Changing Facts: Changing Minds; Changing Worlds.
A | B | C | D | E | | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | W | X | Y | Z |
A
Condorcet’s Brave New World: Revolutionary and Philosophical Visions of Europe in “The Influence of the American Revolution on Europe.”
Shama Adams
PhD, Media, Culture and Creative Arts, Curtin University.
The French philosophe Condorcet wrote in 1786: “it is not enough that the rights of man be written in the books of philosophers [...] the weak and ignorant must be able to read them in the example of a great people. America has given us this example.” Drawing on his pamphlet “The Influence of the American Revolution on Europe,” this paper will investigate Condorcet’s depiction of Europe as a collection of states in political crisis and social revolt, in contrast to America, which he represents as an exemplary state, capable of acting as a moderating and modernising force in European affairs. This paper will interrogate these representations and will argue that the Enlightenment’s progress towards achieving a Europe of nation states, civic equality and individual freedoms owes much to the spirit and consequences of revolution across the Atlantic, which preceded the French Revolution by fifteen years. This paper will use Condorcet’s pamphlet to explore the ways in which the very idea of America, with its political, social and economic transformations, came to represent a kind of laboratory or experiment that could not yet be reproduced in Europe but would eventually create a new order capable of changing and refashioning an old Europe in its own image.
Resisting the Change: The Politics of Alterity in Dickens’ Textual Depiction of Australia
Keyvan Allahyari
Master of Arts – English Literature University of Auckland.
Historically, the pre-discovery enchantment with the continent at the opposite generated its own representative frame which furtively disclosed its way through different texts, quasi-scientific and fictional, and subsequently, contributed to underpin a mythic construction of the Antipodes. Through his novelistic and journalistic endeavors, Charles Dickens (1812-1870) adds new items to the accumulative and selective tradition of the imaginary invention of the southern continent. These textual items function as complementing pieces for the discursive puzzle of ‘Australia’ and ‘the Australian’ from the Empire’s point of view. I will argue that Dickens’ picture of Australia echoes the tenets of the centuries-held discourse of Antipodeanism. Under the guise of an objective outlook, Dickens’ writing about the colony could hardly do anything but act as a working hegemonic impetus to ease the dissemination of imperialist ideas, hence the material domination of Australia. The power-directed aspect of these items, which are rewording oppositionality and emptiness of the land down under, remains hidden under a philanthropic veneer. Nevertheless, economic and spatial availability of Australia could not be justified in Dickens’ words, unless the core binarist system of representing the colony in relation to the metropolis is maintained.
The Problem with Chick Lit: Post-Feminism in Australian Literature
Rosslyn Almond
Master of Philosophy, Literature, Australian Catholic University (Melbourne).
This paper will examine an aspect of the changing significance of feminism in Australian literature since the cultural revolution that was the women’s liberation movement. While the influence of second-wave feminism is evident in much fiction-writing that was produced during the seventies, some more recent texts have evidently adopted the ideals of post-feminism. Because of the increasing popularity of post-feminism in the media and in creative fields such as literature, a critical examination of how post-feminism is expressed in Australian literature, specifically in the genre of chick lit, seems timely. I will examine how chick lit espouses post-feminist ideals, and why this new perspective on feminism is detrimental to how women ‘read’ women. I will argue that post-feminist texts promote both sexist and heterosexist ideals regarding women’s sexuality and stereotypical gender norms. I will be looking at short stories from Girl’s Night In: 10th Anniversary Edition, a collection consisting of short chick lit fiction. These stories will be juxtaposed with short second- and third-wave feminist texts and contemporary queer fiction by Fiona McGregor and Elizabeth Jolley to highlight the differences in the portrayal of women’s roles and sexualities.
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Vaclav Havel and the Power of the Powerless
Daniel Brennan
PhD, Philosophy, Bond University.
The former Czech President, prominent dissident, playwright and philosopher Vaclav Havel argues that an authentic life is a ‘life in truth.’ My paper will delve into the nature and characteristics of a ‘life in truth’ explaining that for Havel, a life in truth is a negative concept. Following on from his mentor, the Czech phenomenologist and author of the Charter 77 document, Jan Patocka, Havel sees Truth as inexplicable; but absolute. Any attempt to fix meaning, is doomed to nihilism. For Havel, the human condition is a pluralistic condition. It’s meaning, or truth, is in constant flux. Hence the task of thought, and of actions, is to reflect this pluralistic nature. Being authentic, or ‘living in truth’ is hence better understood as thinking or acting to reveal the ideological nature of fixed meanings, to affect political change that better reflects the pluralistic human. Change, or openness to change, is an essential feature of Havel’s thought, and my paper will explore how ‘change’ is linked to a ‘life in truth.’
Welfare in times of War: The Royal National Relief Committee in the Netherlands, 1914-1919
Anja Brok
PhD, History, University of Western Australia.
This paper explores the provision of welfare during the Great War in the Netherlands. Although this country remained neutral the nation mobilised for war and ‘neutrality’ did not equal ‘not involved’. The Netherlands was ‘a state in a world at war’ and very much affected by it. Immediately after the outbreak of war, a number of cities and towns spontaneously set up relief committees to ameliorate the impact of the war and the government established the Royal National Relief Committee to enhance unity and efficiency of their efforts. Amongst the tasks of the Committee featured the distribution of food, clothing and shoes, placing of orders with industry to boost employment, unemployment relief for workers who did not have insurance or were no longer entitled to benefits, and the general support of the 350 local relief committees. When the war finished in 1918, the Committee played a major role in demobilisation proceedings. Many measures were thought to be of a temporary nature but growing state intervention created a sense of entitlement and expectation that the government would look after its citizens in times of hardship and crisis, initiating a course towards the modern welfare state.
Where Is Art (Can Experiential Media Engage Children with Sensory Processing Disorders)?
Scott Brown
Bachelor of Digital Media (Honours), Interactive and Experiential Media, University of New South Wales (College of Fine Arts).
I don’t approach my own practice through the singular lens of art. So if I am not to define myself as an artist, how do I frame my methodology? Throughout the creative discourse of my work, I require the participation, feedback, engagement and aesthetic choice of others, which results in a blurring of the boundaries between author and audience. My own process explores emerging technologies and the role that interaction with these technologies has in creating psychophysiological experiences, but the question remains: should the resulting aesthetics of this practice ever be called art?
It is a question long asked of programmed creative expression; when designing interactive or experiential devices, artistic forms are often generated, but is this a true reflection of the author’s intent, or simply a bi-product of imaginative exploration of technology that we feel needs to be classified? Or is it instead the end user who invokes the aesthetics of the device through her own participation, decisions and bias that becomes the creator of a temporary digital object or experience? These questions can be discussed by observing the lifespan of an experiential work; the meeting places negotiated between author, object and audience when aesthetic agency potentially becomes the creation of art.
Presented alongside an observational case study in which I create interactive therapeutic devices for a child with Autistic Spectrum Disorder, I will question my own role in this process: whether I am the sole author of these devices; and ultimately who is responsible for aesthetic decisions within my work. The case study accompanying this paper will look at the merging worlds of art and technology, art as therapy, the role of the creator and the facilitation and impact of ephemeral art.
An Ethics of Some Substance: Deconstructing Hallucinogenic Prohibition.
Hayden Browning
Bachelor of Arts (Honours), Philosophy, University of Ballarat.
Current Australian regulations regarding the legality of the synthetic drug lysergic acid diethylamid (LSD) widely prohibit consumption of the hallucinogen, thus severely limiting the possibility for its use within research. Yet an increasing amount of evidence suggests this substance to have various potential benefits. As such, recent debate has surrounded the possibility of a legislative change regarding this issue, with arguments both for and against a prohibitive stance typically being founded upon utilitarian and rights-based principles. The current discourse grounds itself therefore upon calculative and Universalist foundations. Yet recent theorists of the post such as French philosopher Jacques Derrida claim such assumptions (i.e. universality and calculation) cannot be so easily made. Rather the possibility for additional contexts and unforeseen problematics must be taken into account, if we are to develop a progressively more just approach. I will argue current Australian legislation surrounding the use of LSD therefore remains problematic and hence, a change to a more just policy in relation to prohibition is required. Specifically, I will apply the ethics of Derrida as found within his work “Force of Law: The Mystical Foundation of Authority” (1992) to this issue, in order to demonstrate a need for reconsideration within context of the post.
Music and song as a narrative element in retelling Inanna and the Huluppu Tree.
Raelene Bruinsma
PhD, Humanities, Curtin University.
Bartleet and Ellis (2009) lament the under representation of music as an autoethnographic research method and outcome, observing that it is more often the subject than the result of research. This is, they argue, despite the many ways in which music making and autoethnography share goals. Both seek to move and engage an audience emotionally and intellectually, and to bring present the subjectivity of the researcher/composer. Music can also draw together diverse streams of knowledge in new ways. Thus, in autoethnography, as in practice-led research, creating the music becomes a method of inquiry, while the music created becomes a piece of research in its own right. In Restoring Inanna, my autoethnographic practice-led doctoral research project, I seek to retell some of the five thousand year old stories of the Sumerian goddess Inanna. By devising a series of one woman performances in which original songs are key narrative elements, I explore the ways in which the stories “speak” to contemporary audiences. In this presentation I will perform and ‘unpack’ a song from a retelling of Inanna and the Huluppu Tree earlier this year. In doing so I will demonstrate how music and song can be integral elements of the narrative process.
An anarchist experiment: Luigi Molinari and the Milanese Modern School, 1906-1918
Fausto Buttá
PhD, History, University Of Western Australia.
Education represents an essential aspect of anarchist thought. Libertarian pedagogy has emerged in several revolutionary contexts highlighting both the importance of individual freedom and the crucial role played by the community in one’s formative process. At the beginning of the twentieth century Milanese anarchists focused on creating a secular and rationalist educational system. Much of the credit for this long-term campaign goes to Luigi Molinari, an anarchist lawyer who dedicated most of his life to libertarian pedagogy through the institution of the Università Popolari and the constitution of a Modern School in Milan. Eventually, Molinari’s project of constituting a Modern School was successful. Not for long, though, as the outbreak of WWI wiped away this libertarian experiment. In analyzing this case study, this paper also contributes to elucidate some aspects of anarchist thought.
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Reconstructing the Past: writing the historical (science fiction) novel
Andrew Cameron
PhD, Creative Writing, Curtin University
The practice-based research I am undertaking involves writing a novel that explores how paradigm shifts between science and religion are represented in the genre of science fiction (SF). I have chosen to write this novel as a series of interlinked short stories, with each story being a pastiche of the type of SF written between 1600 and today. It is my aim that the narrative will demonstrate how these paradigm shifts have encouraged the type of speculation that is necessary to a science-fictional mode of literature. Whilst each story must function as historical pastiche, reflecting the style and concerns of different periods, they must also maintain the flow of narrative and remain engaging to a modern audience. This presentation will chart my methodological approach to writing each story and examine the creative process involved in my project. It will explore how I found inspiration in the literature, art and music of different historical periods. My synthesis of fact and (science) fiction will demonstrate the inextricable relationship between research and creative production.
Immersion.
Russya Connor
PhD, Performing arts, Edith Cowan University (WAAPA).
There are different meanings of immersion: a descent into liquid (like the ocean), an absorption in activity (like diving), and the all-encompassing entry of the self into a cultural medium (like theatre). I examine multiple ways how the play between different gravitational states (submerged or suspended) change our perception and can be translated onto the stage as part of a practice as research PhD at WAAPA. It's a known fact that training changes an individual, but can these changes be translated in a theatrical, poetic expressivity? Underwater, sensations in our everyday live are changed, inverted or removed. With training the diver adapts to the new environment within the physiological limits imposed by it. Just having the knowledge of what our body is capable of, can be a huge confidence booster. Adapting to the rules of the particular existence (whether it’s a performance space or the underwater world) differs in its content, but not in the adaptation process. My presentation aims at sharing those changes that happen within this environment, the need for certain skills and knowledge about the specifics of this world to find an efficiency and ease, and an attempt to translate them into an artistic interpretation.
Postcard rack and Couch – an invitation to explore postcards as a metaphor for remembered places.
Robyn Creagh
PhD, Built Environment, Curtin University.
This installation invites conference participants to explore the fragmentary memories of places through selecting, writing, sending, and receiving postcards. The work consists of a series of couches, postcard racks, artist’s postcards, pens, post-boxes, and explanatory texts. I invite participants to select postcards from the rack, to keep as many as they choose, and to write and post any that remind them of places from their past or present. On the second day of the conference I will redistribute postcards so that each receives a postcard from someone else.
The focus of this installation is the processes of collecting and inhabiting fragments of distant places through memory and imagination. Borrowing the approach of creative practice led enquiry the anticipated outcome of this work is a further research paper, a write-up which reflects on the process of making the work and its public reception. Of particular interest is the efficacy of translation and engagement with the objects and metaphor. The outcomes will guide further production and enquiry of my doctoral thesis into the role of fragmentary knowledge of distant places within the everyday experience of Perth.
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Alternative approaches to stage management in Bali
Sue Fenty Studham
Master of Arts, Creative Arts, Edith Cowan University (WAAPA).
The first state of the art ‘mega-theatre’ opened in Bali in 2010 with the production of a large-scale epic show. This paper explores approaches to stage management in the context of this intercultural production. Can an altered style of traditional theatre bring a transformation in the method in which a production is stage managed?
In this instance, local stage managers were employed and trained both on the job and through an intensive one-month program. The production, a Balinese legend with a cast of more than 150 Balinese artists and a menagerie of animals was designed and directed by an international team. At the same time, the production’s staging techniques draw on technologies of western influence.
As a teacher of the craft as well as a practitioner, I would like to discuss the notion of synthesizing techniques to best suit a production. Can there be a combining of stage management approaches that respects both cultures’ interpretations of the role of the stage manager? This case study will examine the evolution of a stage manager in Bali.
The Nothingness at the Heart of Language: Anxiety and Textual Identity in Fiction
Steven James Finch
PhD, Communication and Cultural Studies, Curtin University.
In what ways can a fictional narrative explore the effect of hereditary sin on subjectivity after the death of God? Using Kierkegaard’s analysis of hereditary sin, which focuses on the ‘anxiety’ that one feels when first becoming aware of the possibility of committing sin, I explore this question through a creative production and an exegesis. Fenves describes this state of anxiety as pre-subjective: ‘it [anxiety] points to ‘itself’ before the self, as the mind-body relation, is posited; it speaks of ‘itself’ when the self of which it would speak is absent’ (79). The possibility of one’s actions and language (ie. speaking or communicating) comes before the formation of the subject.
My creative production, ‘also/besides’, takes place in an alternate universe where time has become a commodity: people have discovered how to manipulate time-space, and are selling or renting fractions of it. I will be employing a dialogic and non-linear narrative to explore what happens to human subjectivity and spirit when given absolute possibility, when past realities and its inhabitants become entertainment/art objects – the posthumously colonised and disabled. What happens when such sin is not only possible but constructed as enviable and pleasurable.
Devising a new approach to ethnographic methodological research: the AI – SAL model.
Troy Fuller, Dr Peter Gall and Ms Nurdan Colleran
PhD, Business, University of Notre Dame Australia.
Managers in 21st century organisations are often faced with conflicting and problematic demands with ever decreasing timeframes. This poster provides a ‘key’ to maximise an organisation’s ability to attract, retain and reward employees and to avoid a constant cycle of recruitment and selection.
Two existing theories and processes, Appreciative Inquiry (Cooperrider 1980) and Salutogenesis (Antonovsky 1987), have been used in this investigation. Both emphasise strength rather than weakness and proactivity rather than reaction to circumstance. Appreciative Inquiry examines what can be learnt and Salutogenesis tests what is working well. A common dimension, ‘Meaningfulness’, has been used to develop a combined model for future research in organisations. Potentially, the model can help employees to be more confident of a long term career and organisations to minimise the loss of good people. It is hoped that the model will have wide application in contemporary situations including business improvement, employee well-being and organisational development.
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Public Space, Social or Physical Matter?
Marjan Hajjari
PhD, Urban Design, University of Melbourne.
Urban public spaces are prerequisite for social gathering and interaction between differences (different groups and different ideas) and play significant role for enhancing diversity in societies. Urban public spaces of Tehran, capital of Iran, based on local and global culture, are the main domain for struggling between different groups in term of age, gender and class and different ideas comprising Islamic and modern beliefs. Nevertheless, these cultures have different implication on various sectors of the city. South parts of the city accommodated poor and marginalised people, while as the north represented the lifestyle of rich and upper middle class Tehranis.
This paper aims to explore how spatial structure of urban public spaces influences on the meaning of these places. Based on a research in north and south of Tehran, this paper reveals how people in these two different cultural contexts perceive urban public spaces in their everyday life.
The main themes of this paper are emerged through the content analysis of the semi-structured interviews with 35 people living in north and south of Tehran. All the participants were aged 18-60 in both genders.
People’s perception in these two contexts is mainly influenced by the social structure of the place rather than the physical aspects. This paper argues that the similar built environment has dissimilar meaning and role in different social and cultural context.
Re-visioned spaces: (un)covering the feminine in Australian social realism
Grady Clare Hancock
PhD, School of Communication and Creative Arts (Film Studies), Deakin University.
Cinematically, social realism has remained the key mode of expression in presenting oppositional viewpoints to mainstream film and the dominant status quo. Often aligned with revolutionary rather than reformist rhetoric, social realism’s overarching intent remains to give voice to those on the margins of society, and to enact social change through such cognizance. This is no less true of Australia’s own locally nuanced social realist films.
Early Australian social realism was largely preoccupied with the working/underclass and disaffected male character and diegesis. Representation of female characters, issues and themes within these films were often presented as secondary, restricted within the gendered domestic spaces of the suburban and the home. With the advent of distinct formal and diegetic evolutions in contemporary Australian social realist filmmaking over the past decade, there can be identified a small, yet significant, cycle of films that are presenting a re-visioning of those domestic spaces and the feminine within. This literal re-visioning gives new range and voice to a feminine once stifled by traditional domestic ideology inherent in early Australian social realist film, and provides variance from which the marginal feminine voice can too be heard through social realism - the cinematic conduit of change.
The Larrikin Carnivalesque: Exploring Traditions of Subversion and Grotesque in Australian Comedy
Rebecca Louise Higgie
PhD, Communication and Cultural Studies, Curtin University.
In his 2007 lecture to The Sydney Institute, Tony Moore described The Chaser, The Glasshouse and the Barry McKenzie films as larrikin carnivalesque. Here the word “larrikin” signals a crude and cheeky Australian rejection of authority, while “carnivalesque” implies an added element of excess, theatrics and the grotesque. While Moore uses Bakhtin’s notion of the carnival to explore Australian bohemianism and the aesthetics of Barry McKenzie, the term “larrikin carnivalesque” has yet to be expanded in great depth. From the early days of television with Graham Kennedy to the recent work of Chris Lilley in Angry Boys, the larrikin carnivalesque has a long tradition in Australian humour. This paper takes the larrikin carnivalesque and expands its definition within Bakhtinian theory, providing a framework that explores the aesthetic and rhetorical underpinnings of the particularly grotesque, crude and anti-authoritarian larrikin style of Australian comedy.
Wipe Your Boots at the Door: the Global Soul returning home
Kathryn Hummel
PhD Social Sciences, Communication, International Studies and Languages, University of South Australia.
When someone leaves home then comes back again, what shifts—the person or the place? Wipe Your Boots at the Door is a photographic prose-poem that explores the tragicomic issues facing the traveller who, after a physical and spiritual absence, returns to a designated place of belonging in a world where home is “nowhere and everywhere” (Iyer 1988 24). For a person between literal and figurative locations, returning means confronting a multitude of changes—to how one defines home and roots, to one’s identity, to what exactly drives one away and/or brings one back. According to Ha Jin, going home “involves arrival more than return” but also involves making sense of the individual’s role in the context of such change (2008 84). Drawing on art, literature and pop culture (Brett 1997; Hage 2008; Walker 1984; Rogers 1999), as well as the author’s own experiences of coming (from Australia) and going (to anywhere but here), Wipe Your Boots at the Door inserts “a break into the fixed norms” of traditional narratives and emphasises the heterogeneity of representation (Minh-ha 1992 138; Mitchell 1987). By encouraging deconstructive ways of reading text and images, the piece explores change as both subject and praxis.
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Changing Directorial Practice: ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ in performance and somatic dramaturgy.
Teresa Izzard
PhD, Performance Studies, Curtin University.
Laban Movement Analysis and Bartenieff Fundamentals (LMA/BF) are situated within the field of Somatics, focusing on the ‘experienced’ body instead of the ‘objectified’ body. Somatic modalities are already being applied to performer training and, increasingly, to the creation of performance work, predominantly in dance. As a director, my interest lies in the application of a somatic framework to the creation of contemporary theatre work, and as a researcher, I am focused on analysing and articulating the results of this application.
The desire for an in-depth understanding of body movement within my own directorial practice led me to become a Laban / Bartenieff Certified Movement Analyst. Developing this training further, my practice-led doctorate explores how theatre direction and movement education intersect and augment each other.
This paper focuses on the changing nature of the practice of ‘somatic dramaturgy’ as an original adaptation of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story The Yellow Wallpaper is rehearsed for a season at The Blue Theatre, Perth. Through descriptive and filmed examples I will share some of the practical processes we employed in the rehearsal room and their performative results, with an aim to demonstrate how this approach is changing my approach to creating contemporary theatre.
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Performative Spaces: New ways of looking at the Interior.
Hami James
PhD, Interior Architecture, Curtin University.
A performative shift is occurring in the way interior space is understood affecting not only space itself, but also notions of body, culture and the experience and performance of everyday life thus challenging preconceived notions of the condition of interiors and our sense of interiority. This preconceived condition, ‘generally conceived of as one of frames and enclosure – a container condition which is static, defined by boundary conditions and a pre-existing void to be filled’, is being contested by notions of process, performance, and temporality.
A cross-fertilisation of ideas is occurring between usually disparate fields of interior architecture, performance, theatre, drama, design, scenography and spatial design. This seeding of ideas in disparate fields is offering new theories and new ways of looking at the everyday. In the following paper I explore how performance and ritual theories are shifting the way the domestic interior is understood, through Arnold Van Gennep’s rite of passage theory, Victor Turner’s theory of liminality, and Erving Goffman’s theatrical metaphor. Through these theories I seek to shift preconceived ideas of interiors as static, to interiors that are encountered and experienced through ritual processes, sequences and performative events, thus exploring notions of event, bodily movement, fleeting, ephemeral temporal acts of occupation, and transformative performances through thresholds, transitory and liminal spaces. Through an interrogation of the ‘liminal’ I explore notions of the body as being and becoming, and through Heideggerian concepts I explore how bodily states are constantly changing and in flux. The domestic interior is no longer perceived as an assemblage of rooms but rather space is an event where the performative “flow” of rituals is in process.
The outcome is a re-shifting and re-positioning of the domestic interior by understanding space, and the potential for people to connect to space, through the performance of rituals. This paper proposes that domestic interior spaces are performative spaces, sites for dramaturgical experiences that go beyond traditional notions of the ‘theatrical as entertainment’ and intersect with the bodily, the experiential and the transformational.
The role of information professionals in the changing world of geoscience data management
Vanessa Johnson
Master of Information, Information Studies, Curtin University.
Geoscientific data comes in a wide variety of forms, from geological specimens, hardcopy maps and field notebooks, through to digital 3D models. Geoscientific data is essential for scientific investigation, managing geological hazards, land use evaluation and classification, civil engineering projects, formulating government resource policy and efficient exploitation of natural resources. Efficient access to this data is vital for effective decision making.
Information professionals such as librarians, archivists and records managers have a long-standing tradition of preserving and providing access to information. This study explores how information professionals are adapting to the changes technology has wrought on the world of geoscience data management. The project examines the role of information professionals in geoscience data management across the corporate, government and academic sectors in Western Australia. The research investigates the types of geoscience data being managed, who is managing it, how it is being managed and the skills needed to meet the challenges of geoscience data management.
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Confronting the new totalitarian threat: Hussein’s Iraq as the descendent of European fascism
Thomas J. Kehoe
PhD, International Relations History, University of Melbourne.
In the escalation towards the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, key members of the Bush administration drew on a myriad of historical analogies from World War Two that aimed to demonize Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in the minds of the public and justify pre-emptive war. Hussein was likened to Hitler. Diplomacy was cast as appeasement. The Baathist State became the new instantiation of totalitarian threat. Conquest in the hope of preventing greater war in the future became the moral logic underpinning the focus on weapons of mass destruction (WMD), Baathist war crimes of the 1990s and Iraq’s links with terrorism.
Many observers discount the administration’s comparisons between Iraq and Nazi Germany as little more than propaganda fear mongering. Yet, the Bush administration’s, and by extension the Coalition Provisional Authority’s (CPA), attempt to replicate reconstruction programs from post-war Germany point to the possibility that the historical analogies employed in support of the invasion were not merely rhetorical devices aimed at generating public enthusiasm for war, but the voicing of true perceptions, beliefs and ideological commitments.
This presentation aims to examine the Bush administration’s perceptions of Iraq as a threat that superseded all others in the post-9/11 era of the War on Terror. More specifically, it aims to address the question of why the Iraqi threat was believed to be greater than the other “Axis of Evil” states, or international rivals, requiring immediate war to end it?
Green building on our beaches
Thor Kerr
PhD, Media, Culture and Creative Arts, Curtin University.
The rise of the Greens party as the dominant force in Fremantle’s institutional politics from late 2008 through 2009 relied partly on voters identifying with the people of ‘our beaches’, as indicated in texts around a ‘sustainable’ property development proposed for a seabed site off Fremantle, Western Australia. This movement can be understood in terms of Ernesto Laclau’s populist reason: discursive subjects unified themselves through identification with the people of ‘our beaches’ while constructing an internal frontier dividing society into those for ‘our beaches’ and those against. Incidences of ‘our beaches’ in media texts containing representations of ecological threats and the North Port Quay property development coincided with the state election in 2008, the Fremantle by-election in 2009 and mayoral election in 2009. The transfer of important political positions to Greens members in this former Labor-party stronghold through these elections indicated a radical change had occurred in institutional politics, but it did not necessitate radical positions being taken by the Greens party candidates. Rather, the texts indicated the emergence of a conservative populist movement resisting radical change, emanating from capital concentrated in the hands of coastal property developers.
Trauma, Travel and the Transformative: Liminal Encounters with the ‘Other’
Laura Tanja King
Master of Creative Arts, Creative Non-Fiction (Travel) Writing, Curtin University.
Emerson proclaimed that “travelling is a fool’s paradise” because he felt that he remained the same person, whether here or there—“though we travel the world to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us, or we find it not”. By contrast, Thoreau believed that travel could deeply and permanently transform our way of being. According to Mark Jenkins, travel forces firsthand encounters with the world “the way it is, not the way you imagine it” and compels you to “grapple with the limitless kindness and bottomless cruelty of humankind—and perhaps realise that you yourself are capable of both. This [may] change you.”
Travel literature through the ages has often considered the affective transformation of ‘self’ via encounters with the ‘other’. As has philosophy and psychology. Yet the connection between these disciplines on the matter remains largely unexplored—in particular, the fact that the encounter is a liminal experience; that is, it occurs across a sensorial threshold. The fundamental dilemma of travel, as to whether to embrace a new worldview following our encounter with the ‘other’, may invoke primal psychological trauma. This research explores how creative non-fiction travel narratives question the liminal and transformative encounters with the ‘other’.
Happiness in Human Rights: Changing Hearts and Minds for Social Progress
Laura Kittel
PhD, Human Rights Education, Curtin University.
British Economist John Maynard Keynes claimed in 1945-1946 that “the day is not far off when the economic problem will take the back seat where it belongs, and the arena of the heart and the head will be occupied or reoccupied, by our real problems—the problems of life and of human relations, of creation and behaviour and religion.” Yet, in the year 2011, discussion of one of the real issues of life - happiness - is being shaped by economists, as with the discovery of the “happiness gene” by researchers at the London School of Economics. Heart and mind are still preoccupied with economics, hindering our ability to discern the relationship between our innate desire for happiness and the impact we have on society. Means that capitalize on personal happiness are emphasized at the expense of collective well-being. A human rights perspective on happiness will be explored to resolve this issue. Hermeneutical investigation from the field of religious studies will enable us to ascertain the meaning of happiness and its significance for the world today, contributing to the establishment of a new understanding of happiness: one that engages the heart in changing minds for the betterment of the world.
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Changing “Sex”, Changing Minds: Technology, “Maleness” and FTM Bodies.
Jo Latham
PhD, Cultural Studies, The University Of Melbourne.
How do technologies affect notions of “sex”? Ftm (“female-to-male”) transgender bodies continue to defy expectations of “sex”. Available surgical interventions are limited in terms of possible outcomes for those seeking sex reassignment surgery (SRS) to achieve a bodily “maleness”. The result of which is that ftm people embody “sex” in different and obscure ways. This is one way in which ftm and mtf (“male-to-female”) experiences differ; while mtf genital surgeries can construct a vagina, ftm genital surgeries tend to create genitals which differ significantly from “biological male sex.” This technological restraint in no small way affects ways of thinking: about embodiment, maleness and masculinity, and gender more generally for ftm people and those who sexually interact with them.
Often considered as an “incomplete” or “failed” maleness (because of penile absence), ftm bodies have been taboo even in disciplines they are embedded within, such as clinical psychiatry, plastic surgery, or indeed transgender studies itself. Recent ftm cultural productions, such as XX Boys (France), Original Plumbing (USA) and DUDE (Australia), attempt to rectify this omission, explicitly embracing ftm bodies as just that: ftm bodies.
(D)evolving? The Nature of Nature in Alberta’s North.
Kristen Liesch
Master of Arts, English, University of Auckland.
New Zealand has its edenic wilderness (100% Pure), Australia its rugged outback, Canada its immense diversity. Nature features prominently in the collective identity, if not the tourism mottos, of most nations. Our imperative to manage and preserve natural spaces has intensified in recent decades. However, our desire to safeguard Nature is in constant competition with our demand for resources. Exploitation of natural resources is a process that occurs largely beyond the scope of most urban dwellers. Logging takes places in a forest somewhere, bottom-trawling happens out in the ocean somewhere, and open-pit mines are dug in the desert somewhere. Geographically remote, these industries go about their business in the back-country of the social imaginary. The face of Nature is, nevertheless, transformed by our insatiable appetite for its resources. But what happens once industry has exhausted the profitability of a once-natural space? If plant life sprouts and animals return, does that space become Nature again? Does it matter if post-industrial Nature does not resemble pre-industrial Nature? Would we recognize the difference? My paper explores our complex relationship with Nature—not “Nature in the familiar sense of that which precedes development,” but Nature reclaimed.
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Mirror, Mirror on the wall: how self-reflective practice can contribute to the architectural design process
Lara Mackintosh
PhD, Architecture, Curtin University.
Current architectural practice has contributed to our changing world. To mitigate and adapt to these changes the architectural profession must in turn change their approach to design, and to reconsider their responsibilities. Despite recent technological advances in architectural design there is little evidence of the change in attitude amongst architecture students and practitioners toward embracing sustainable design.
This paper will discuss an investigation into the opportunity to promote change towards environmental architecture and lifestyle through a transformative learning experience. Architectural students undertaking their final semester of the Bachelor program at Curtin University will be asked to reflect upon everyday activities, personal attitudes, and design approach and process through a number of critical reflective exercises. These reflections will be used to determine a method of qualitative interpretation of changes in lifestyle, behaviour and approach to sustainable design, as a means of developing a model of transformative learning. This study builds on previous investigations into models of architectural education that have determined that in order for the learning experience to be transformative, there must be opportunities for self-awareness of learning and change. It is a part of a larger research project investigating the role of architectural education in long term sustainable behaviour.
Changing Australian Attitudes Towards Sunday and Easter – The Law and Television Examined
Josip Matesic
PhD, History, University of Wollongong.
Economics and religion interact. How they interact, and how our worlds and minds change as a result is subject to movement. These shifts are evident in the history of legislation and television broadcasts. Changes can be seen in the legal system such as those relating to religiously influenced laws on social and commercial restrictions on Sundays in Australia during the twentieth century. Viewing Easter television programming over time reveals a decline in religious programming. Both the law and television give insight into what people think about a topic – in this case religion. By documenting how the law has changed, it is possible to infer how attitudes have changed on such cultural markers as the Sabbath; documenting special television broadcasting at certain times of the year makes it possible to infer how society views sacredness. These documentations show shifts in the assumptions and perceptions of a people, as they are a material record of the changing immaterial mind or consciousness of society. At various moments, economic or financial imperatives have influenced these histories. The interaction between economics and religion is important in explaining the changed minds and worlds of Australia in the twentieth century.
The changing facts that have changed the mindset on poverty & development issues
Josiyas (Joe) Mbuzi
PhD, Development Studies/International Community Development, Griffith University.
“When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” is a quote attributed to the British economist, John Maynard Keynes. Also attributed to Keynes in the First Annual Report of the Arts Council 1945-1946 is that “the day is not far off when the economic problem will take the back seat where it belongs, and the arena of the heart and the head will be occupied or reoccupied, by our real problems- the problems of life and of human relations and behaviour and religion”.
Nowhere else does one find a better illustration of economics taking ‘the back seat” than in the issues related to poverty and development. The dominance of economics, or economic growth, as a yardstick for 'development', which may have been the case previously, no longer applies in the contemporary times.
This paper traces the demise of economics in the issues of poverty and development, tracing the changing mind-set over a 30-year period, based on the narrative and history of the World Bank’s World Development Report publications, starting from 1978 to 2008, exemplifying the reality that changing ideas and meanings, do change minds, and ultimately, do change the world views.
ETIQUETTE: Where Is The Social Inclusiveness In W.A. Theatre?
Michael Mccall
PhD, Performing Arts, Edith Cowan University (WAAPA).
What if a social group perceives that they are being unfairly represented in the cultural landscape? Where does that leave a project, for example, in the theatre?
This presentation proposes to investigate alternative production methods and how these might be implemented in relation to this question. The social realist theatre making process is defined by various components connected to Stanislavskian principles. It could be argued that this constricts the evolution of creative works in what appears as an inflexible framework. Debatably, this can be viewed as restrictive upon innovative changes in theatrical practice, derived from a misunderstanding of how the subversive marriage between reality and imagination works.
The stories of the recently arrived African community are unique within W.A.’s cultural spaces, but to a great degree neglected. The spaces where their voice can be heard are few and the dialogues between young African migrants and the larger community are arguably fewer. Questions arising for theatre practitioners - such as the dilemma of propriety in using non-professional over professional performers due to a lack of trained African performers – to reveal these stories. This provides material to be unpacked if radical change in approach to social inclusiveness in theatre production is viable. This presentation questions cultural sensitivities and addresses reactionary perspectives to challenge perceived best practices.
Reinventing an Icon: The Lone Ranger in the 1950s
Nicholas William Moll
PhD, Popular Culture, University of Ballarat.
Beginning as a radio series in 1933, enshrined for its television incarnation and existing today as a comic book series, The Lone Ranger franchise has enjoyed countless changes. It is during the 1950s that many of these changes coincide, with The Lone Ranger simultaneously seeing production in comic books, novels, film, radio and television. Within this grand plethora of media one change occurs which can be viewed as central to the franchise’s longevity; the shift from radio to television. Naturally, this coincides with the general shift in home consumption practices towards television within the United States.
Histories of entertainment and media generally position the 1950s as a time of transition for which The Lone Ranger acts as touchstone. Here we note that within the aforementioned print media depictions of the Ranger himself soon change to match that of television. Likewise, the films of this era see television’s Clayton Moore and Jay Silverheels reprise their roles as the Lone Ranger and Tonto respectively. This paper argues television reinvented an iconic character at a time of its immense popularity. From this perspective television can be seen to displace radio, undertaking a shift from peripheral to central position within The Lone Ranger franchise.
The Impact of Microfinance on the Poor, Very Poor and Destitute in Rural Bangladesh: A Review of Some Existing Empirical Research
Shaheena Muniruzzaman
PhD, Economics, University of Wollongong.
In recent years, academics, development researchers, social investigators and policy makers have been paying attention to the question of why ‘the poorest of the poor’ are excluded from microfinance institutions. The purpose of this paper is to review existing empirical research on the impact of microfinance on the poor, very poor and destitute in rural Bangladesh, with a special focus on the destitute. Another purpose is to illustrate the fact that if the microfinance programs’ primary goal is to help the poorest of the poor then it is irrational not to include the destitute group, those most in need of assistance in rural societies including Bangladesh. Therefore, this paper examines how the group most in need of assistance get assistance from the microfinance institutes, other non-government and government institutes and even from individuals, to eradicate poverty from their lives permanently by building up their own income generating assets gradually. Furthermore, the existing literature reveals that the microfinance programs reach the poor successfully, reach the very poor less successfully, but the destitute remain excluded.
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Original minds in Sharav’s artworks
Ochirbat Naidansuren
PhD, Design and Art, Curtin University.
Currently, discussions in Mongolian history studies and public understandings of their history, particularly in modern art in the democratic stage of the People’s Revolution (1392-1940) have dramatically changed due to scholarly revealed new facts that were hidden under Socialist regime.
This presentation will examine personal attitude of Mongolian prominent artist Baldoogin Sharav’s artworks. I will explore ways in which Sharav’s famous leaflets, Religious Education and Public Faith and Greedy Monk’s Mouth is Closed, depicted a Buddhist monk swallowing a procession of nomads. I will suggest that a relationship exists between the revolutionary ideology of that time and some adverse characteristics of manggus in ancient Mongolian mythology. The Manggus is mythical monster ready to swallow everything. Sharav’s leaflets appear to be inspired by the ancient Mongolian metaphoric concept of swallowing. He parodied Soviet Russian political occupation as swallowing Mongols religious beliefs and traditional practices. This presentation offers a new analytical paradigm for understanding the development of Mongolian contemporary art and the object of study of postmodernism.
New Varieties Of English: A Failure Of The Education System Or A Manifestation Of New Socio-Cultural Contexts?
Bich H. N. Nguyen
PhD, Education, Curtin University.
The diverse forms and functions of world Englishes on the different continents have triggered substantial research which is investigating the evolving socio-cultural characteristics of the English language. However, in that context of world Englishes, there are people who believe that the emergence of multiple Englishes inevitably leads to non-communication and miscommunication. Some writers regard the localised varieties of English as a manifestation of slipshod, incorrect English usage - as the consequences of a failed local education system. In an effort to change that point of view, this paper argues for the validity of indigenised Englishes. The paper will demonstrate that the authority to determine what is accepted as Standard English no longer resides with ‘native’ speakers, especially within the context of globalisation and the complex sociolinguistic realities of multilingual societies. This paper will also call for a pluricentric acceptance of world Englishes by highlighting some of the features of the communication done in English within the Vietnamese business community to illustrate that a localised variety evolves linguistically and pragmatically to meet new functional demands in the new cultural and situational contexts. The paper will conclude that indigenised Englishes cannot be considered a collection of mistakes, as their emergence is a consequence of contact between languages and cultures.
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Architectural Concepts for Socio-cultural Islamic Centres in the West: Challenges and Opportunities in a Changing World
Mona A. Omar
PhD Architecture, Built Environment, Curtin University.
The world today witnesses significant revolutions across the Arab and Muslim world, which strive for democracy, freedom and reforms. These civilised and ‘mostly’ peaceful revolutions are shifting Western minds about “Arab” and “Muslim” stereotypes and changing the negative image about Islam and Muslims in the West.
Nevertheless, although Muslims have lived in the West for many decades, they still face many challenges and exclusion from socio-cultural and recreational activities sometimes not inclusive for people from different cultural backgrounds.
In addition, Muslims’ cultural and religious obligations may limit their participation at a range of public venues. These kinds of limitations and exclusions highlight the need for community centres that cater for Muslims special requirements.
This research paper will discuss challenges that face Muslims in the West and will explore the opportunities for social inclusion and cross-cultural participation through built environment development. This paper aims to answer questions about the main architectural concepts and design criteria required to develop a functional socio-cultural Islamic centre.
The research methodology will use comparative analysis for selected Islamic centres from Australia, Europe and America, as case studies, to investigate and analyse their activities, architectural plans, functions and forms.
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Multiple intelligences and the therapeutic alliance: Changing views of theory and practice in counselling.
Mark Pearson
PhD, Arts & Sciences – Counselling, University of Notre Dame, Fremantle.
How many ways do counselling clients reflect and communicate? How many ways can counsellors respond to client needs? Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences (MI) has only recently been applied to the field of counselling. This presentation highlights the contribution MI theory and practice can make to developing the therapeutic alliance, to supporting a culture of client feedback, to enhancing counsellor flexibility, and to the overall effectiveness of therapy.
The therapeutic alliance has been shown to contribute significantly to positive outcomes from counselling. Recent research highlights the positive impact from modifying psychological treatment in response to client needs and interests. Understanding clients’ preferred intelligences enhances counsellors’ ability to tailor treatment. This presentation argues that counsellors and their clients could experience increases in the therapeutic alliance, in feedback and the effectiveness of the therapeutic process as a result of using MI theory and practice, offered in the form of expressive therapies. Possible new foundations for eclecticism, new directions for counsellor training and enhancement of practice are discussed.
The Production of the Gendered Subject through Disciplinary Techniques: a Preface to Transgression
Cassie Pedersen
Bachelor of Arts (Honours), Philosophy, University of Ballarat.
Poststructuralist thought has displaced the primacy of the subject in order to examine the complex relations of power through which, it is argued, the subject is produced. Michel Foucault re-defines ‘power’ as a relational and equivocal device that both traverses and produces subjectivity. Foucault’s conception of ‘disciplinary power’ functions through an omnipresent surveillance of bodies that produces subjects in accordance with social norms. In order to examine the impact of such social norms upon the production of gendered subjects, this paper will conduct a queer examination of disciplinary power through the utilisation of Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity. This paper will establish that although the subject is produced through disciplinary techniques of power, there is reciprocity between the subject and their enactment of gender norms. The subject actualises gender norms through their embodiment and performative signification which subsequently helps these norms to proliferate. Thus, acts of transgression are available to the gendered subject through the ‘breaking down’ of existing norms, in order to make way for a changing acceptance of other intelligible modes of subjectivity that lie outside of constraining social norms.
Live Animal Export, Humane Slaughter, and the Rise of Animal Rights
Nick Pendergrast
PhD, Sociology, Curtin University.
There has recently been widespread public outrage at the treatment of animals in Indonesian slaughterhouses, with calls for the Australian government to ban live export gaining momentum. Discussions about the footage of the Indonesian slaughterhouses and the live export issue have generally taken place within the animal welfare paradigm, which sees animal slaughter as acceptable, but attempts to ensure this is done as humanely as possible. The idea that we have humane slaughter in Australia has rarely been challenged.
The animal rights position, which rejects the slaughter of other animals, regardless of how “humane,” is worlds away from the welfare position. This rights position has generally been left out of the mainstream discourse on our obligations to other animals. This neglect of animal rights in the mainstream is beginning to change, with arguments promoting animal rights increasingly entering the mainstream media and consciousness. This mainstreaming of animal rights has been possible due to the Internet providing a space where this alternative approach can be discussed. As more alternative websites promoting animal rights have gained prominence online, their ideas and others promoting animal rights are increasingly being heard in more mainstream sources that had neglected animal rights in the past.
He’s a changed man…
Shane Pike
MA – Creative Arts, Theatre – Directing, Edith Cowan University (WAAPA).
An increasing number of health professionals, academics and social commentators are sending the same message – Australian men are in crisis. A message supported by rises in alcoholism, depression, suicide and crime amongst men in Australia. It is clear – something needs to change.
Through the analysis of Australian theatre and its male characters over the years, it is possible to track changes in masculinity and issues concerned with male identity. The bushman characters of the 1800s, the breakdown of rural masculinities in 1950s plays, Williamson’s bullies of the 70s, the gay characters of the 90s and the alcoholic characters of the twenty-tens demonstrate issues associated with being a man throughout the post-colonial history of Australia. How do these characters demonstrate issues of masculinity, culminating in the purported crisis of today?
Theatre is not only useful to chart past changes in masculine identity, but may also be used to change current concepts of masculinity, encourage different – ethnic, indigenous and non-heterosexual – images of masculinity to be more widely accepted and persuade society to stop viewing alcoholism, depression and crime as issues in themselves, but as symptoms of a greater concern: a crisis of masculinity based in issues associated with male identity.
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The Changing Other and Self: Footbinding, China, and the West, 1300-19oo
He Qi
Master of Arts, English Language and Literature, National University of Singapore.
Footbinding, as a unique characteristic of China and its people, had always served as the perpetual symbol of otherness in Western narration of the Chinese Other. From the Franciscan friar Odoric of Pordenone in the fourteenth century to missionaries, diplomats, and travelers in the twentieth century, Westerners who had been to China never failed to notice and account on this practice. However, the meaning of footbinding changed dramatically from 1300 to 1900. It was originally viewed as a symbol of beauty, respect, and civility. However, it became a mark of ugliness, cruelty, and backwardness in Westerners’ eyes in the 1900s. With an analysis of Western discourse on footbinding, this paper is going to argue that footbinding served as an allegory of China in Westerners’ mind. Western interpretations of footbinding fluctuated with Western images of China, which changed from being the civilized and admirable Other to be the barbaric and despised one. However, essentially, the changing Western interpretations of footbinding were a reflection of the shifting power relation between the West and China, and echoed with the needs of the rising West in the discovery of the world and the representation of the West itself.
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Pamela Anderson: Adapting to Change and Changing the World, One Tweet at a Time.
Jackie Raphael
PhD, Creative Advertising and Design, Curtin University.
Hollywood has made a global impact on consumption and advertising since its existence in the early 20th century, but in the past 5 years, the Internet has transformed celebrity culture to a new realm. The aim of this paper is to examine the significant role that Web 2.0 has played in changing the celebrity industry and advertising industry.
This paper will be based on online data collection from social networking sites and a case study of Pamela Anderson, focusing on her endorsement contracts and her online interaction with fans. From this it will be established that Web 2.0 has transformed celebrity-fan interaction, as well as, the consumer-advertiser communication, affecting the global market and proving that change in mass media is inevitable as are the changes that result from it. Thus, it will be concluded that for celebrities to stay current and maintain their global status they must adapt to the changes in their industry.
'There's all this noise about climate change': using Conventionalized Expressions in discourse modes
Helen Renwick
PhD, Linguistics, University of Western Australia.
This presentation draws on ongoing PhD research in the Linguistics Discipline at the University of Western Australia. The work focuses on the way conventionalized expressions – prefabricated or semi-prefabricated groups of words known to significant numbers of a language community – are used in different discourse modes, linguistically defined (Smith 2003). The current focus of attention is Argument Mode, in which a text "brings something to the attention of the reader, makes a claim, comment, or argument and supports it in some way" (ibid., 33).
Writers operating in Argument Mode choose carefully regarding points of access to the dialogic space, then move readers around that dialogic space and to other parts of related and even, at times, unrelated spaces. Conventionalized expressions play a significant part in that progression. They also play a part in marking the writer's engagement in the ongoing colloquy (Martin & White 2005), and in situating that engagement with regard to what Smith calls "the argument and commentary poles" (Smith 2003, p. 33).
The use and non-use of different kinds of CEs offers an alternative perspective on texts that aim to change minds, change facts, or change the world.
Art as a medium to reduce social exclusion for adult with Down syndrome.
Nurul Hanim Md. Romainoor
PhD, Art and Design, Curtin University.
People with Down syndrome are visual learners with a short attention span (Oelwin, 1995). Currently, institutional approaches are not working well and adults with Down syndrome of moderate/severe IQ are inappropriately isolated and excluded. Adults with Down syndrome of moderate/severe IQ are commonly excluded from working life. This study aims to research how art can be used to reduce exclusion and provide positional employment opportunity for adults with moderate/severe IQ Down syndrome.
In this paper, I will explore the relationship between art and social inclusion for adults with Down syndrome. This paper will compare the Malaysian situation with that of Australia and the ways in which art has been successfully drawn upon as a way to increase the visibility of adults with Down syndrome in these two countries.
First, I will provide a brief overview of each of these two differing contexts, highlighting their similarities and dissimilarities in government support for disability arts based programs. Secondly, I will draw upon in-depth qualitative research interviews with families, carers and support workers from both locations. I will explore the ways in which the median of art has been a successful strategy to increase the participation and inclusion of adults with Down syndrome in both places.
The lessons to be learnt from Human Rights Violations in El Salvador from January 1980 to January 1992
Rafael Romero
PhD, Human Rights, Curtin University.
The internal armed struggle in El Salvador during the 1980s and early 1990s was the scenario of repeated gross violations of human rights. Although, El Salvador is a signatory to all international human rights treaties, violations of those rights lasted for twelve consecutive years. This research starts by identifying the triggering factors for those violations in El Salvador. The next objective will be to determine the reasons for the comprehensive US support to the Government of El Salvador, reputedly for gross human rights violations. Extant literature about the internal conflict in El Salvador points at perceived Cold War rivalries as the motivation for the US involvement in El Salvador. That is, the US perception that international communism was penetrating in El Salvador, putting at stake the US national security. However, a scrutiny of the US foreign policy towards Latin America suggests reasons beyond mere Cold War issues. Those reasons will be explored and critically analysed. Finally, an assessment of international human rights treaties effectiveness and their enforcement mechanisms in the context of El Salvador’s internal armed conflict will follow.
‘Don’t Mention the War’: Writing Post-Wall German History
Josh Rosner
PhD, Creative Writing, University of Canberra.
In Against Remembrance, David Rieff argued that historical memory is selective and more often than not self-serving. In contrast, Israeli philosopher Avishai Margalit writes in The Ethics of Memory that some "moral nightmares", such as the Holocaust, should always be a part of collective memory.
We've become, as John Gillis argues in Commemorations. The Politics of National Identity, "accustomed to living in a forest of monuments, to have the past represented to us through museums, historic sites, and public sculpture, that we easily lose sight of the recent origins and diverse meanings if those uniquely modern phenomena."
As I progress through my PhD, writing about my own experiences living in Berlin in the years immediately following the fall of the Wall, I am constantly asking myself whether the historical stain that is the Holocaust remains, nonetheless, relevant to the German sense of identity and national history, particularly given Germany's 'forest of monuments' in memory of the Holocaust.
In this paper I explore whether it is possible, or indeed advisable, to write about Germany’s more recent history without reference to significant historical events, such as the Holocaust, which shaped the nation’s culture, society and national psyche.
“Sinful” Sexualities: The “Sin of the Sodomites” and Human Rights
Melissa Russell
PhD, Cultural Studies, Curtin University.
Of late, significant progress has been made in lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual and intersex (LGBTI) rights, with many countries now recognising and allowing same-sex marriages and other LGBTI rights. Yet strong opposition remains, particularly amongst some religious communities, not only to the rights of LGBTI people, but to those people themselves. A factor which contributes to these attitudes is the perception of homosexual sex acts as wrong, unnatural and/or sinful. This presentation will explore, in particular, changing definitions of the term sodomy. Sodomy has come to signify particular sexual acts, oral, (but most commonly) anal sex, acts which are usually understood to take place between homosexual men. However, it is not by definition related to sexual orientation, and indeed, the way the term is conceptualised has influenced perception of the entire LGBTI community. Sodomy is, as author of Sodometries, Jonathan Goldberg suggests, an “utterly confused category.” The current interpretation of the term is in part based on still-disputed interpretations of the biblical narrative of Sodom and Gomorrah, and is hardly in line with historical readings of that story. Some theologians maintain that “the sin of the Sodomites,” was a lack of hospitality (a sacred and ancient Hebrew law, the violation of which was quite serious), and not sexual deviance. Many authors, including Goldberg, have professed that this linkage of homosexuality with the “sin” of sodomy is based on social prejudices which developed in recent centuries, rather than anything that can be found in scripture, ancient law, or nature. The development of this interpretation of sodomy illustrates how changes on a conceptual level are not always based on facts, and, in this case, actively holds back positive processes of social change.
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Interracial Cuckold Ideology: The New Patriarchy and Racism with a Vengeance
Widya Saraswati (Bambang Suwarno)
Master of Arts, Education, Curtin University - Universitas Bengkulu.
A prerequisite for an emancipatory society is the improvement of women leadership, the promotion of multiple roles among men and women, and the cultivation of feminine qualities in the society. This requires a change in the emergence of males with feminine characteristics and willingness to share multiple roles. The development of such males is under threat by the interracial cuckold lifestyle. In a cuckold marriage, a married female becomes a mistress in the household and enslaves her male spouse. She makes all decisions and owns all finance and properties, while her male spouse has to work for family support and to do the housework. The female may take multiple lovers and may even have babies from her lovers. By contrast, the male spouse should stay faithful, with very little sexual and reproductive rights. Among white couples, the wife’s lovers are usually black males and thus the life style is called interracial cuckold. The strongest proponents of this life style declare that it should apply to everybody, in which case it becomes an ideology. While a cuckold relationship may appear matriarchal, in actuality it is super patriarchal, as the female spouse submits to her male lovers: the patriarchal power is just passed from the husband (the beta male) to the lovers (the alpha male). When the female and her male spouse are white couples while the wife’s lovers are blacks, in which the black lovers are entitled to abuse the white female and suppress her white spouse, the ideology is a new racism, which may lead to the eventual obliteration of the white race. With its strong patriarchal and racist overtones, it poses a great danger to emancipation. It is thus surprising that very little has been researched about this ideology and this does not bode well for the future of egalitarian society.
Shifting cultures and motivations: Transforming identity through modifying interior worlds
Nicola Dawn Smith
PhD, Design, Curtin University.
Attending to the fabric of the house through maintenance or modification, and accommodating the shifting desires and requirements of family is a life-long commitment to home making that many people make when buying property. Several generations may witness the life span of the same family home, accommodating them through changing eras and changing economies. These domestic buildings age and morph and intertwine with the changing lives of the inhabitants, the successive fashions in home décor and increasing pressures to remain efficient and functional, such as accommodating new technologies.
There are many reasons for altering the fabric of the home, varying from the personal satisfaction of do-it-yourself (DIY) as a ‘serious leisure’ activity in its own right to a perception centred on constant renewal to increase real estate value. Some homeowners make improvements in the belief that making a physical change in the home will overcome a personal sense of inertia; hoping that by improving their immediate surroundings, the quality of their ‘internal’ (psychological, emotional and physiological) lives will also improve.
This paper will draw on a current doctoral research study to explore aspects of personal and social motivation underlying the changes we make to our homes, and our lives.
Landscape and Aporia: paradox and uncertainty in Australian Art
Cassandra Sturm
PhD, Art, Curtin University
Through the changing faces of Australian art historical discourse at least one thing has remained constant- that the Australian relationship to overseas influence and to landscape is problematic, and is played out in cultural production. The interrogation of this in critical writing and creative production, particularly in the 80’s and 90’s, began to conceive of an Australian tradition which is the site of paradox and uncertainty.
In the conceptual work of artist Ian Burn this prevalence of self-reflection in Australian art achieved a visual expression. In an oral presentation I will examine the work of Ian Burn through an analysis of Keith Broadfoot’s 1999 article ‘Landscape as Blank: Australian Art after the Monochrome’. This essay’s use of aporia to examine paradox and uncertainty in Australian landscape art and its international influences suggests that critical writing as well as creative production has yet to solve this problematic relationship. But has the revision of this uncertainty become a paradigm which restricts the potential for art and critical production to determine a stable position from which to evolve and change.
Ancient poets for a modern cause: Matisse’s Poemes Charles d’Orleans and Picasso’s Vingt Poemes (Gongora) give hope!
Rodney Swan
M Phil (by research), Art History College of Fine Arts, University of new South Wales.
The world had changed in post-World War II Europe and devastation lay all around. Two rivals Picasso and Matisse reached deep into their nationalistic history to engender a sense of security and stability. Matisse illustrating the 14th century poems of French born Charles d’Orleans and Picasso illustrating those of 16th century Spanish born Luis de Gongora y Argote thus propelling these poets into the context of modernist literature. I will argue that the livre d’artiste of Matisse’s Poemes Charles d’Orleans and Picasso’s Vingt Poemes introduced a text-image dynamic that had complementary aesthetics. My proposition of the congruency of the ornamental imagery, decorations, hand written text and choice of poets will be demonstrated through my emerging four aesthetic theory. I will show similarities in the interpretative aesthetic of the text and image in both works and will explore both the visual aesthetic and the architectural modus of these illustrated books. I will also comment on the sensitive treatment of the poetry by both artists in not allowing the image to overpower the text but to add to the “joyfulness” of the work. These two illustrated books set the foundation for many similar renditions in the years ahead.
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Representing the Science-Fictionalised Present
Elizabeth Tan
PhD, Creative Writing, Curtin University.
The science fiction genre is popularly associated with extrapolating the future. How is it possible, then, to write science fiction set in the present day? William Gibson contends that science fiction has always been about the present; however, commentators such as Judith Berman claim that works of contemporary science fiction – particularly those written in or after 2000 – are increasingly set in an alternate past or the present. Furthermore, Berman argues that much of millennial science fiction is infused with techno-anxiety, nostalgia and fear of the present. According to Veronica Hollinger, the present is characterised by such rapid change that the future is ‘no longer the site of meaningful difference’ – thus Hollinger adopts the term ‘the science-fictionalised present’ to describe post-millennial society (453).
In this presentation, I investigate how the science-fictionalised present has produced the changes that Berman has observed in contemporary science fiction. In particular, I explore how science fiction is increasingly perceived less as a genre but more of a narrative strategy – a discussion or mode. In my creative project, ‘Rubik’ and Other Stories, I am interested in how contemporary science fiction combines defamiliarisation with a technological aesthetic in order to represent our science-fictionalised present.
The Human Sciences: Two Cultures in A. S. Byatt’s The Biographer’s Tale
Olivia Tapper
PhD English Program, School of Culture and Communication University of Melbourne
In her article “Strange and Charmed” (2000), the novelist and critic A. S. Byatt calls upon the humanities to change the way they view science. For Byatt, postmodernist suspicion towards scientific knowledge has prevented an increasingly solipsistic humanities from productive engagement with the external world. Instead of shirking science, Byatt’s suggestion is that artists and academics try to explore scientific theories and discoveries from a humanistic perspective, whereby “the immediate, and subtle, and complex involutes of art can reveal new connections in both language and the material world.”
My paper will read Byatt’s novel The Biographer’s Tale (2000) as a literary-critical investigation of the possibilities – and the complexities – arising from artistic engagement with science. The Biographer’s Tale repeatedly invokes scientific facts and theories metaphorically, employing science as a textual conceit aimed at elucidating the connectivity of human knowledge; yet the interpolation of two divergent epistemological systems is shown to be problematic, as Byatt’s authorial struggle to reconcile scientific fact with artistic fancy comes to mirror the thwarted biographical endeavours of her fictional protagonist. Ultimately, The Biographer’s Tale is ambivalent about the prospect of a happy marriage between the two cultures, but it nevertheless upholds Byatt’s conception that the vitality of the humanities depends on a motivated curiosity towards the material world unveiled by science.
“Now is the winter of our discontent”: Recognising the importance of Shakespeare on the Australian stage.
Zoe Tuffin
Master of Arts, Creative Arts (Research), Theatre Directing, Edith Cowan University (WAAPA).
Shakespeare on the Australian stage is an area that is severely under-researched. Despite the fact that Shakespeare’s plays have been performed in Australia for over two hundred years, in that time only one book on the topic has been published. The lack of attention to Shakespeare in Australia needs to change.
To help future generations guide the Australian theatre industry forward with a sense of strength and purpose, it is important that new practitioners learn where their industry has come from. Shakespeare performance is, in fact, the perfect vehicle for this. By looking at Shakespeare on the Australian stage, from the first performance until today, it is possible to trace the different movements and changes in the Australian theatre industry. The various ways in which directors have treated Shakespeare reflect the numerous trends in theatre. Examining the different approaches to Shakespeare over the years also reveals how Australians began to express a sense of national identity through their theatre.
It is, therefore, imperative that as Australia journeys into the twenty-first century, Shakespeare on the Australian stage should be recognised not only as an important area of research but also a tool through which Australians can continue to explore their national identity. Shakespeare, as a symbol of its imperial past, can help Australia to find its place in the twenty-first century.
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Compose(ur)e
Peter Wildman
Bachelor of Digital Media (Honours), Interactive Art, University of New South Wales (College of Fine Arts).
How do we live with composure and self awareness in an age where lives transmitted through technological devices take precedence over our embodied presence? Compos(ur)eexplores how mobile devices can become bells of mindfulness, empowering people to make the present moment the object of their attention.
Mindfulness meditation, among many things, strengthens a person's ability to be aware of the ontology of the present moment. Thich Nhat Hanh, Buddhist monk and poet, speaks about how mindfulness can be incorporated into objects of our daily lives.
"While we are driving, we think only about arriving. Therefore every time we see a red light, we are not very happy. The red light is a kind of enemy that prevents us from attaining our goal. But we can also see the red light as a bell of mindfulness, reminding us to return to the present moment.”
Compos(ur)e is a mobile phone application that enables a social network of people to create technological bells of mindfulness for one another. This interconnection is materialised as a network of installations and kinetic sculptural spaces that represent these interactions.
Beyond the Pink Ribbon: An investigation of self-compassion and ways women with breast cancer nurture self and other relationships.
Helen Wilson
PhD, Counselling, Notre Dame.
This qualitative study focuses on whether self-compassion could contribute to emotional wellbeing in women with breast cancer (BC). The study investigates whether women recovering from diagnosis and treatment develop and nurture self-compassionate relating with themself, their body, and with significant others. Participants will be a purposive sample of ten to fifteen women aged between 24 and 55 years of age who have completed treatment for primary BC and have been disease free for at least twelve (12) months. Participants will be women residing in the Perth metropolitan or rural areas of Western Australia. They will be invited to take part in three focus groups, one in-depth semi-structured interview, and a 12-hour (6-week) self-reflection program. Data will also be gathered through individual, semi-structured interviews, from three participants who each are a significant other in the life of one of the women with BC. Three counsellors who work with women with BC will also take part in an individual semi-structured interview. Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) will be used to analyse data from all interviews and focus groups. The findings of this study aim to identify: 1) in what ways the experience of having BC influences intra-personal and inter-personal relating for women with BC, 2) the self-relational needs of women with BC, 3) in what ways women in remission from BC are self-compassionate, 4) provide an extended understanding of the lives of women with a long-term medical condition.
Noongar Women’s Birth Experience
Judith Wilson
PhD, Nursing, Notre Dame.
Hearing the stories of Noongar women’s birth experiences is important for all Indigenous Australians because the voice of a single and unique group of Aboriginal women will provide society with valuable insights on which to base healthcare development. Birth outcomes for Indigenous Australian mothers and babies are significantly worse compared with the wider population. Though advances in satisfaction of the birth experience have steadily been achieved in the Western world through a woman centred approach in qualitative research, this is not the case with Indigenous Australians who have remained muted and marginalized in maternity care reform. This study aims to give voice to Noongar women who have birthed in the last two years and capture the essence of this lived experience; this will provide facts. The purpose of this research is to acknowledge the wisdom of Noongar childbearing women as authoritative knowledge; this has the potential to change minds, actions and world views. The quality of life of Noongar women will be enhanced when health care professionals and policy makers are provided with insights and knowledge upon which to base their decisions, enabling planning and delivery of culturally appropriate care. The voice of Indigenous Australians has the potential to change the world of all Australians.
Broadening the Epistemic Horizon for African Voices to Emerge
Yirga Gelaw Woldeyes
PhD, Humanities, Curtin University.
Africa has a great potential to contribute to the world of minds. So far, this potential has been ignored and Africans contribution to the academic world constrained due to the uneven relationship between the West and Africa. Framed by an epistemology that restricts the emergence of non-western knowledge, the academic world had little space for African voices. However, as the world comes to face various social and environmental menaces, this epistemic hegemony is being challenged with the development of theories that allow supressed views to surface. Africa, despite its problems, has a lot to contribute to the global call for new ideas. Lessons of strength and human values could be drawn from what has enabled the people to endure, resist and survive the very long and brutal sufferings perpetuated against them by self-serving and patrimonial systems. My presentation seeks to draw critical insights into possible ways of making sense of the African legacy as part of the legacy of our world. I will present specific examples from the cultural legacy of the continent to suggest that a changing world requires a broader epistemic horizon that accommodates Africa’s worldviews.
