Feminist cultural studies in Brisbane?
Posted on | April 25, 2006 |
Since leaving the Sydney Gender Studies department where I did my PhD, and taking up a position in a Cultural Studies research centre, I’ve begun to miss the sense of a shared theoretical and political framework for the kind of work I do. This perception of losing a collective project - and it is only a nostalgic one, for there were a number of competing intellectual strands running in the department during my time there - is probably attributable to the kind of close ties a small department like Gender Studies encourages. But increasingly, I think, it is the key feature of a form of feminist pedagogy that I cannot find in Brisbane.
In the CCCS, my post-doc colleagues have been variously trained in English Literature, Japanese Studies, Anthropology and Community Media Studies, and all of us have shared interests in identity politics and/or new media as a site for analysis. But when I write about feminism, critical theory or philosophy, I’ve struggled to find people to talk to and test my ideas on. We haven’t had many overlapping reference points.
I’ve had the same difficulty with the teaching side of my job. Close colleagues are sympathetic to the kinds of issues I’m interested in, and provide me with feedback and support when I ask, but (understandably, from the point of view of a Head of School) their emphases lie elsewhere: in film, television, race or whiteness studies.
Speaking to someone about this recently, we agreed that a really important part of academic life is to be excited by new ideas, and to sense that such excitement is shared in a similar way by others. I don’t know why this was quite the revelation it was at the time, I just wrote a whole book making this very point, and how contemporary academic practice seems structurally organised so as to limit opportunities to share the positive affective dimensions of our work. It seems that I haven’t been applying my own theory to my own local context (I guess I’ve been too busy writing it). What I guess I’m saying is that it’s a long time since I had a conversation with someone in my immediate physical environment about a life changing book or theory. That realisation makes me feel a bit barren inside.
My intellectual isolation in Brisbane has been something I’ve found hard to articulate, because it has taken a while to establish enough of what’s really going on so that I know whether I’m actually imagining it. Initially the differences manifested in comical ways, such as the ‘postgrads don’t read Deleuze here’ notion this blog has documented before. From a cultural theory standpoint, Brisbane is identified with: a history of Foucault scholarship, that manifests in a few different places; at UQ, a strong tradition of semiotics-inflected cultural studies (one that I’m not really encouraging to remain, if I can help it); another strand of cultural studies-inflected film and television studies, influenced by the work of (newly promoted, finally) Frances Bonner; a genre of television studies and public-sphere oriented media studies influenced by John Hartley at QUT, and, at a curriculum level, now pioneered by the indefatigable Alan McKee); and the policy and industry foci that have become both the specialty and unhelpfully cliched lot of the QUT Creative Industries Faculty. Hartley, along with Stuart Cunningham, appears as the public face of this for many.
Before my time were the massive influences (and student enrolment magnets) of John Frow and Graeme Turner (the former who is recently back in Australia based in Melbourne, the latter now does postgraduate supervision and occasional lectures and concentrates on research and professional service). With Tom O’Regan, Tony Bennett, Ian Hunter and Toby Miller (briefly) around, the Australian Key Centre for Cultural and Media Policy housed at Griffith University was also an extremely influential intellectual confirguration. Before that, I’m not sure how cultural studies existed in Brisbane. But this is how I understand it now. It is not how I understand cultural studies in Sydney. Or Melbourne. Or Perth. It is the lived residue of what John Frow documents in his recent and fantastically useful essay, Australian Cultural Studies: Theory, Story, History. But it sometimes feels a little bereft of new trajectories, especially given that the top layer of senior cultural studies academics are so heavily involved in administration or advisory roles.
From this sketch, to which I welcome further definition, context and history, it seems little wonder that I’m feeling isolated: I’ve moved from a place where women hold positions of real power, responsibility and intellectual influence in cultural studies to a place where they hardly ever do. Sydney currently boasts Ien Ang, Stephi Donald, Liz Jacka, Catharine Lumby, Elspeth Probyn, Zoe Sofoulis and a returning Meaghan Morris, among others. QUT has a newly appointed Dean of Creative Industries, Susan Street, but this isn’t a cultural studies position; while the Griffith Centre for Public Ideas is clearly staking claim to a History emphasis.
Partly in reaction to this context, partly for my own sanity, over the next little while I’m starting a feminist cultural studies collective as a small step towards building some credibility and presence for the history of thinking that provides the basis for my understanding of and remaining enthusiasm for Australian cultural studies. It will be a reading group, a work-in-progress discussion space, a professional development and mentoring scheme and the basis for some community outreach work. It will also be something that’s long overdue.
If you’d like to be involved, let me know. We’re hoping to meet in the next couple of weeks.
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10 Responses to “Feminist cultural studies in Brisbane?”
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April 25th, 2006 @ 8:36 pm
Hey Melissa,
A great post, and one that I think highlights the tension between academic disciplines whose terms of reference are constructed in, like, real cities (I know Brisbane’s trying) and the expansion of those programmes into other places, often through the movement of young scholars like yourself. So in there are two forces: you are obviously capable of being central to the development of a tradition in the field you work. As you intimate, some of the early Aus. leaders did the same, and it’s important work. But there will always be the pull toward an elsewhere that can feed your knowledge and intellectual development - which is surely also important for you as an emerging talent! Maybe I’m projecting, but that’s the dynamic that doesn’t really let the actually existing academic institutions look like the right place for me to move toward at the moment (though the outside world isn’t consistently better ;7)
All I want to say is that I’m feelin’ you and best of luck with the community development, you seem to be thinking about it the right way.
April 25th, 2006 @ 8:38 pm
And an ironic message from your spam filter:
“Sorry, but your comment has been flagged by the spam filter …
You may want to contact the blog admin via e-mail to notify him.”
April 26th, 2006 @ 4:33 pm
Although a little disheartened by the seeming lack of my own town, especially against the names of sydney, I agree with most of what you are saying. As you are aware, I’m angered as much by the lack of women in ‘power’ here as the lack of support within the cultural studies discipline for those that aren’t willing to devote 80 hours a week to their academic careers. I would like to see a push by younger career researchers for a feminist approach of ‘doing with’ rather than ‘doing for’ and this defintiely involves taking some time out of the theatre of academic activism to participate in what you might term ‘community outreach’. I consider spending time at my daughter’s daycare to be as much a form of feminist engagement as I do working on ideas for ladyfest. Sometimes the emphasis placed on young career researchers to self-capitalise and strategise ‘worthy’ sites of investment is a little terrifying isn’t it? Am I too much of a pain in the arse for the collective??
April 26th, 2006 @ 5:51 pm
Hardly a pain! Your frankness is just what cultural studies - and universities in general - desperately need. I think one of the most important things we can do with this group is to learn from each other what community mindedness can involve for researchers and teachers who want to be humans rather than production line article writers or sound bite generators. And, when it comes to feminism, finding a more complex range of community engagements than the kids or no kids divide seems to have led to for previous generations.
April 27th, 2006 @ 9:54 am
Sorry Danny for the delay in getting through. I guess my feeling is that actually existing institutions don’t change while we look at them from the outside. In fact, they don’t even change much when we work hard within them. But we can mobilise the resources they offer, and rearrange our own priorities at an individual level, so that pockets of big institutions work towards objectives we are proud of.
April 27th, 2006 @ 10:15 am
I guess my feeling is that actually existing institutions don’t change while we look at them from the outside. In fact, they don’t even change much when we work hard within them
True dat! By “outside” I really meant “other institutions”.
May 1st, 2006 @ 5:45 pm
Mel,
You make no mention of Professor Jennifer Craik from Griffith University in your post (currently working at Canberra University). Outside of Brisbane, Dr Karen Brooks is at the Sunshine Coast University and seems to make very ‘real’ contributions to cultural studies in Queensland. What do you think? I’m interested to hear more. Thankyou.
May 1st, 2006 @ 7:04 pm
I think you’re absolutely right, they are important figures in Queensland cultural studies. I haven’t met or encountered either of them personally over the past two years, which explains the absence, and I am clearly being very Brisbane-centric. Karen is coming to be a visiting fellow in the CCCS soon, so I am looking forward to meeting her. She is certainly a strong presence in the media, from what little I have read and heard of Queensland media. I have supervised an undergraduate student of hers for an Honours year. That was my most direct contact with her influence!
I would like to hear more about the impact of Professor Craik at an institutional level. Do you have knowledge of this? Because what I am trying to identify is the way in which women in higher positions - women who supervise, or who are in charge of programs, or who get grants and employ people - are able to create an institutional presence for the kind of work they do. This is a crucial complement to working as an individual scholar if the objective is to change the composition of an organisation at a wider level. I can talk more about this, but do you know what I mean? And can you help with the detail on Griffith? One of the reasons GU remains such a mystery to me is because all of my efforts to contact them about MACS events have been met with silence. I have recently written to the postgraduate co-ordinator in an attempt to improve dialogue between the universities involved, and heard nothing in response.
May 18th, 2006 @ 2:09 pm
[...] The first meeting for the cultural studies reading group will be next Wednesday morning, May 24th. We decided that we wouldn’t limit it to only feminist writing because we want to read more broadly than that, but because a number of us are working on feminist projects gender will be an inevitable part of our discussions. To start with we’re going to read Charlotte Brunsdon’s “A thief in the night: Stories of feminism in the 1970s at CCCS” in Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies, edited by David Morley and Kuan-Hsing Chen. We’ll also be sharing our current research projects and setting up our expectations for the group. Let me know if you’d like to come along. « Renovation zone [...]
October 4th, 2006 @ 3:31 pm
[...] For the past few months the reading group I wanted to set up has been running, gradually building a sense of momentum and confidence as we find out what we know and might like to learn from each other. I am really enjoying the opportunity to read and talk with people I don’t have the chance to meet with otherwise, and it feels useful to be able to share my own experience and thoughts about theory as someone who still feels a little cut-off from the traditions at work here at UQ. [...]