design. I aim to generate ideas about the ways that technological advancement of media might have a very real impact on social relations and to suggest that "media events" might be instrumental to and conditioning factors of modern genocide.
Publications:
- Steven, M. (accepted book chapter) "Storm's Getting Worse: The Apocalypticism of Firefly" in Small Screen Revelations II: Reading Apocalyptic TV. Ed. Marcus O'Donnell.
- Steven, M. (accepted book chapter) "Bug-Brained Layabouts: FernGully and Australian Eco-Trauma" in Eco-Trauma Cinema: Film and the End of the World. Ed. Anil Narine.
- Steven, M. "Their Time Has Come: Bad Cinema Nerds as Late-Capitalist Paradigm." Colloquy: Text, Theory, Critique 18 (2009).
Selected Awards:
- 2010 - Gandel Fellowship in Holocaust Studies and Holocaust Education; visiting Yad Vashem Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority, Jerusalem.
- 2008 - Cultural Research Network's Early Career Researcher Award
- 2008 - University Medal (USyd)
- 2008 - Wentworth Medal for Best Essay in English Prose (USyd)
- 2008 - Gleebooks Prize for Best Honours Student in Cultural Studies (USyd)
- 2007 - The Walter Reid Memorial Prize for Academic Achievement (USyd)
- 2007 - Prize for Best Student in Third Year Cultural Studies (USyd)
Marc Trabsky
Distortions of Vision: Encounters of Eroticism and Death
My thesis explores an aesthetics of eroticism and death in mythology, modern literature and contemporary performance art. I am particularly interested in how one imagines a relation between eroticism and death; that is how one makes sense of the encounters of Eros and Thanatos through an apparatus of representation. This thesis also gestures towards an ethics of eroticism that makes use of the art of dying. Prior to embarking on a MPhil, I completed a BA/LLB (Hons) at the University of Melbourne and taught undergraduate students at Birkbeck College, The University of London. In addition to reading and writing, I also make films and mixed media installations.