School of Culture and Communication - Theses
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ItemVariations of difference(University of Melbourne, 2009)
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ItemThe Forty-seventh r�nin and an existential guide to travel(University of Melbourne, 2008)
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ItemTemporality and Australian narratives of racial science; or, thesis as lynch mob(University of Melbourne, 2008)
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ItemSeparatism to soap opera ; lesbian communities and the community gaze in cinema and television.(University of Melbourne, 2008)
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ItemThe billycan in Australian poetry(University of Melbourne, 2007)
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ItemSonic intersections : subjectivity within punk aesthetics(University of Melbourne, 2007)
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ItemBurrowing on the beach: satire in the poetry of A.D. Hope, John Forbes, and J.S. Harry( 2014)This thesis proposes a new method of reading satire in the work of three white postcolonial Australian poets. Making detailed use of French theorists Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s concept of the rhizome, the thesis argues that the satire of A.D. Hope, John Forbes, and J.S. Harry can be read as a dually deconstructive and generative machine. Such a view questions the existent, structural models of satire proposed by theorists in the field, as well as the stylistic designations made regarding each of these poets’ work. The thesis begins with a nominal definition of the genre of satire which is thereafter deployed in the three chapters of close-readings: it is crucial to the method that such a definition must itself be questioned by the poets themselves. Such a method, in its dual movement of proposition and self-critique, performs what this thesis regards as the very process of satire, thereby embodying the kind of reading for which the thesis argues. Chapter One examines the theme of self-sacrifice in A.D. Hope’s work and argues that it constitutes his satirical will to criticism; Chapter Two places the 1988 bicentenary of European settlement as the satiric object of John Forbes’ collection, The Stunned Mullet; and Chapter Three tracks the nomadic, satirical movement of J.S. Harry’s rabbit character, Peter Henry Lepus, and his interactions with the figure and philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein. The thesis therefore tries to think about the intersection of genre, poetics, and nation. In doing so, it demonstrates a model for interpreting such discourses as ecopoetics and decolonising poetics, and for revisiting texts not commonly associated with these contemporary movements.
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ItemParticipation and performance: human-technology relations in the art of Rafael Lozano-Hemmer( 2014)This thesis investigates the participatory media artworks of Mexican-Canadian artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer as a means of exploring the human-technology relations that produce and are produced by the works. Situating Lozano-Hemmer’s work within a history of participatory art and action-based theories of technology, the enquiry adapts the artist’s own terminology – platforms for participation, relationship-specific art, alien memories, and reverse puppetry – to create a structure through which to analyse specific artwork case studies. These phrases provide a conceptual basis through which to explore notions of materiality, autopoiesis, control, and agency within human-technology relations. The enquiry uses the work of Bruno Latour and N. Katherine Hayles, with reference to the work of other key theorists including Donna Haraway and Gilles Deleuze, to challenge a humanist perspective of technology and argue for a posthumanist framework in which technology comes to be understood as a performance of techno-social agency.
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ItemFrom codex to kindle: exploring the technological mediation of words in the digital era( 2014)This thesis argues that like the emergence of the technology of writing in antiquity, digital literacy is also a technology with tremendous cultural, economic, political and cognitive repercussions, and that these technologies partially inform the ways by which contemporary Western society is ordered. The thesis begins by offering a broad definition of ‘literacy’ that takes into account literacy’s potential as a technology to help shape individual understanding of the external world. The first chapter is concerned with exploring the implications of this definition of literacy by investigating how print literacy alters human cognitive function, which in turn affects society more broadly, with particular reference to the work of Ong and Dehaene. It suggests literacy’s influence on the human cognitive system affects the structure of narratives, and that literacy privileges certain modes of cultural consumption over others by reifying cultural artefacts as private property. The thesis goes on to investigate whether emerging digital technologies affect human cognition to the same degree as print literacy, and how this affect may be moderated by cultural forces in the form of digital literature conventions, as well as how digital literacy is taught. An interview was conducted with two University of Melbourne Library staff, who spoke about emerging digital pedagogic practices, as well as the difficulties faced by staff and students in successfully navigating digital systems. It emerged that digital literacy is not yet formally taught, and I suggest that this is one of the largest reasons for the negative conceptions of digital literature as a force of cultural degredation that this chapter explores. Finally, the thesis suggests that – with certain caveats – digital lierature is capable of deepening the conceptual abstration of thought enabled by print literature. It goes on to analyse the implications of this on narrative modes, as well as the economic and political ramifications of digital literature’s lack of physicality.
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ItemByronic fandom: mutual consumption and the ambiguous politics of readerly desire( 2014)This thesis examines the relationships between Byronic heroes, fandom, and consumer culture through a detailed critical analysis of three female-authored Byronic texts. Taking Lady Caroline Lamb’s fictionalised account of her affair with Lord Byron as my starting point, I ask how desire for the Byronic hero has influenced our cultural understanding of fandom and gender. By reading the fan as an active authorial agent in Lamb’s 'Glenarvon' (1816), Emily Brontë’s 'Wuthering Heights' (1847), and Stephenie Meyer’s 'The Twilight Saga' (2008), I argue that Byronic heroes and their fans exist in a relationship of mutual consumption in which desire for the Byronic hero facilitates the literary productivity of fans. Lamb, Brontë, and Meyer provide sites of departure from Byron’s poetry through their focus on the emotional lives of their heroines. Such a focus uncovers the patriarchal systems which are at work in Byron’s representation of his heroes and works to create a female space in which authors, characters and fans can return the Byronic hero’s famously fascinating gaze. This relationship is what I term mutual consumption. The thesis moves chronologically from a selection of Lord Byron’s poetry and Lady Caroline Lamb’s novel 'Glenarvon', through the Victorian Gothic of Emily Brontë’s 'Wuthering Heights', to Stephenie Meyer’s 'The Twilight Saga'. These three texts form a trajectory of textual inheritance linking the Byronic hero to female desire and celebrity culture. In examining the relationships between the Byronic hero, fandom, and consumer culture, I seek to add to the critical literature working to rectify cultural assumptions of frivolity and worthlessness attached to women’s literature, the romance genre, and fan culture by demonstrating the cultural significance of these devalued forms.