School of Culture and Communication - Theses
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ItemHow to do things with sadness : from ontology to ethics in Derrida(University of Melbourne, 2010)
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ItemWays of listening : dramaturgy as deep mapping in intercultural-Indigenous performance(University of Melbourne, 2010)
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ItemEdith Alsop, Artist( 2013)Edith Alsop (1871 – 1958) is now considered a minor twentieth century Australian artist, but during her some fifty years of artistic activity she was much more highly regarded. Her oeuvre covers sketches, drawings, watercolours, pastels, relief prints and book illustrations. She also produced posters, commercial art, friezes and some oil paintings. The University of Melbourne holds the largest public collection of Alsop’s works, located at The Ian Potter Museum of Art. My thesis will question why she has been forgotten. I will demonstrate an active and important artistic life and an almost textbook development as a professional artist. I find that Alsop suffered from the now well-documented fate of the invisibility of women artists from about 1940. From her oeuvre I pay particular attention to her prints as a small but distinct part of her artistic output. In the 1980s, women artists were being rediscovered. I believe that her lack of rediscovery results from her minor and erratic performance as a printmaker, her concentration on drawing and watercolour (as being ‘lesser than oils’) as her favoured mediums and her lack of visibility in public collections. This thesis is by far the most extensive research into this artist to date, and therefore illuminates her life and provides an important basis, or context, for the consideration of any of her art.
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ItemThe environment in English versions of the Grimms' and Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale literature, 1823–1899( 2016)This dissertation explores the intersections between literature and environmental history in nineteenth-century English versions of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale literature. While the success of the Grimms’ and Andersen’s fairy tale literature in England can be attributed to the inclusion of Christian principles, the privileging of individualism, the omission of licentious content and the focalisation of child protagonists, this dissertation argues that the tales were also valued for presenting an environmental ethos. English versions of the Grimms’ and Andersen’s fairy tales relayed anthropocentric ideas about nature which competed with a developing sense of environmentalism during a period of rapid environmental change. While these tales idealised the tremendous possibilities offered by the environment, nature is not prioritised above human interest; rather, these versions effectively highlight humanity’s destructive disposition by disempowering female and animal characters. By focusing on depictions of nature during a century of environmental devastation, this thesis contributes to our understanding of humanity’s relationship with the natural world as relayed in literary texts.
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ItemRadical platforms: autonomism, globalisation and networks( 2016)This thesis engages in the work of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri as well as others in the post-autonomist Italian Marxist tradition to critique the concept of Empire and to identify serious flaws in cryptolibertarian approaches to replacing the state with computational apparatuses. Hardt and Negri’s work proposes the existence of an international, multi-layered political structure called Empire, with a corresponding international working class called the ‘multitude’ which has been subsumed within this new global political system. The main thrust of the thesis identifies that media is underanalysed in Hardt and Negri’s work, yet there is great scope for networked media to be included as not just a component to Empire, but as constitutive of Empire’s existence. Thus the argument is that Empire is reliant on media, and would not survive without it. From this perspective, the acts of loose groups and fraternities, such as IP pirates, cryptolibertarians and cryptofascists, and anti-state groups of other sorts, to engineer software solutions to replace the state are problematic. Examples such as 3D printing, bitcoin, Wikileaks, and State-In-A-Box suggest that cryptolibertarian and related ideologies of technological solutions not only tend to be misguided, they reproduce the nature of Empire in an intensified manner. The argument of this thesis is thus that technological solutions that seek to replace the state with mediated software protocols will likely tend to simply reproduce structures of governance that are more rigid, and have less capacity for social intervention than the current structures of governance. This argument does not preclude technological methods as integral to political solutions in the future, but certainly questions those approaches that conceive of society as a set of problems to be solved.
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ItemExtreme males: autistic masculinity in three bestsellers( 2015)Inspired by Simon Baron-Cohen’s theory that autism can be understood as an extreme version of typical male behaviour, this thesis will examine whether this view is reflected in the representation of autistic males in best-selling fiction (“Extreme Male Brain” 248). It will investigate autism representations in the context of hegemonic masculinity, by comparing the behaviour of Christopher Boone from The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Jacob Hunt from House Rules, and Don Tillman from The Rosie Project to Linda Lindsey’s masculinity norms. These include anti-femininity, emotional reticence, success, intelligence, toughness, aggressiveness and an obsessive heterosexuality (Lindsey 241-7). While Christopher's surprising violence, extreme intelligence, insensitivity and stubbornness are masculine traits, his asexuality disqualifies him from being an extreme male. Jacob’s masculinity is shown in his aggressiveness, intellect and physique, but is undermined by his ambiguous sexuality and patchy career history. Don’s physical appearance, heterosexuality, stoic attitude and intellect are all masculine qualities, unlike his need for social guidance and apparent virginity at the novel’s beginning. All three characters are white and compensate for a lack of emotional awareness with hyper-rationality. Their paradoxical masculinity may account for their novels’ success. This thesis finds that these three fictional autistics are not extreme males by the standards of hegemonic masculinity.
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ItemA creative nation is a productive nation: a theoretical and contextual exploration of Tasmania’s Collect Art loan scheme( 2015)Tasmania’s Collect Art loan scheme enables eligible consumers to take out an interest free loan from the Tasmanian Government in order to purchase works of art. As the first scheme of its kind in Australia, Collect Art presents an interesting and real life case study of a market facilitating instrument of government subvention. With the aim to explore and establish its significance as such, this thesis discusses the Collect Art loan scheme within relevant theoretical and contextual frameworks. It explores the implications of Collect Art with respect to its impact on artists, government and consumers, and under these circumstances, assesses its efficacy. I have determined that the efficacy of Collect Art is located predominantly in its economic outcomes. To this end, I have concluded that the scheme’s significance lies in its orientation toward the consumer, and in its establishment as a consequence of the economic paradigm that permeates the contemporary arts ecosystem.
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ItemOswald Brierly and the art of patronage: a colonial journey( 2016)This thesis seeks to evaluate the nature and significance of artistic patronage in colonial Australia by an examination of the patronage received by Oswald Walters Brierly [later Sir Oswald] (1817-1894) associated with his time in Australia and the extent to which this patronage informed his art. The thesis explores Brierly’s role as a professionally trained artist in the emerging artistic environment of the Australian colonies in the 1840s and seeks to show how his colonial experiences influenced the subject matter of his later art; particularly the impact of his direct engagement with the whaling industry at Twofold Bay in New South Wales between 1843 and 1848, under the patronage of his first Australian mentor, the flamboyant entrepreneur, Benjamin Boyd (1801– 1851). It also examines his role as a shipboard artist on voyages of discovery aboard H.M.S Rattlesnake and to a lesser extent H.M.S. Maeander. It will be shown that following Brierly’s second visit to Australia with H.R.H. Prince Alfred, the Duke of Edinburgh (1844-1900), on the first Royal visit to Australia in 1867-1868, the artist attracted new Australian patronage: patrons who sought to enhance their own prestige and status by acquiring works by an artist who enjoyed strong royal connections. It proposes that the examination of Brierly’s work associated with Australia sheds new light on the changing nature of artistic patronage in Australia between the largely convict dependent society of the 1840s and the confident and prosperous world of the Boom Period following the discovery of gold, especially in Victoria. The thesis will demonstrate that Brierly’s art reflects these changed circumstances and the expanding aspirations of his Australian patrons.
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ItemIndigenous worlds forcing thought: kūmara and river red gums( 2016)Since the late 1980s the entwined forces of neoliberal capitalism, expanding conversation regimes, and legal frameworks of recognition have provoked the re-emergence of indigenous worlds in ways possibly unimaginable in the preceding decades. The emergence of indigenous worlds has been replete with more-than-human entities that were long considered extinct or disproved, and whose existence was decried and denied. In this thesis, I present my research on the re-emergence of two such entities: kūmara, a taonga from Aotearoa New Zealand, and the river red gums forests of the Murray River Country in Australia. I show how the re-emergence of kūmara and river red gum forests as more-than-human entities necessitates diplomatic encounter between indigenous and non-indigenous peoples, and I discuss two instances in which this has occurred, each with markedly different results. The first instance I discuss is how kūmara provoked a claim to the Waitangi Tribunal, Aotearoa NZ’s pre-eminent institution for inquiring into Crown breaches of the Treaty of Waitangi, on the grounds that Māori were entitled to control taonga in a Māori way, and that included property. The second instance is how the river red gums brought together a motley alliance of indigenous people and environmentalists to seek environmental protection for river red gum forests in tandem with Traditional Owner control. I argue that while these instances contain vast differences, it is useful to consider them alongside each other for the way in which the former re-instantiated Nature/Culture dualisms and denied the distinctive vitality of Māori worlds, while the latter were able to generate an “experimental togetherness” (Stengers, 2005) among practices and in the process achieve effective outcomes. Ultimately I show how the close analysis of instances where settler and indigenous worlds entangle can provide illuminating instances or moments where postcolonial ways of going on together might be occurring.
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ItemHurdy-gurdy: new articulations( 2016)The purpose of this thesis is to expand existing literature concerning the hurdy-gurdy as a contemporary musical instrument. Notably, it addresses the lack of hurdy-gurdy literature in the context of contemporary composition and performance. Research into this subject has been triggered by the author’s experience as a hurdy-gurdy performer and composer and the importance of investigating and documenting the hurdy-gurdy as an instrument capable of performing well outside the idioms of traditional music. This thesis consists of a collection of new works for hurdy-gurdy and investigation of existing literature including reference to the author’s personal experience as a hurdy-gurdy composer and performer. It will catalogue and systematically document a selection of hurdy-gurdy techniques and extended performance techniques, and demonstrate these within the practical context of new music compositions created by the author. This creative work and technique investigation and documentation is a valuable resource for those seeking deeper practical and academic understanding of the hurdy-gurdy within the context of contemporary music making.