home cooked theory

Related reading #SOI09

With thanks to Tammi and Jen…
The RED Report: The contribution of sessional teachers to higher education, Australian Learning and Teaching Council, 2008
From the introduction, by Professor Rob Castle, Deputy Vice Chancellor (Academic and International), University of Wollongong:
To maintain for permanent staff the ideal of being teaching and research academics, we have had to rely on [...]

10 things graduate students want

Over the past few months panelists for the SOI conference have been meeting and sharing plans for what they will present in their allotted time at the beginning of each session. The conference format is not the traditional paper-giving mode, but rather an open discussion with the audience following a series of provocations from invited [...]

Course outline

Thanks very much for all the tips as this was coming together. Since I was moving house yesterday, the day the reader was due, I’ve written something based on what I already know rather than what I hope to get across before giving the lectures. I’ve got a bag of books about romance packed for [...]

Suggested reading: online friends and intimacies

Just in time for my course outline, a fantastic manifesto addressing the limits of online social networking on Geert Lovink’s blog. A taste:
Social networks register a ‘refusal of work’. But our net-time, after all, is another kind of labour. Herein lies the perversity of social networks: however radical they may be, they will always [...]

The Work of Media Consumption

We are half way through the Advanced Cultural Studies course I’ve been teaching this semester with my colleagues Graeme Turner and Mark Andrejevic. I thought I’d share the course outline to give a sense of what we’ve been up to.

Advanced cultural studies: The work of media consumption

July 23
New media utopias and dystopias
Group discussion

Readings
• Axel Bruns, [...]

Cultural studies after Melbourne

Last week on top of the excitement of meeting Lauren Berlant and Ian Horswill and the despair of seeing the Swans lose at ANZ stadium I had some interesting discussions about teaching and cultural studies with some of Melbourne University’s finest employees. It was exciting to hear that some of the material I’ve discussed here [...]

Teaching or research?

My unfortunate lack of blogging lately is partly due to travel and the impact this has on other deadlines: I have three articles/chapters due this month and more presentations in Melbourne and Brisbane, as well as a graduate course to convene and an engagement party to organise! This workload was partly designed to fill in [...]

Looking ahead

Without wanting to read too much into this, it is becoming clear that if I can’t find some assistance soon, I’m going to have to think about moving elsewhere to continue my research. One of the downsides of being a ‘research intensive’ staff member is that access to a pool of students looking for work [...]

Blog readers research

Yesterday I met with an Honours student who wants to write her thesis on non-commenting blog readers. Specifically, she’s trying to explore and understand whether long-term blog readers develop a ‘para-social’ relationship to their favoured blogger, even when they may not participate on the blog itself – how readers form attachments to particular writers and [...]

London calling, #2

Update: Judith Halberstam’s title has changed, see below….
In just over a week, I’m heading over to the UK again for the Cultural Studies Now conference at the University of East London. Before the event, Angela McRobbie has kindly offered to host a seminar for those of us coming such a long way where we can [...]

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