POSTGRADUATE WEEK 2018 - Interrogating Impact: Research in a Changing World 3 - 5 September 2018 THE SCHOOL OF THE ARTS, ENGLISH and MEDIA (TAEM) ...
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THE SCHOOL OF THE ARTS, ENGLISH and MEDIA (TAEM) presents POSTGRADUATE WEEK 2018 Interrogating Impact: Research in a Changing World 3 – 5 September 2018
2018 Postgraduate Week
School of the Arts, English and Media
University of Wollongong
Interrogating Impact: Research in a Changing World
Monday 3 September
Time Event Venue
9.00 - 9.15am Arrivals and Introductions.
Dr Susan Ballard HPS TAEM
Revelation, Interpretation, Translation:
Constructing Identities through Writing Research Hub
Building 19
Chair: Samson Soulsby Room 2072
9.15 – 10.30am NADIA ALESI Linguistic Decolonisation and Transnationalisation of Identity
Discourse in Contemporary Anglophone Arab Women’s Life Writing.
ZHUOLING TIAN (JOLIN) Feminism or Marketability: The “Beauty Writer” and
“Body Writing” Phenomenon in Shanghai Baby and “Mistaken Love.”
AMY BOYLE “Nolite te bastardes carborundorum, bitches”: The Handmaid’s Tale
as transmedia feminism.
10.30 – MORNING TEA
10.45am
Bringing Communities Together:
Weaving through the Changing World
Chair: John Harris
Research Hub
10.45 – 12noon MAI NGUYEN-LONG Why folkloric practices in Vietnam today are relevant to an Building 19
Australian contemporary art context.
Room 2072
LISA ANDREW Leaving, returning and about being from elsewhere: Transcultural
consumption and practice.
KIM WILLIAMS Transdisciplinary collaboration: Weaving through a Changing
Reef.
12 - 12.45pm LUNCH
pg. 1Imagination and Materiality:
Hybridity in a Restless Landscape
Chair: Xiao Xiong
SHELLEY WEBSTER Worldmaking as Method in Contemporary Science Fiction Research Hub
12.45 –
Art. Building 19
1.45pm
Room 2072
KAI RUO SOH Exploring the “Transnational” in the Film Production of Lapse
(forthcoming).
JOHN HARRIS
‘The Greatest Show on Earth’: The Apollo 11 Lunar Landing as Media
Archaeology.
1.45 – 2pm BREAK
Unsettling Fringes:
Destabilising Boundaries and Narratives
Chair: Kai Ruo Soh Research Hub
2pm– 3pm Building 19
XIAO XIONG Haunting as Ghost in ‘The Crocodile Fury.’
Room 2072
SAMSON SOULSBY “Make Them Laugh And They’re Not Afraid”: Altering
Perceptions of Otherness.
MICHELLE CAHILL Interceptionality and Narrative Mediation.
3 – 3.30pm
AFTERNOON TEA
KEYNOTE PRESENTATION: 'A History of My Times '
Research Fellow and Associate Professor Alan Wearne
3.30 – 4.30pm
I shall be discussing some of the things I've learnt about narrative poetry [both as
reader, writer and indeed publisher] in the past decades. An amount of this will keep
returning to my current work-in-progress YARRAVILLE CONFIDENTIAL from
which I shall read extracts. Research Hub
Building 19
READINGS Room 2072
Postgraduate Student Readings
Tess Barber
4.30 – 5.30pm
Hayley Scrivenor
Donna Waters
Jen Saunders
Naomi Barton
Julie Keys
Research Hub
DRINKS AND NIBBLES
5.30 – 6.30pm Building 19
ThesisPoesis Prizegiving Room 2072
pg. 2Tuesday 4 September
Time Event Venue
8.45 – 9am SET UP
Barry Maitland
Research
PhD Research Presentation Review
The Vietnam War Novel: A Formal Analysis Hub
Building
9.00 – 9.40am
PANEL: 19
Joshua Lobb Room
Sue Turnbull 2072
Luke Johnson
9.40- 9.50am SHORT BREAK
Sandra Wilder
M.Phil Research Presentation Review Research
Spinsters, Sleuths and Snoops: Depictions of Culturally Invisible Older Woman as Hub
9.50 – Amateur Sleuths Building
10.30am 19
PANEL:
Sue Turnbull Room
Nicola Evans 2072
Cath McKinnon
10.30 – MORNING TEA
10.50 am
Naomi Barton
PhD Research Presentation Review Research
Let the Dead Speak: An Exploration of the Role of the Victim in Detective Fiction Hub
10.50 –
Building
11.30am PANEL: 19 Room
Chrissy Howe
2072
Sue Turnbull
Joshua Lobb
LUNCH
11.30 – 1pm MORNING PANEL MEETS (20mins x 3 = 60mins) + 30 min break for panel
Anne Marie Dalziel
Research
DCA Research Presentation Review
A Very Long Echo: cultural grief and embodied archives Hub
Building
1pm – 1.40pm
PANEL: 19
Sarah Miller Room
Cath McKinnon 2072
Lucas Ihlein
pg. 31.40 – 1.50pm SHORT BREAK
Roselle Pineda
PhD Research Presentation Review
Blossoms from the death of the last Summer’s bloom – Exploring the role of conflict and Research
care in Curatorial Practices in and with Communities: the case of the Adow Ne Hub
Domaget (Dumagat Day) Festival in Aurora, Philippines Building
1.50 – 2.30pm
19
PANEL: Room
Sarah Miller 2072
Terumi Narushima
Lucas Ihlein
2.30– 2.50pm AFTERNOON TEA
2.50 – 3.30pm AFTERNOON PANEL MEETS (20 mins x 2 = 40 mins)
pg. 4Wednesday 5 September
Time Event Venue
8.45 – 9am SET UP
Fiona Morris
DCA Research Presentation Review (transfer to PhD)
Ethical Witness: The documentary photographer in the age of hyperphotography Research
Hub
9.00-9.40am
PANEL: Building 19
Jacky Redgate Room 2072
Andrew Whelan
Steinar Ellingsen
9.40 -9.50am SHORT BREAK
Nasibeh Khorani
MPhil Research Presentation Review
How do Iranian artists respond to censorship restriction in current social and political Research
9.50 - contexts? Hub
10.30am Building 19
PANEL: Room 2072
Penny Harris
Agnieszka Golda
Jacky Redgate
10.30 –
10.50am MORNING TEA
James Keogh
MPhil Research Presentation Review
Buying Skins: Investigating the cultural intermediaries that are localising Australian
Research
digital games for China
10.50- Hub
11.30am Building 19
PANEL:
Brian Yecies Room 2072
Xiaoping Gao
Ted Mitew
11.30 – 1pm LUNCH Morning Panel meets (3 x 20 mins = 60 mins) + 30 min break for panel
Emily Martin
PhD Research Presentation Review
Re-Imagining Women and Legitimating Whispers: Constructing an Australian Research
Feminist Discourse Online Hub
1 – 1.40pm
Building 19
PANEL: Room 2072
Ika Willis
Michael Griffiths
Chris Moore
pg. 51.40 –
SHORT BREAK
1.50pm
Omar Alkhamees
PhD Research Presentation Review Research
Saudi-Arab Archetypes in Video Game Narratives and Visual Styles and their Impacts on Hub
the User Experience Building
2 – 2.40pm
19
PANEL:
Brian Yecies Room
Sukhmani Khorana 2072
Nicky Evans
2.40 –
AFTERNOON TEA
3.00pm
Jennifer Saunders
PhD Research Presentation Review Research
But wait, there’s more: deep mapping place to disrupt local histories Hub
3.00 – Building
3.40pm PANEL 19
Lisa Slater Room
Joshua Lobb 2072
Cath McKinnon
3.40– 4.40pm
AFTERNOON PANEL MEETS (20 mins x 3 = 60 mins)
pg. 6Presenters’ Biographies
KEYNOTE BIOGRAPHY
ALAN WEARNE has been part of Australia's poetry scene since the late 1960s. He has published a verse novella, two
verse novels and five collections, the three most recent being with Giramondo: The Australian Popular
Songbook (2008) Prepare the Cabin for Landing (2012) and These Things Are Real (2017). He works for an outfit called
Narrative Verse in English (company founder Geoffrey Chaucer) and considers himself both an elitist and an entertainer.
After teaching (mainly Poetry) at the University of Wollongong from 1998 to 2016 he is now back in Melbourne where
he publishes Grand Parade Poets, twelve books since 2011, the most recent being the collection of Group Sestinas and
Group Villanelles composed by his Wollongong students With the Youngsters (2017).
PRESENTER BIOGRAPHIES
NADIA ALESI is an Iraqi PhD Candidate (English). My major is Literature and work jointly with Linguistics. My thesis
is on investigating the linguistic discourse of identity in the Contemporary Anglophone Arab women’s life writing,
combining text analysis and literary theory. I’m supervised by Prof. Anne Collett and Dr. Alison Moore. I worked as
translator/interpreter for NGOs, lecturer in Translation Department in Basra University. I published in translation and
discourse analysis, participated and published in Drama Education project by London School of Speech &Drama, and
have recently participated in Basra-Boston HER STORY IS project, and presented in conferences in Canada (virtual
presentation), Australia and Spain (in person presentation).
OMAR ALKHAMEES. Associate Lecturer at Imam University. Omar holds a BA degree in English from Gaseem
University Saudi Arabia and an MA in Literature from Essex University UK. His interests include: pop culture, video
games, civil rights and cultural dialogue. Omar’s PhD research is an extension of his many interests.
LISA ANDREW’s art practice draws on her history of moving and her research at UOW focuses on ideas surrounding
authenticity and appropriation through the transcultural history of the pineapple. In 1994 she received an MFA at the
School of Visual Arts in NY and in 2017 she presented Modified Fruit: Weaving a transcultural practice through leaving,
returning and about being from elsewhere at the University of Wollongong.
A creative writer studying a PhD in Creative Arts at the University of Wollongong, TESS BARBER is researching
alternative approaches to environment and ecology in science and speculative fictions (SF). She is currently writing
her first novel: Maybe revolution is too strong a word.... Find more of Tess' words at
thespacesinbetween.wixsite.com/tbarber
NAOMI BARTON is a prose writer and first-year Doctor of Philosophy in Creative Arts (Creative Writing) student,
focusing on crime fiction. Her thesis, Let the Dead Speak, examines the role of the victim in detective fiction narratives.
Her first crime novella, Liar's Candle, was shortlisted for the 2018 Viva la Novella competition.
AMY BOYLE is in her first year of a Doctor of Philosophy (Arts) in the School of the Arts, English and Media. Amy’s
research explores the representation of women, and the circulation of hetero- patriarchies and feminism through popular
culture. Her thesis will examine how the movement from broadcast network to subscription television has cultivated a
feminist niche audience and a new demand for female-centric fiction.
MICHELLE CAHILL received the UTS Glenda Adams Award, NSW Premier Literary Award for New Writing, for her
story collection Letter to Pessoa.
pg. 7ANNE MAREE DALZIEL is an interdisciplinary artist and creative producer working collaboratively in live
performance and installation, often with the participation of people living in regional communities or western Sydney.
Her work explores social issues, referencing written, material and embodied archives to explore loss, belonging and
collective identity.
JOHN HARRIS’ PhD research project brings ‘Media Archaeology’ and ‘Vertical Geography’ together in a consideration
of recent ‘scenes’ of Space exploration and communication. Moments of broadcast history, breakthroughs and
crossovers of Space invention, as well as art historical and aesthetic interventions into the ‘discourse’ of Space are
brought into relation to explore their evolving significance.
CHLOE HIGGINS is the founder and Chair of Wollongong Writers Festival. She was the 2016 Katharine Susannah
Prichard Writers’ Centre Emerging Writer-in-Residence and the Varuna/Ray Koppe Young Writers’ Resident. In May
2017, she was named the winner of the Feminartsy Memoir Prize, and in February 2018, won third place in Glimmer
Train’s Family Matters competition. She recently signed with the Jane Novak Literary Agency for her debut book, The
Girls, a memoir about grief, guilt, family dynamics, and socially-stigmatised sex. The Girls will be published by Picador
in June, 2019.
JULIE KEYS is a PhD student in Creative Arts at the University of Wollongong. She was awarded a Varuna LitLink
Residential Fellowship and shortlisted for the Richell Prize in 2017 and her debut novel will be published by Hachette
in the first half of 2019.
JAMES KEOGH is a Digital Media Advisor for a global corporation, working closely with international stakeholders
and large media enterprises. He is currently studying a M.Phil at the University of Wollongong, and interested in
investigating the key processes by which audio-visual content is transformed by transnational actors.
NASIBE GHASRI KHOUZANI is an M.Phil student at University of Wollongong (UOW), School of the Arts, English
and Media. In her thesis, she explores the strategies used by contemporary artists in Iran to circumvent the censorship
impose by the current regime. With a BA from the Art University of Esfahan, Iran, her research interest is investigating
the influences of social, political and historical context on the contemporary art trends in Iran.
BARRY MAITLAND was born in Scotland, grew up in London and studied architecture at Cambridge University. He
practised as an architect and urban designer in the UK and taught at the University of Sheffield before coming to
Australia as Professor of Architecture at the University of Newcastle from 1984 to 2000. He has published 5 books on
architecture and 16 novels.
EMILY MARTIN completed her Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in 2017 at UOW’s Bega Campus with a major in English
Literature, and Community, Culture and Environment. Her current work on Australian feminist discourse and the
benefits of multi-modal publishing was inspired by new perspectives as a stay-at-home wife and mother.
FIONA MORRIS is an Australian documentary photographer and DCA candidate in the Faculty of Law, Humanities
and the Arts at the University of Wollongong (UOW). She is also a sessional photographic teacher at UOW and the
Australian National University. Fiona has worked as a photographer for a number of organizations including; Fairfax
Media, Getty Images, Greenpeace and Médecins Sans Frontières, who commissioned her to photograph female survivors
of family violence in Papua New Guinea. Her photographic practice has a strong focus on social issues. In 1996 Fiona
was awarded a scholarship to study in the General Studies Program at the International Center of Photography in New
York.
MAI NGUYEN-LONG is a visual artist whose DCA research has been inspired by exhibiting within ‘Vietnamese
Australian’ contexts and associated conflicts. She is interested in expanding readings of Vietnamese identities in
contemporary art by engaging with folkloric practices in Vietnam today, material history as heritage, and the
im/possibility of non-binary realms.
pg. 8ROSELLE PINEDA is a teacher, educator, curator, performance maker, community worker and activist. She
interweaves these subject-positions in her works and projects as faculty at the University of the Philippines, director of
the Aurora Artist Residency Program and Space and the Performance Curators Initiatives, and as PhD candidate at the
University of Wollongong.
JEN SAUNDERS is an artist and researcher examining local histories, communities and landscapes. She has published
two books of poetry – Translations (1999) and In A Night House (2002, PressPress). Saunders was shortlisted in the
2016 joanne burns MicroLit Award. In 2017 Saunders was shortlisted in the Peter Porter Poetry Prize.
HAYLEY SCRIVENOR is a third-year Creative Writing PhD student. Her fiction and non-fiction has appeared
in TEXT, Seizure Online, SCUM, Mascara Literary Review, SWAMP and Verity La. Hayley is the current director of
Wollongong Writers Festival, held in November every year.
KAI RUO SOH is a PhD candidate at the University of Wollongong. Her research explores international collaborations
within the Chinese film industry and the reception from digital media audiences. Her research mainly examines user-
generated content on social networking sites to understand the reception of international collaborations within the
Chinese film industry.
SAMSON SOULSBY is a third year PhD candidate at the University of Wollongong. His research explores the depiction
of monsters and monstrosity in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series, as well as in other popular media. His other research
interests include children’s and YA literature, speculative fiction, fan studies, comedy, and horror. In July, he represented
TAEM in UOW’s Three-Minute Thesis competition.
ZHUOLING (JOLIN) TIAN is a Ph.D. student in University of Wollongong under the supervision of Prof. Wenche
Ommundsen and Dr. Michael Griffith. She is doing research on Asian Australian literature, with a focus on diasporic
Chinese Australian writing. She is currently completing her Ph.D. thesis named Feminism or Femininity: Representation
of Chinese Women in Chinese Australian Literature.
SARAH TURNBULL is a Sydney-based freelance writer and author of Almost French (Random House) and All Good
Things (HarperCollins). As part of her DCA, Sarah is currently working on a novel about the Australian impressionist
John Peter Russell, who lived and painted in France in the late 19th century.
DONNA WATERS is a mature-age emerging writer, in her third year of a creative writing PhD. Her writing has
appeared in Tide, Cordite, and the University of Plattsburgh zine. She loves living and working in Port Kembla, and
hopes to see a book of hers in print one day.
SHELLEY WEBSTER is a PhD candidate in the School of the Arts, English, and Media at the University of
Wollongong. She is a photographer and visual artist working with speculative practices in contemporary art with a focus
on science fiction.
SANDRA WILDER is a mature-age student enrolled in a Master of Philosophy. She completed a Bachelor of Arts
degree, majoring in English Literature and Sociology followed by Bachelor of Arts (Honours) majoring in English
Literature.
KIM WILLIAMS’ practice-based PhD investigates specific environmental issues using the methods of socially engaged
art and in collaboration with communities. Sugar vs the Reef? celebrates regenerative agricultural innovations by
sugarcane farmers in Queensland. Mapping the Islands explores new approaches to environmental issues on the Great
Barrier Reef through transdisciplinary collaboration. Waterways of the Illawarra brings attention to the neglected
streams of Wollongong through community creek walks.
XIAO XIONG commenced his PhD course in English literature in 2015. His research field is migrant and disaporic
writing. He is also a lecture in English literature at Central China Normal University.
pg. 9ABSTRACTS
INTERROGATING IMPACT: TAEM POSTGRADUATE WEEK 2018
NADIA ALESI
Linguistic Decolonisation and Transnationalisation of Identity Discourse in Contemporary Anglophone Arab
Women’s Life Writing.
My research examines the linguistic discourse in contemporary Anglophone Arab women’s life writing. English
discourse is chosen for identity representation in the post/neo-colonial eras to reclaim a cultural and political self-
representation, with liberation and/or decolonisation of the inner self as transnational acts. My paper raises a number of
questions: What do Arab women life writers inherit? And, what are the role of English here and the role of the genre
itself? I will refer to Etel Adnan’s (2005) memoir In The Heart of The Heart of Another Country, as a representative
example of practices of witnessing and of ethical obligation which show itself in the instable and provisional projection
of identity construction, using English amid a precarious narrative of social and political conflicts and contradictions in
the Middle East and worldwide. By employing Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), I will discuss the writer’s practice
of creating an English text that shows ethical implications of linguistic choices by analysing how language can and
should correspond to a social reality. The text is formed in the infinitives and is linked to a critique of the past, present
and future to show a method of membership/identity around these poles. I focus on the deterritorialization of the
linguistic politics, the connection of the individual and the political, and how the text is an instance of a chaotic narrative
that is difficult for audience to follow since the “I” of autobiography is absent and the linguistic agency is mostly made
ineffective.
OMAR ALKHAMEES
PhD Research Proposal Review: Saudi-Arab Archetypes in Video Game Narratives and Visual Styles and their
Impacts on the User Experience
This research investigates the construction and representation of the Saudi-Arab identity in video games narratives and
audio-visual content. It expands on the previous but limited work of Sisler (2008) and Naji and Iwar (2013) through a
new but related analysis of recently evolving state policy in Saudi Arabia, coupled with Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions
and the GUESS game satisfaction scaling framework. By appropriating Jenkins’s theories on participatory culture
(Jenkins, 2009) and spreadable media (Jenkins, Ford and Green, 2013), as well as employing a content analysis of
material shared by gamers, this project explores the specific markers used to distinguish cultural aspects and elements
of identity to which Saudi gamers identify. In so doing, this project compares and contrasts three particular archetypes:
the suggested model by state policy, the Arabs exhibited in popular Western video games, and those in the minds of
active Arab/Saudi gamers.
LISA ANDREW
Leaving, returning and about being from elsewhere: Transcultural consumption and practice.
‘Leaving, returning and about being from elsewhere’ addresses the politics of authenticity through a strategy of
displacement and appropriation. I draw on the history of Piña (Pineapple cloth from the Philippines) as a metaphor for
a transcultural ‘traveller’ - because of its mobility - which I compare with my position of being from ‘elsewhere’. This
paper contextualizes transculture with a strategy of displacement to address ideas on identity informed by fragmented
influences, a heterogeneity and intertextuality which repositions alliance through affinity.
Transcultural processes generally involve appropriative acts of picking and choosing, producing both mistranslation and
auto-ethnography, which challenges the idea of culture as static. Anthropophagy, on the other hand, as a strategy of
appropriation, suggests symbolic digestion - or artistic ‘cannibalism’ - of outside influences. The research into Piña
cloth in the Philippines acknowledges that I am operating in the space of the ‘Anthropologist’s tent’. Through my
research, I am practising ‘alongside’ (Trinh Minh Ha), as well as negotiating my relationship with the Philippines to
address the politics of displacement exemplified by Piña, a politics that is also reflected in my own life experiences as a
white Anglo woman living and working in colonised spaces.
NAOMI BARTON
pg. 10PhD Research Proposal Review: Let the Dead Speak: An Exploration of the Role of the Victim in Detective
Fiction
This thesis traces the development and changing trends in how the victim is depicted in detective fiction. Using as a
starting point the critique of writers such as Bridget Lawless that crime fiction ‘rewards’ violence (Lawless, 2018),
particularly violence against women, and that the victims of crime are routinely ignored or exploited in crime fiction, it
examines the evidence whether or not this is indeed the case. It traces differing trends in the history of crime fiction,
from the necessary reader pathos for the victim in late Victorian 'penny dreadfuls' and True Crime, to the conscious 'un-
personing' of the fictional victim in Golden Age detective novels, and throughout the latter half of the 20th century and
the 2000s and 2010s.
Via a series of case studies of significant works of detective fiction in different eras, this thesis will demonstrate
that criticisms that the genre inherently ignores or exploits the victims of crime for storytelling purposes is not entirely
true. These case studies examine how prominent crime writers over the past seventy years have indeed given the victim
full personhood and characteristics, and further, have implemented the character of the victim as part of the plot. In
short, these examples show that the detective, and the reader, must get to know the victim intimately in order to discover
who killed them.
AMY BOYLE
“Nolite te bastardes carborundorum, bitches”: The Handmaid’s Tale as transmedia feminism.
My paper will discuss my research and its potential impact by examining the feminist influences of one of my case
studies, Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale. My thesis will examine how the movement from broadcast network to
subscription television has cultivated a feminist niche audience and a demand for more explicitly feminist texts. “Impact”
is foremost, “the action of one object coming forcibly into contact with another” (Oxford Dictionary). In this fashion, in
recent years, the changing interests of the television industry and feminist interests have collided and necessarily,
converged. The most recent offering of this partnership is The Handmaid’s Tale, which has become an unprecedented
example of the popular and the political intersecting. This convergence has rendered itself in the construction of the
television series, its marketing, its reception and its uses in activism beyond the entertainment sphere. The Handmaid’s
Tale has been positioned by both industry and audience as a transmedial text that bridges fiction and reality to become
part and parcel of the contemporary feminist movement. Its impact has been so profound that “the handmaid” is now
internationally recognised as a symbol of resistance against hetero-patriarchal oppression. Texts such as these have the
ability to effect female rights and representation on and off the screen. In suit, my research will have repercussions for
media industries, the conceptualisations of audiences and politics, and ultimately, social justice and feminist scholarship,
as I believe such texts are key players in Fourth Wave Feminism; crucial to inspiring equal political, social, cultural and
corporate citizenship.
MICHELLE CAHILL
Interceptionality and Narrative Mediation.
In this paper I will present the key elements of interceptionality, a communications tool which can be applied within the
arts industry to strategically reorient the framing of minority narratives and the positioning of those who are ‘Othered’
at the intersections of race, gender and class. Building on Kimberlé Crenshaw’s renowned 1989 framework for the
configuration and intensities that determine intra-group oppression I argue that while intersectionality addresses the need
for contemporary feminist and anti-racist movements to layer and complicate the relationships between subjectivity and
power it has isolated itself within an increasingly polarised leftist and educated minority experience. Moreover as critics
such as Jennifer Nash point out, intersectionality remains confined to a theoretical and descriptive analysis, whose
methodology is poorly defined. Intersectionality’s failure to address cultural and legal policy leaves it susceptible to
replicate the very approaches to difference it describes. Adapting from an understanding of narrative theory (Gérard
Genette, Linda Hutcheon), Foucauldian discourse analysis and conflict resolution methodology (Sarah Cobb, Nikolaj
Kure) interceptionality operates like metalepsis intruding from the extradiegetic world of the disempowered minority to
stimulate contingency, to destabilise cohesive narrative frames and discourses that offer privileged subject positions to
dominant groups. The transgressive power of interceptionality enables an historiographic shift in hierarchical and linear
discourses that structure and position minorities who are being blocked by the cultural gate. Not only does it mark and
map the history of absence and erasure, it opens the way for alternative participatory narratives which are discursively
empowering.
ANNE MAREE DALZIEL
pg. 11DCA Research Proposal Review: A Very Long Echo: cultural grief and embodied archives
This thesis, entitled “A Very Long Echo: cultural grief and embodied archives” comprises an exegesis and a series of
participatory art projects that seek to initiate potentially difficult conversations about family, history and relationship to
place. Through a series of participatory performance projects underpinned by scholarly research, this thesis seeks to
discover whether cultural grief persists as embodied memory, and whether it can be traced and performed with rural
descendants of Gaelic boat people. It does so by exploring the broad question of ‘belonging’ focusing on how rural
descendants of a Gaelic speaking subaltern Scottish culture displaced to Australia in the nineteenth century.
JOHN HARRIS
‘The Greatest Show on Earth’: The Apollo 11 Lunar Landing as Media Archaeology.
As we approach the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing it is a telling time to reflect on both what and how
we might learn from its nature as media event and artefact. Broadcast live to a global audience approaching 600 Million
people, the ghostly footage has become an iconic symbol of Russian and US engineering prowess and a media milestone
that broke new ground in the realms of human exploration, technology and communication.
While bookshelves brim with accounts of brave astronauts and our silver screens still pulse with documentary and
all manner of other genre derivations of ‘the moon landing’, remarkably little has been produced in a scholarly context
that seeks to apply contemporary methods and concepts from Media Studies to the first lunar landing.
In this paper I will take a Media Archaeological approach to the lunar landing in order to unpack in finer grained
detail the nature of the materiality of the media employed and its effects on the story we have come to know. In so doing
I will situate this media event in a broader sociohistorical context by examining the difference between International
versions and receptions of the broadcast. In generating a clearer picture of this early networked moment in media history
I intend to offer new insights, beyond the mythopoetic reverie the landing is often shrouded in, that reposition and
refocus this event 50 years on.
JAMES KEOGH
MPhil Research Proposal Review: Buying Skins: Investigating the cultural intermediaries that are localising
Australian digital games for China
This project investigates the emergence of China’s bourgeoning cultural sectors and some of the key processes by which
audio-visual content is transformed through contributions from a range of national and transnational actors. Specifically,
it explores how Australian video game ‘localisers’ are intersecting economic and cultural fields in unprecedented ways,
mediating between well-established cultural policy demands and a bevy of new commercial industry opportunities and
networks of stakeholders. Through the lens of Bourdieusian field theory, particularly from Distinct (1984), this research
analyses how such ‘cultural intermediaries’ are contributing to the transformation of economic capital and evolving
consumer tastes and needs. At once, the expertise of these localisers lies outside of the skillset and capabilities of the
local Australian labour market, while also providing knowledge in the field of cultural production, distribution, and
consumption of Australian games for the lucrative Chinese market. Utilising interview materials, field observations and
secondary data analysis, this project analyses the range of localisation practices and network relationships sought by
Australian gaming developers to penetrate China’s gaming market and to navigate the State’s esoteric censorship
procedures. Gaining new understandings of these professionals and their practices will provide original insights into
both the field of cultural production and how Australian content is adapted and geared for both Chinese and transnational
audiences. Not only will this assist to elucidate the relevant power institutions at play and how they are transforming,
but also it will reveal the dynamic relationships involving a network of actors that are facilitating transnational media
and cultural flows.
pg. 12NASIBEH KHOUZANI
MPhil Research Proposal Review: How do Iranian artists respond to censorship restriction in current social
and political contexts?
Following the Revolution in 1979 that over threw the Pahvoli dynasty, the Islamic Republic regime secured power in
Iran. The newfound regime was intent on restricting and controlling the speed of modernization in Iran when thought to
be unaligned with religious orders. To that end, the regime instituted controls to reverse what they perceived to be the
westernization of the country intent on preserving Islamic values and power. These restrictions impacted significantly
the arts community, which was censored and monitored by the state when present in the public realm. In response to
these imposed restrictions, those artists wanting to express their political views and their dissatisfaction with the regime
countered with a strategy of resistance using covert languages and strategies that enabled them to continue their arts
practice.
Under the gaze of the state, artists developed covert narratives of resistance which adopted universal symbols,
metaphors, allusions and cultural references and re-imagined them to developed their own localised visual language and
circumvent the restrictive censorship. I would argue that embedded in the contemporary art produced by Iranian artists
is a paradox which sits between both the public and private worlds in a context of fear and hope.
This study explores the state's rationale for censorship, the mechanism of imposing it, its influence on the trends
in visual art, and the artists creativity adopted to circumvent the censorship; with an argument that the post-revolution
restrictions have influenced the practice of Iranian contemporary artists. This environment of subterfuge and resistance,
underpinned by fear and penalty, has galvanised the underground arts community and through necessity has required
them to develop their own particular visual language unknown by an outside audience unless decoded.
BARRY MAITLAND
PhD Research Proposal Review: The Vietnam War Novel: A Formal Analysis
Kate McLoughlin (2011) has argued that 'war, as a subject, is the greatest test of a writer's skills of evocation', being
'huge in scale, devastating in impact and encompassing of human behaviour in its greatest trials and intimacies'. Despite
these challenges, war fiction has been a recurring preoccupation of authors in the twentieth century, and especially so in
relation to the Vietnam War, about which Renny Christopher (1995) estimated that some 'seven thousand or so books'
had been published. How then might one contribute something original to this canon? It is true that much less has been
written about the Australian involvement in that war, but still, what fresh or original approach could derive from an
Australian perspective?
It is the intention of this study to address these broad questions by focussing on the formal characteristics of war
novels in general and Vietnam novels in particular. What makes them different? How do they work? McLoughlin offers
a penetrating analysis of these questions, focussing on six features which she regards as distinctive of war narratives.
The first of these she terms 'Credentials', concerning who tells the story, in other words focalisation; the second, 'Details',
addresses the problem of scale and the characteristic responses of taliation or synecdoche; then comes 'Zones', and the
distinctive types of settings of war stories; 'Duration' investigates the ways in which war reconfigures the dimension of
time as well as space; 'Diversions' is concerned with an adequate language to represent war; and 'Laughter', discusses
the place of humour in war writing.
From McLoughlin's comprehensive survey of the distinctive features of war fiction, I propose to focus on three
analytical elements – focalisation, setting and narrative speed. The first two relate directly to 'Credentials' and 'Zones',
while the third can be seen as a feature of 'Duration'. McLoughlin quotes a telling remark by Ernest Hemingway in a
letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald, that war 'groups the maximum of material and speeds up the action and brings out all sorts
of stuff that normally you have to wait a lifetime to get'. I believe that the question of narrative speed is a crucial element
and a particularly useful tool with which to analyse the intensity of war fiction, and in order to do so I shall propose a
further development of Gérard Genette's model of narrative speed as set out in Narrative Discourse (1980) and Narrative
Discourse Revisited (1988). Together, these three elements – focalisation, setting and narrative speed – will, I believe,
provide a powerful analytical framework to investigate the nature of the Vietnam War novel and suggest an answer to
the research questions.
pg. 13EMILY MARTIN
PhD Research Proposal Review: Re-Imagining Women and Legitimating Whispers: Constructing an
Australian Feminist Discourse Online
Feminism in Australia continues to be widely contested in both public and private discourses. As more people turn to
digital and social media to navigate their lives and experiences, feminist commentators have embraced new multi-modal
platforms to reignite conversations about what it means to be a woman in contemporary Australia. Social and digital
media provide an insight into the power relationships that shape the discourse of Australian womanhood, but also into
the way that online texts infiltrate and influence the offline socio-cultural context of Internet users.
This project investigates the circulation of contemporary Australian feminist discourse through three case studies:
Sudanese- Australian woman Yassmin Abdel-Magied, best-selling author Clementine Ford, and Arrernte woman
Celeste Liddle. Using an intersectional lens on their publications, including social-media posts, print journalism, and
books, I will examine how multi-modal publishing and social and digital media provide a platform for feminist writers
to shift the grounds of legitimacy and authority, and re-shape the discourse of womanhood for Australian women. Central
to this is the offline impact that these social and digital media texts have on Internet users, specifically women, and how
the social media space produces a feminist counter-public in the Australian cultural landscape.
Understanding cultural spaces as a form of communication, this project utilizes a number of methodological and
theoretical frameworks. Social and digital media theory dissects the relationship between online contexts and the offline,
socio-cultural impacts of the texts, using netnographic and sociological research methods. Underlying the textual
analysis of the case study texts are the established frameworks of feminist scholars such as Bronwyn Carlson and bell
hooks, and more recent work on feminist diasporas such as that of Ien Ang and Sara Ahmed. Alongside this, critical
reading and reception theory inform the study of the text as a cultural object which is more traditionally situated within
English literature research.
FIONA MORRIS
DCA/ PhD Research Proposal Review: Ethical Witness: The documentary photographer in the age of
hyperphotography.
This Doctor of Creative Arts project examines how the democratised tools of photography, including good quality
camera phones and easy access to publishing on multiple social media platforms, are reinventing the meaning and
function of documentary photography. Once, the documentary photographer was the sole author of their stories; now,
camera phones enable multiple authors to record social phenomena. Fred Ritchin (2013, p. 267) has argued that, as a
result, the power balance in documentary photography has shifted, from the single outsider view of the professional
photographer, to one which can include insiders recording their own points of view. These multiple perspectives, and
the way they challenge notions of a single ‘truth’, constitute what Ritchin calls ‘hyperphotography’ (2013, p. 6; Palmer
2017, p. 160). By analysing how insider perspectives are being used by new documentary makers alongside their own
images, and building on Ritchin’s concept, this practice-led research examines the ways that hyperphotography offers a
more complex understanding of social issues, and the ways that documentary photography from the inside out can
expand and challenge our perspective of truth in representation. Of particular interest is the use of the documentary
photograph as ‘evidence’ in a historical and contemporary context, and the implications of the use of the mobile camera
phone.
This research originates from my own practice as a documentary photographer with a strong focus on social
issues. Drawing on two of my most substantial ongoing series of work, Australian Circus Performers, 2008– and
Giovanni (Jimmy) 2000–, this project will expand on new forms of documentary photography in the context of
hyperphotography. Responding to documentary photography’s shortcomings in association with concepts of authenticity
and truth, this new phase in my documentary project proposes a multiperspectival strategy in which the insider–outsider
partnership introduces new possibilities of narration.
pg. 14MAI NGUYEN-LONG
Why folkloric practices in Vietnam today are relevant to an Australian contemporary art context.
My presentation will argue that folkloric practices in Vietnam today are relevant to an Australian contemporary art
context. I will approach this from an artist’s perspective. I will use my work, Ế Chồng: A Bilingual Installation with
Incorrect Translations, as a departure point to show how three forms of practice: woodcarving, lacquer painting, and silk
painting, evolved from folkloric practices and remain relevant to contemporary art and vice versa. I will then take you
through the current body of work I am developing that furthers this relationship with folkloric practices. Folkloric
practices in Vietnam today, often in the form of popular religion, remain an expression of indigenous cultural heritage
and an “unofficial counterculture” (P Taylor 2007, p10). In the Australian contemporary art context, the influence of
these practices on contemporary art making is at times over-looked partly due to the long shadow of the Cold War.
ROSELLE PINEDA
PhD Research Proposal Review: Blossoms from the death of the last Summer’s bloom – Exploring the role of
conflict and care in Curatorial Practices in and with Communities: the case of the Adow Ne Domaget (Dumagat
Day) Festival in Aurora, Philippines
This thesis, comprising a scholarly dissertation and project-based case study, seeks to explore the relationship between
conflict and care, understood as interconnected and rarely studied, and how these values might inform and shape cultural
work, particularly, curatorial thinking when working in and with communities. Particularly, it asks how notions of
conflict and care play a role, firstly when forming relationships with and among project participants. Secondly, how
conflict and care influence what methodologies might be employed to develop effective community arts engagement.
Thirdly, how conflict and care affect participatory performance making and the role of the curator in/with communities.
This research takes as its case study, my relationship as community worker and curator of the first Adow ne
Domaget (Dumagat Day) Festival, which is an artistic collaboration between the Dumagat indigenous peoples
community and the Aurora Artist Residency Program and Space (AARPS) in Dingalan, Aurora, Philippines. Aside from
thoroughly documenting and theorising the creative and collaborative process for the said festival, I also intend to present
the research outcomes via two creative documentaries – one, that will focus on the festival itself while the other will
focus on the how conflict and care played out in this project.
Through this study, I hope to; one, ‘give back’ to the community by documenting, analyzing, evaluating, and
archiving the project; two, contribute to the growing number of practice-led research; and finally, add to the discourse
and practice of community art engagement both in the global and local context.
JEN SAUNDERS
PhD Research Proposal Review: But wait, there’s more: deep mapping place to disrupt local histories
This project is concerned with the potential of creative nonfiction writing to disrupt settler colonial versions of local
history and knowledge of place. The field of settler colonial studies provides the theoretical framework for my
examination of and experimentation with creative nonfiction writing about place. As a non-Indigenous writer, doing
place-based research which interrogates settler narratives of belonging and unbelonging in local histories, I aim to self-
reflexively re-view my own position as ‘a local’. This thesis considers how narratives of non-Indigenous belonging are
maintained and how they might be unsettled through place-based research combining archival research and local
Aboriginal testimony. To undertake this work my project is comprised of a theoretical analysis of the topic and a creative
component. In the theoretical section of this project I will conduct close textual analysis of four Australian creative
nonfiction works on place and history: Seven Versions of an Australian Badland (2002) by Ross Gibson, Position
Doubtful (2016) by Kim Mahood, Kayang & Me (2005) by Kim Scott and Hazel Brown, and The Bush (2014) by Don
Watson. These case studies will be followed by an exegetical chapter in which I analyse the potentials and difficulties
uncovered in my own creative nonfiction writing on settler colonial place. By examining the case studies in terms of
their structure, narratological voice, use of archives and testimony, and what decolonising work they are or are not doing,
I aim to further my understanding of the potential for creative nonfiction narratives of place to contribute to decolonial
work.
pg. 15The creative component of this project will be a collection of nonfiction essays which aim to perform a deep
mapping of local place (Heat-Moon 1991; Maher 2014). The ‘place’ of this project is the Berry, Kangaroo Valley, Nowra
area of the Shoalhaven region, South Coast NSW. My data will be collected in three fields: first, materials in the settler
archive, particularly early colonial maps, Dharawal and Dhurga language and place-name lists collected in the early
1800s in the Shoalhaven region; second, testimony gained from conversations with Yuin Elders and community
members, prompted by the archival materials; and third, self-reflexive writing that charts the physical place under
investigation alongside the issues that arise from being a non-Indigenous writer, researching Indigenous narratives. I
bring these three fields of place-knowledge together to make a rich layering and entangling of knowledges. I expect that
the research I conduct and the literary works resulting from it will play a part in deepening local place knowledge and I
hope this work will also contribute to a decolonising re-viewing of local history narratives.
KAI RUO SOH
Exploring the “Transnational” in the Film Production of Lapse (forthcoming)
In this lightning talk, I examine behind-the-scenes footages of the science fiction film Lapse (forthcoming) along with
interviews conducted with the film’s director, to explore the transnationality of this film production. Through this paper
I attempt to identify the key issues of transnationalism and how this could be conceptualised as a form of capitalism.
SAMSON SOULSBY
“Make Them Laugh And They’re Not Afraid”: Altering Perceptions of Otherness.
In this lightning talk, I focus on several children’s film examples to discuss the reoccurring characteristics that separate
a “friendly”—or palatable—monster from other more threatening varieties. I argue this particular representation of
monstrosity is used to not only endear fellow characters (and audiences) to monster characters, but often also highlights,
and at times criticises, the way in which the category of “monster” is arbitrarily and oppressively assigned.
ZHUOLING TIAN (JOLIN)
Feminism or Marketability: The “Beauty Writer” and “Body Writing” Phenomenon in Shanghai Baby and
“Mistaken Love.”
The “beauty writer” (meinǚ zuojia) phenomenon refers to a literary trend led by young female writers who were born in
the 1970s in China. Their writing style is also known as “body writing” (shenti xiezuo), featuring an unabashed,
unprecedented foregrounding of the female body and sexuality, women’s agency and personal autonomy. This paper
examines the controversial discussion on “beauty writers” and “body writing” in Chinese (including diasporic Chinese)
literature at the turn of the 21st century. Wei Hui’s Shanghai Baby (1999) is the most well-known as well as the most
contentious novel of this genre in China due to its explicit description of sex, drugs and homosexuality. Another text
“Mistaken Love” is a self-declared autobiographical short story written by Shi Guoying, who is a Chinese Australian
writer based in Sydney. Her story, as well as her previous article stating that Chinese men are inferior to Western men
in bed provoked great controversy within the Chinese Australian community. Both texts contain a common theme
relating to Chinese women’s sexuality and their differing attitudes towards Eastern and Western men. Although the
authors claim themselves as feminists, their books are packaged as sexual allure for male gaze and marketable strategy
which cause controversies in Chinse intellectuals asserting that feminism is not only about the emancipation of the
female body and of sexuality. The relationship between feminism and sexuality becomes the focal point in the debate
over how body writing contributes to the feminist movement in China.
pg. 16SHELLEY WEBSTER
Worldmaking as Method in Contemporary Science Fiction Art.
This paper investigates how contemporary artists are employing worldmaking as a method within the context of science
fiction art to explore society’s changing relationships to science and technology. It considers science fiction to be a genre
that is vaster than literary and dramaturgical approaches and recognises worldmaking in contemporary science fiction
art as a method to investigate the ways that our human condition is challenged by scientific, technological and
environmental changes.
Historically, science fiction art has been considered primarily in terms of illustrative supports to literary works;
yet, in a recent shift, contemporary artists are moving away from conventional science fiction illustration and symbolism
to form their own imaginary worlds. This paper examines artworks such as Ellen Harvey’s The Alien’s Guide to the
Ruins of Washington, D.C. (2013) and Frank Kolkman’s OpenSurgery (2015) to investigate how these works can be
viewed as forms of worldmaking and science fiction artworks, and how their imagined worlds negotiate their relationship
with reality.
In doing so, this paper investigates the impact and relevance of science fiction research to contemporary society,
primarily in the dialogues generated around potential legal, political and ethical implications of contemporary scientific
and technological developments.
SANDRA WILDER
MPhil Research Proposal Review: Spinsters, Sleuths and Snoops: Depictions of Culturally Invisible Older
Woman as Amateur Sleuths
The history of crime writing reveals that women writers, although constrained by their gender, have been producing
crime stories as early as the 1700s. Nevertheless, the early history of the genre and its established canon of great writers
has tended to be masculine, with women considered to be largely incidental. The figure of the female sleuth is also much
older than had been recognised previously, with women writers using the trope to express anxieties about women’s roles
in society. The figure of the older spinster amateur sleuth emerged in the 1800s and was further developed by many
women writers in the Golden Age of crime writing in the 1920s and 1930s where she was depicted as using her age and
gender to assume an invisibility which made her invaluable as an investigator. The spinster was a woman who functioned
outside of the acceptable role of wife and mother and therefore threatened heteronormative ideals. As a result, she was
often portrayed as an outcast and an undesirable role model for young women. However, an elderly spinster, no longer
such a threat to patriarchy, could benefit from the expectations of a society that not only rendered her invisible but also
endowed her with the stereotypical characteristics of the elderly. An inquisitive, gossipy, culturally invisible and morally
upright woman, she had the perfect requirements to become the ideal amateur detective, completely unassuming and
free from suspicion. The development of the figure of the older spinster sleuth will be analysed from the late 1800s until
the late 1900s using examples of novels written by women who continue to use the stereotypical characteristics of the
character to help solve crimes. This analysis will consider the development of the elderly spinster sleuth over time and
analyse the subversive nature of her portrayal which challenges gender expectations as well as showing the fallacy of
using preconceived ideas about the capability of individuals based on cultural stereotyping.
pg. 17KIM WILLIAMS
Transdisciplinary collaboration: Weaving through a Changing Reef
The Great Barrier Reef is Australia’s bellwether for climate change. If coral has colour, it is healthy. If it is bleached
white, we know that sea surface temperatures are too great for corals to survive. The Reef is a vast organism that, until
explorers such as Captain Cook began navigating the eastern coast of Australia, did not exist in the colonial imagination.
Today the Reef is a vast economic enterprise, bringing millions of tourists to Queensland to experience this ailing marine
wonderland. It is also the gateway to international waters, where coal is shipped offshore to distant countries. The
massive coal reserves in the Galilee Basin are being gifted to Indian businessman Gautam Adani by State and Federal
Governments in the exaggerated promise of jobs for Australians. Coal extraction and fossil fuel burning are key threats
to the Great Barrier Reef. They are key drivers of climate change, as carbon emissions from coal drive global
temperatures ever upward.
This presentation focuses on a single project with the bold title: Mapping the Islands: How Art and Science can
Save the Great Barrier Reef. It is a transdisciplinary collaboration between a marine scientist, two artists and a cultural
geographer, all passionate advocates for the Reef. The collaborators explore how different disciplines can work together
to build new bodies of knowledge. It is an open-ended exploration with both serious and playful outputs. This paper
focuses specifically on the way music and writing are bringing the participants together to find ways of engaging
audiences with the Reef.
XIAO XIONG
Haunting as Ghost in ‘The Crocodile Fury’
Haunting originally means that the ghost visits a place or a person. It also refers to an ambivalent, unstable, and uncanny
state caused by the ghost or ghostly matters. The ghost is the spirit or soul of the dead which seems to be scary and
uncanny. On the one hand, the ghost visits the human world when it is thought of, blurring the distinction between the
Nether world and the human world and between being visible and invisible. On the other hand, the ghost is also partially
independent and has its own desires. Haunting as ghost means that people are unsettled by the ghost’s constant visit,
creating a state in which the ghost’s incomplete absence is in fact a seething presence. This paper examines haunting as
ghost in Beth Yahp’s ‘The Crocodile Fury’ which is set in postcolonial Malaya where native belief in Hantu (the native
spirit) encounters and clash with Western and Chinese beliefs in ghost. Part one focuses on some characters’
disappearance which is a seething presence haunting the mansion. Part two analyses repetition in terms of ghost chasing
which comes to no end. Part three explores the unconscious which is complicated and twisted by different beliefs in
ghost and colonial power.
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