home cooked theory

Reading list

Here is the list! Thanks for the tips, some of which are from last year when I needed help the first time. And just to note that many of these were originally selected by Ruth Barcan, the previous convenor of the course. Please do continue to add suggestions! Week 1 – What is a thesis? [...]

Readings for thesis writers

This semester I convene a course called Arguing the Point: Research in Gender and Cultural Studies. It’s a compulsory unit for all Honours, Masters and PhD students new to our Department, and it also takes some students from other higher degrees in the Arts Faculty. I’ve heard some talk that the unit might become part [...]

Guess work

‘Lovers are like detectives: they are trying to find something out that will make all the difference.’ — Adam Phillips, On Love Probably the least useful thing to do after getting married is to have to go back to work and put together a course reader for “Intimacy, Love & Friendship”. I haven’t changed the [...]

Why bother?

This semester I teach Arguing the Point: Research in Gender and Cultural Studies. It’s a graduate course for students writing a thesis for the first time and those new to our discipline. The classes are a mixture of themed discussion and practical workshops. A final “After 5″ hour focuses on research skills. Tonight I’m spending [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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