The problem with work (I)

Feminist calls for better work for women, as important as they have been, have on the whole resulted in more work for women. Beyond the intensification of many forms of waged work… the burdens of unwaged domestic and caring work have also increased, both because of the pressures of neoliberal restructuring along with the double [...]

Commuter marriage

I have been reading a book from the early 1980s on ‘commuter marriage’. It stood out from the shelves in the library when I was preparing my course reader this year, and for obvious reasons I have an interest in the topic. What’s remarkable, reading it from the set of presumptions I have today, is [...]

Rural cultural studies and hire car research

…small country town research is important to Australia precisely because of the political utility of the stereotype. The image of the small country town combines practical assumptions about size, location and isolation, but any or all of these may be missing in the definition of a given town as small and rural in character. [...] [...]

Dream large

Dream large of narcotising the practice of thought, of putting to sleep the old cultures of criticism, inquiry and analysis, in favour of a consumer opportunity. Culture becomes brand. Dream large of how to educate and polish up your young people, so that they think efficiently but within certain limits, and so that they never [...]

What’s become of cultural studies?

From Graeme Turner’s new book: Cultural studies is among the humanities disciplines where academics’ everyday practice has become increasingly professionalized, strategic and institutionally oriented – this is particularly so for younger people, entering a workplace in which these attributes have become ever more important to one’s continuing employment. That has its drawbacks: new academics are [...]

Welcome homotectonic and thoughts on academic blogging

At the risk of aggravating my loyal spambots still further, I wanted to share the great news that my colleague Kane Race has started a blog, homotectonic. It’s partly to document work that’s emerging from his new ARC Discovery project, ‘Changing Spaces of HIV Prevention: a cultural analysis of transformations in sexual sociability among gay [...]

Notes on Jason Read’s ‘Starting from Year Zero: Occupy Wall Street and the Transformations of the Socio-Political’

NB: These are highlights created by instapaper on my kindle. Read the full essay here. I am experimenting with this and other ways of taking notes “in the cloud”… Follow @melgregg on Twitter if this is your kind of thing. As students take on more and more loans to fund their education, their education changes [...]

Week Three – Space

Here are the readings for the last meeting of the Sexuality and Space/ Queer Thinking reading group, in which we will discuss a number of approaches for researching intimacy, space and scenes. Everyone is welcome, and this week Elspeth Probyn will join us for the discussion along with some other department colleagues. If you would [...]

Reading group guest post: Jonathon Zapasnik

In regards to the reading this week, I think both Annamarie and Sara bring two different, but also, two complimentary approaches to thinking about queer, sex, and identity politics. In this reflection, I have chosen to briefly summarise each of the readings (feel free to correct me, if I’m wrong). Then, after each, I will [...]

Week Two – Style

So much for people wanting to talk more online! It makes me sad when blogging is all broadcast. Well, I will continue posting these anyway, in case there are people following and interested. This week’s readings for Queer Thinking are as follows: Melissa Hardie, “The Closet Remediated: Inside Lindsay Lohan,” Australian Humanities Review, May 2010. [...]

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