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.
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 1950s Italian Women Migrants to Australia. A Journey Towards a New Self
My research focuses on the (becoming of the) identities of the Italian women migrants who arrived in Australia in the 1950s, and on the (im)possibility entailed in (un)framing their (*subjugated*) voice. Circumstances have in fact rendered the migrants the site of negotiation between a time-wrapped idealistic representation of “Italian culture”, and the “Australian ways”. They therefore represent an important gauge for measuring the effects of migration and “integration”.
Due to Australia’s role as both colonizer and (former?) colonized, and because of the migrants’ gendered subjectivity, and of their (former?) orientalised, borderly-positioning between notions of whiteness and blackness in an institutionally (North-)Euro (and North American)-centric country, geographically located at the easternmost frontier of the (old map of the) Western world, the study of their (so far unreported) life stories, offers the chance to set up a framework of reasoning for:
- the analysis of power relations in inter-cultural exchanges and (institutional-izing) practices of othering;
- the theorization of (gender) identity formation;
- the hermeneutical investigation of (the relation between the researcher and) the “voice of the other(-ed)”
I seek to build on the work of Judith Butler, Carole Pateman and James Clifford to highlight a feminist philosophical perspective on cultural hybridization, looking into to the economic, gender, social, political, institutional, emotional and religious factors that mould the overlapping of cultures.
Adopting and questioning the (epistemologically complicated) position of “insider anthropologist”, I utilise a self-reflexive ethnographic approach to explore the “internal world” of the women migrants, and thus enter the intimacy of their everyday lives to track and outline their (supposedly) own personal understanding of their self and practices, and the (researcher’s perspective on the) specific transformations (and/or lack of change) that migration has brought to their existences. The (progressive) unearthing - also via “linguistic escamotages” - of the aspects of their life experiences that gender, national and cultural “framing” had left "unspoken" (or “unspeakable”), juxtaposed to the effects on subjects of institutionally and politically-constructed images of “national characters”, is aimed at allowing access to the (never fully achievable?) “autonomous narrative” of the women migrants’ world, and to meditate on the circumstances that had kept that knowledge previously unavailable.
Kurt Bugden
Butterflies in The Stomach: Fluid Feelings, Feeling Fluids
This thesis explores the psychosomatic relationship between feelings – particularly of lust, disgust, disorientation and anxiety – and bodily fluids, their movements, secretions, pulsations, ebbs and flows. I argue that this relationship is psychosomatic because feelings and fluids are neither purely of the flesh nor “divined” by consciousness but are, rather, mingled and render one another intelligible. Drawing largely on the work of Alphonso Lingis, Michel Serres and Elisabeth Wilson, I aim to get at the pulsating heart of feeling, to probe the queasy gut, to make sense of the perspiratory pores and the weeping eyes, to attune to the nervously full bladder. In the first section of the thesis, I focus on “queer” feelings of disorientation and anxiety in relation to experiences of sweating, breathing and those peculiar experiences of feeling butterflies in the stomach. The sensations of butterflies in the stomach exemplify how feelings often mix with, infuse and can distort one another. The weight and specificity of a feeling is, in this sense, always situational. In the fourth and fifth chapters, I turn my attention to the headiness of specific bodily fluids. With an emphasis on breath and sweat, I explore the ways in which bodies feel, and are effectuated, moved or “thrown” by certain aromas and stenches. I call this process “smelling feeling”. Geared towards the lived experiences of queer people, these chapters mark an attempt to extend and supplement the project of queer phenomenology, and to further explore the ways in which non-visual phenomena can both inspire and enervate erotic feeling. In the second section of the thesis I consider more thoroughly erotic feelings of lust and their intelligibility through psychosomatic processes of salivation, perspiration, tumescence, lubrication and olfaction. The final chapter offers a study of the erotics of urine, its texture, variable aromas and its erotic transaction as a “queer” sexual practice. Throughout the thesis I draw on work carried out in the scholarly fields of phenomenology (and indeed queer phenomenology), queer theory, affect theory, the biological sciences, sensory theory or, in general, studies of embodiment. I also draw on narrations of lived experience (through both prose and poetry) and empirical research done within “queer” communities.
Julia Broom
The Labouring Subject in the Contemporary Indian Novel
This thesis explores the figure of the labouring subject in three Indian novels. It maps aspects of contemporary labour subordinated to regimes of flexible accumulation which structure the global economy, and in which the Indian worker is increasingly enmeshed. Here the neoliberal view of citizenship – that would have every citizen the entrepreneur of his or her own future – is examined in relation to three forms of labour as they are represented in the novels on which this thesis focuses. To this end it examines modalities of labour associated with: (i) the begging industry as portrayed in A Fine Balance (Mistry 1995); (ii) the outsourcing industry as characterised in The White Tiger (Adiga 2008); and, (iii) the undocumented worker as illustrated in The Inheritance of Loss (Desai 2006).
Kerryn Drysdale
Desirous investments: an examination of the relationship between participants in Sydney's drag king scene
My doctoral thesis is intended to provide an analysis of the Sydney drag king scene, representing an alternative approach to existing scholarship on drag kinging. In looking at the 'communities of investment', my research interrogates how different 'flows' or 'layers' of desire both constitute and represent the various participants in the drag king community. This research utilizes the work of Gilles Deleuze as a tool through which these investments can be examined and to reconsider the theoretical conceptions of desire that are applied to the sexual subject. I am also particularly interested in how an expanded concept of the archive can be harnessed to reveal underlying discourses that structure thinking about drag king practices. The ever-shifting archive of drag king culture generates a topological assemblage of the material and scholarly. In adding to this archive, my ethnographic research of the Sydney drag king scene aims to show how different participants are invested in drag kinging, and how these different investments intersect in the drag king event. By conducting this research, I hope to facilitate recognition of drag kinging as an important cultural event imbued with meaning that expands our conception of this queer practice.
Rebecca Brown
'A night on the town': Young women's relationship to alcohol in post-industrial night time economies
Methodologically the thesis engages discussions in social and political theory on questions of political subjectivity; on work and citizenship in the context of contemporary capitalism. As a theoretical and historical context for an analysis of Mistry’s text, the first chapter is concerned with the biopolitics of population control shaping the sterilisation campaigns of India’s (1970s) Emergency. As a means to frame a reading of Adiga’s novel, the second chapter discusses systemic inequalities surrounding the IT economy within contemporary India, as that country comes to be increasingly shaped by neoliberal formulations of citizenship. To explore conditions of diasporic labour presented in Desai’s text, the final chapter investigates the precarious conditions of the undocumented worker in contrast with the flexible citizenry rights available to a globally mobile, cosmopolitan elite. The three chapters are drawn together through the discussion of a biopolitics whereby citizenry rights become entwined with neoliberal designations of productivity and value.
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
Punishing Paedophilic Sex Offenders in NSW: Cultural Studies, Criminology, and Consent
This project interrogates recent legislative changes in New South Wales, and Australia broadly, with regard to the punishment and post-sentence management of sex offenders, especially child sex offenders. In order to consider the normative implications of practices such as extended supervision and continuing detention orders, I consider contemporary practices through competing enlightenment justifications for punishment, specifically Jeremy Bentham’s utilitarianism, Immanuel Kant’s writing on justice, and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s recognitive rights framework. Drawing on these and other enlightenment scholars, I consider contemporary discourses on childhood innocence and citizenship, and the (gendered) child’s relationship to consent, as underpinning both legislative and popular reactions to child sex offending. In doing so, I undertake case studies focused on public reactions to Bill Henson’s controversial photographs in 2009 and ongoing protests over where to house past sex offender Dennis Ferguson. The latter chapters engage with recent legislation – such as the Crimes (Serious Sex Offenders) Act 2006 NSW and the Housing Amendment (Registrable Persons) Act 2009 NSW – designed to manage sex offenders post-release, and recent policy and program initiatives – such as Community Offender Support Program centres. I consider these in relation to more recent writing on the state and government, putting Michel Foucault in conversation with Giorgio Agamben, and examining the significance of the language of security.
Maria Koleth
Popular Development, Tourism and the Ethical Turn
In the last decade, development has become a popular tourist activity, particularly for young people embarking on study or career breaks. It is now a desirable past time to travel to economically disadvantaged regions for short periods of time and volunteer with development and conservation organisations. This so-called development tourism is one of the more contentious forms of popular development but also one of the most rapidly expanding. In a field traditionally made up of experts dispensing advice to ‘Third World’ communities, development tourism is enacting a significant change.This projectwill focus on the changes that this form of tourism is bringing to development ethics by examining how development tourists’ interactions with texts, technologies and spiritualities sustain particular ideas of the ‘good life’. Development tourism is often marketed, particularly to young tourists, as a way to construct a good self but its intervention into the field of development simultaneously aims to construct a good world.The research will explore this self-making as world-making through interviews with past development tourists and an ethnographic study of development tourism in Cambodia and Peru.
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.
Natalie Tao
The narratives of Thai migrant women with intercultural relationships in Australian context
This project investigates the lived experiences of Thai migrant women who are or have been in international relationships with Caucasian-Australian citizens. It aims to explore and understand the different factors involved in those women’s decision-making for international migration. I try to challenge the existing literature which often limits understandings of women’s migration decisions to economic bases. Furthermore, by analysing the blog discourses, I would like to find out the culturally-embedded stereotypes and assumptions that construct Thai women’s images and their relationships with foreigners. It will be used to compare with my interviewees’ narratives on their self-identity and their relationships with Caucasian-Australian partners. The performances and negotiations that migrant women make in the roles of daughters, wives, mothers and workers after migration are often still affected by the social and cultural structures of their countries of origin as well as the country of destination. Therefore, this project examines how those migrant women develop strategies to deal with a range of relationships they encounter in their daily lives, whether the intimate relations with their foreign partners, relations with their original families and partner’s families, relations with other women, including Australian women and those from the same diasporic group.
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
Constructing Celebrity Chefs
The chef is no longer an anonymous figure in the kitchen. He (usually he) now tweets, appears on our television screens, our newspapers and beams from the cover of cook books. My research examines the construction of celebrity in the chef industry. P.D. Marshall suggests that celebrity can be used to “make sense” of the world around us (1997, p.51). I use this idea in concert with Bourdieu’s (1986) cultural capital. Chefs as celebrities have cultural capital – they are seen to possess specialised skills and knowledges which elevate them and keep them to their celebrity status. The consequences of celebrity impacts the way we consume within the industry, as well as how we understand chefs through the media. I examine the construction of the gendered celebrity chef in social, print and television media and consider the ways in which chefs are commodified. My multimedia approach examines a new, more accessible kind of celebrity that is being enacted by chefs. In an increasingly competitive industry, the labours of chefs are evolving. Building and maintaining a media identity is one of the labours required in order to be a successful working chef.
Remy Low
Schooling Faith: Religious education and neo-liberal government in "parent-controlled"neo-Calvinist schooling
My primary research interest is in the relationship between religious discursive traditions and their relationship to broader social and political discourses. My doctoral research addresses the question of the relationship between particular religious discourses and their relation to the prevailing socio-political regime in Australia, specifically in the field of school education. It consists in two parts: Part 1 is primarily 'diachronic' and focused on how religious education - broadly speaking - has come to be defined, demarcated and deployed within liberal societies. In this part of my research, I produce contrasting genealogies of religious education, offering a historicised account firstly of the present 'official' definitions of religious education in Australia from its antecedents in Medieval nominalist and Protestant theology through early-liberal political discourses (e.g. John Locke) to its development in Australia under colonial, state-corporatist then neo-liberal regimes. This is followed by an account of religious education from a contrasting discursive tradition - that of neo-Calvinism - and the establishment of "parent-controlled" schools beginning in the 1960s that draw upon it. In Part 2 of my research, I take a more 'synchronic' approach, drawing on the discourse theory of Laclau, Mouffe and others in seeking to discern how the logics of practice in a case of "parent-controlled" neo-Calvinist schooling combines faith language with educational practices that articulate with the broader, neo-liberal regime's 'managerialism' and 'marketisation' of education. This latter part deals particularly with the practices of teacher work, curriculum design, assessment and reporting in relation to the policies that govern them.
Simon Noble
Debating Population: Economics, Exclusion and Entitlement
In the 2010 Australian federal election, population policy came to the forefront, with both major parties promising to ‘control’ population growth. Whilst fecundity of existing residents was ignored, immigration became synonymous with population growth and the focal point of a raft of public anxieties. The ‘Australian way of life’ was under threat and migration was to blame for traffic congestion, housing shortages and environmental degradation.
This MA thesis will critically examine the public debate that emerged at this time, observing the way in which the size and growth of the national population was portrayed as a problem. The tendency of commentators to assume a position of governmental belonging and present their views as not their own opinion, but an expression of the national interest, will be identified as a tactic of new-racism. It will be argued that this, amongst other strategies, are deployed throughout the literature as a way of deflecting accusations of racism and to position a desire for reduced migration as rational and in the national interest. The instrumentalisation of migration, where migration is justifiable only if there are quantifiable economic benefits for existing residents, will be problematised. Finally, the relationship between the discursive formation and non-discursive domains will be analysed by observing the impact of the population debate on the lives of individuals that are constituted as having either a greater or lesser entitlement to their place in Australia.
Sophie Johnson
Contemporary Pregnancy and Mothering Practices: Discourse, Negotiation, Resistance
The aim of my thesis is to analyse the construction of mothering subjectivities through qualitative data by exploring how pregnancy practices (defined as those practices undertaken to manage and maximize the success of women’s pregnancies) are informed by contemporary sources of guidance, in particular pregnancy and parenting guidebooks. This research considers how practices of pregnancy and early motherhood are negotiated by women and how this impacts upon their general health and wellbeing. These practices and negotiations include emotional ‘work’, selfsurveillance, selfdiscipline, negotiation of actions, reasoning and justifications for actions, and the acknowledged impacts of such practices, strategies, and negotiations. The research also aims to discover how such texts and other media work to inform particular ideas of 'good' and/or ‘appropriate’ mothering behaviours. How do women draw on, weave together, and/or reject aspects of the dominant advice which configures contemporary perceptions of good mothering and motherhood? How do these guides act as a performance reference for these mothers? Do ideas taken from guidebooks and other media sources form essential aspects of a pregnant woman’s identity and thus feed into practices of selfregulation?
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
Gender, Language and the American Dream
This dissertation explores the relationship between gender and the pursuit of the American Dream among contemporary Chinese immigrants. It focuses on writings and adapted media productions that are based on works of two groups of mainland Chinese immigrant writers in the United States: writers writing in Chinese and writers writing in English. This project tries to answer the following three questions: how gender constructs the American Dream? How is the realization of the American Dream related to gender? How is the American Dream represented differently in different languages?
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)
Paul Priday
Conflicted masculinities in transnational advertising agencies
My research examines the cultural production and consumption of masculinities in transnational advertising agencies and the conflict between the professional, public promotion of hegemonic masculinities through mass media on behalf of the clients of those transnational agencies and the private, individualized construction and performance of masculinities by the people who work in the creative industry where transnational advertising agencies operate. One of the questions I intend to investigate in my thesis is whether masculinity can be observed and critiqued as ongoing, improvised, performance art.
Zitong Qiu
Youth and Chinese Modernity (1919-2010)
This PhD thesis explores how May Fourth modernity (1919-1921), socialist modernity (1949-1976) and postsocialist modernity (1979-2010) as different mode of dominant modernity play out in the discourse of youth in different historical eras. The thesis is comprised three parts. Each part consists of one historical background chapter and one chapter outlining a case study. Three historical background chapters constitute a cultural-historiography of youth through examining the dynamically linked tensions between the continuities and discontinuities of different modes of modernity that crystalised in the experience and discourse of youth. Three case studies examine three films: Song of Youth (Cui Wei and Chen Huai’ai, 1959), Sacrificed Youth (Zhang Nuanxin, 1985) and The World (Jia Zhangke, 2004). I read these films by utilising sexuality, ethnicity and class respectively as lines of inquiry to construct a new historiographical reading of May Fourth youth, socialist youth and postsocialist youth. There is a striking dearth of research on Chinese youth within youth studies, and within that small field most scholarship leans too heavily towards political science and sociology. In contrast, my study not only attempts to provide a new perspective on the ongoing debate surrounding the interface of area studies and cultural studies, but also seeks to stimulate a debate about what Chinese youth studies is, could be, and may become.
Nikki Savvides
Animal-centred volunteer tourism in India, Indonesia and Thailand
My PhD thesis aims to reconfigure the destructive aspects of the tourism industry through the development of a practical ethics of tourism. With a particular focus on tourism practices in the Asian LDC nations of Thailand, India and Indonesia, I consider how forms of volunteer and conservation tourism focused on improving the lives of injured, rescued and endangered animals contribute to a paradigm for ethical tourism by engendering cross-species and cross-cultural engagements. In recognising the potential that such engagements have to dissolve the enforced boundary between humanity and nature, the thesis puts the animal back into the human notion of ‘community’, while conversely reconfiguring ‘the environment’ to include the human. By incorporating forms of indigenous knowledge with my own experiences conducting research in the field, and by placing animals at the centre of questions, ideas and theories about tourism practices, the project aims to ‘write in’ the agency of (human and non-human) subalterns while also allowing myself, as author and as tourist, to test the potentiality of the practical ethics first hand. In developing an ethical framework for tourism practices, the thesis ultimately aims to encourage a form of transnational or global responsibility within the tourism industry.