School of Culture and Communication - Theses
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ItemThe challenges of valuing culture in Australia, and the role of symbiosis in understanding cultural interactions( 2019)This research examines the conditions and narratives that surround cultural value, particularly within the fields of cultural diplomacy, cultural policy and the arts. These conditions and narratives are situated within the context of knowledge or innovation-based societies where, over the past two decades, a rise in cultural value discourse has occurred. Knowledge-based societies also feature post-industrial economies and, therefore, in this thesis, the tendency to value culture in terms of economics is of particular significance. In Australia, this is evident across various municipal levels, from local councils to the federal government. Through a series of case studies encompassing the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the City of Melbourne and a federal policy proposal for a National Programme for Excellence in the Arts, I argue a common approach to the valuation of culture is evident, and is one that is rooted in instrumentalisation—or what Yudice characterises as expediency, where ‘culture-as-resource’ is a means to an end. However, this narrow scope limits the possibility to understand more about the different types of value that culture (such as the arts) can have, particularly when it comes to aesthetic exploration of new knowledges, global networks and relationships. To explore alternative considerations of what value culture can offer to both societies and people alike, I consider European theatre collective Rimini Protokoll’s ability to display the culture of nations in their touring performance of 100% City. Here, another realisation of the value of culture is discernible. In political terms, this is cultural value that resides outside the typical state-to-public facilitation of public diplomacy and rests on a people-to-people mode of communication. As a result, I argue that the current, utilitarian vocabulary surrounding the value of culture should be expanded and developed further to reflect its operation today in the age of global networks and relationships. Such an expansion incorporates a symbiotic consideration of the interactions that occur over the course of cultural relationships and counterbalances the over-reliance on economic and political factors and evaluations. My proposal serves to further refine understandings of ‘the cultural’ within the discourse of cultural value. To do so, I draw upon the biological understanding of relationships, referred to as symbiosis, to study how cultural value is understood amongst the private and public sector actors across three key dimensions: the economic, the political and the social. As a result, I propose cultural symbiosis as a conceptual metaphor that assists in the articulation of the more complex and multifaceted relations that cultural activity can generate. This conceptualisation provides the basis for an approach that better articulates the relations of cultural activity and one that extends the neoliberal vocabulary currently used to describe culture and the discourse of cultural value.
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ItemTaiwan in Their Hands: cultural soft power and translocal identity making in the New York Taiwan Academy( 2019)In 2011, Kuomintang (KMT) President Ma Ying-jeou created the Taiwan Academies as a cultural exchange initiative to enhance Taiwan’s soft power and introduce Taiwan’s culture to the world, while also competing against China for space in the realm of competing notions of Chineseness internationally. Three Taiwan Academy resource centres were established that year in New York, Los Angeles, and Houston. This thesis presents a historical case study analysis of the Taiwan Academy resource centre in New York between 2012-2014, in order to examine the context of production of soft power discourse and the empirical consequences within a specific program, among a target audience. To this end, it examines soft power from the perspective of translocality, in order to uncover the often-overlooked socio-cultural, relational, and spatial aspects of cultural strategies aimed at generating soft power. This study responds to two central research questions. First: what kind(s) of cultural messages were being produced and exported to New York by Ma's administration in Taipei? Second: how were these messages translated, interpreted and received in practice, in their implementation at the New York Taiwan Academy? To address these, this research first re-conceptualises a de-Westernised, localised framework for interpreting cultural soft power discourse under Ma’s KMT administration. It then considers Taipei’s strategy of generating cultural soft power through Taiwan Academy from two perspectives: from “above”, in Taipei, and “below”, in New York. From “above”, it evaluates Taiwan Academy as a political strategy, in relation to relevant domestic, cross-Strait, and international contexts. From “below”, this study conducts a grounded analysis of two Taiwan Academy cultural programs and the translocal processes and practices that re-/defined the role of Taiwan Academy in New York. The conclusion integrates these two perspectives in order to address the dynamics and limits of Ma’s use of cultural soft power within the Taiwan Academy. In doing so, this thesis aims to explicate the contingent, relational, and inherently translocal nature of soft power practice.
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ItemSomewhere, between 'in' and 'out': locating Jia and internet in Baling-jiulinghou Chinese gay subjectivities( 2016)Informed by face-to-face interviews with over twenty young gay men during a 2013 field trip to five cities across Mainland China, this research thesis critically examines the everyday articulations of their sexual subjectivities both in the space of family and in cyberspace. By contemplating the state of existence experienced by these young men—specifically, their management of parent-child relationships and their utilization of Internet and geo-locative social media in negotiating their sexual identities—this thesis seeks to provide a framework to theorize broader socio-cultural specificities lived by this generation of urban Chinese gay men. A central argument of this dissertation is that contemporary Chinese gay subjectivities are not only defined by constant negotiations between ‘closetedness’ and ‘outness’, they are also paradoxically constituted vis-à-vis rapid, ongoing, socio-cultural shifts experienced by the Chinese baling- jiulinghou generation. Focusing on family and filiality, as well as the rise of geo-locative media, this thesis explores how these shifting circumstances are generating conflicting sets of expectations for young Chinese gay men, and constructing them as queer subjects of contradictions and incoherencies.
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ItemCrisis of infinite intertexts!: Continuity as adaptation in the Superman multimedia franchise( 2015)Since first appearing as a comic book character over three quarters of a century ago, Superman was not only the first superhero, spawning an entire genre of imitators, but also quickly became one of the most widely disseminated multi-media entertainment franchises. This achieved a degree of intergenerational cultural dissemination that far surpasses his comic book fandom. Yet despite an unprecedented degree of adaptation into other media from radio, newspaper strips, film serials, animation, feature films, video games and television, Superman’s ongoing comic books have remained in unbroken publication, developing a long and complex history of narrative renewal and reinvention. This thesis investigates the multifaceted intertextuality between the comic book portrayals of Superman and its many adaptations over the years, including how such retellings in other media have a generally stronger cultural impact, which exerts in turn an adaptive influence upon these continuing comics’ internalised narrative continuity. I shall argue that Superman comics, as a case study for the wider phenomenon in the superhero genre, demonstrate via their frequent revisions and relaunches of continuity, a process of deeply palimpsestuous self-adaptation. The Introduction positions my research methodology in relation to intertextual theory, with an emphasis on providing terminological clarity, while Chapter 1 expands into a literature review on pertinent key scholarship on adaptation studies and the comics studies field specifically. Chapter 2 explores the history and application of adaptation to other media in the Superman franchise, and how this has progressively manifested in ‘feedback’ processes in the comics that are the notional source material, an increasingly problematised textual designation. Chapter 3 refocuses on Superman’s comic book diegesis and unpacks the definitions and internal methodology of continuity and its revision, with a particular focus on the pertinent writings of Umberto Eco regarding the “oneiric” nature of Superman comics’ temporal narratology, and I weigh in on debates involving his later critics. Finally, Chapter 4 delves into the history and theoretical implications of comics’ process of perpetual and accelerating cycles of continuity revision, and their increasingly intertextual lines of influence with past and concurrent adaptations to other media within the wider franchise. Using Gerard Genette’s conception of the textual palimpsest, I argue that comic book continuity has become a highly iterative succession of self-adapting rearticulations of their core narratives, utilising much the same intertextual processes as adaptations between different media expressions, in search of a constant generational renewal and creative renegotiation.
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ItemWe have voices, too: literacy, alternative modernities, and Indonesian domestic workers in Hong Kong( 2015)Migrant domestic workers are arguably one of the most exploited and subordinated groups of women in the international division of labour under global capitalism. However, they are active in negotiating the prevailing power structures in the transnational labour market. My thesis examines the significance of literacy practices to the cultural and subjective experience of Indonesian Domestic Workers (IDWs) in Hong Kong. Using three sites of culture as case studies—the Forum Lingkar Pena Hong Kong (Pen Circle Forum, FLP-HK) writing community, IDWs’ blogging community, and the practice of suitcase libraries—I argue that IDWs actively exercise agency by engaging in literacy practices, which embody various forms of self-modernisation. Through extensive ethnography and textual analysis of IDWs’ writings, the study reveals that IDWs in the FLP-HK writing community define their own meaning of Islamic modernity by writing to maintain and develop self-reflexive and spiritual interiority. Meanwhile, IDW bloggers are engaged in digital literacy practices that consciously challenge the stereotypes of stupid and uneducated maids and create new images of smart and technologically literate women. Furthermore, their engagement in ICTs—a key element of modernity—for social and political activism enables their elaboration of and participation in an alternative public sphere. Finally, IDWs’ suitcase library practices aimed at fostering reading practices carry the literacy mission as another element of modernity. More importantly, suitcase libraries serve as literacy hubs in which the various forms of IDWs’ literacy practices converge, and thus facilitate IDWs’ participation in an alternative public sphere, in which IDWs create forums of literacy-related public discussions. The above three sites of culture and the elements of modernity they negotiate are the manifestations of IDWs’ definitions of their own meanings of modernity.
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ItemAustralian Aboriginal art in the United States of America, 1941-1966( 2014)The United States has been collecting and exhibiting Australian Aboriginal art since the Great American Exploring Expedition of 1838-1842. Collections from Port Jackson gathered during this expedition were displayed in the Washington DC Patent Office until 1851. Such early collecting and display is rarely noted or discussed in the literature on the history of Australian Aboriginal art and its exhibition. This dissertation seeks to redress this oversight through the story of Australian Aboriginal art in the United States as told by case studies. The primary topic of this dissertation is exhibitions; however, other events that raised American awareness of this topic will also be evaluated. This is a piece of historical research informed by interdisciplinary scholarship on Aboriginal art. In writing about the representation of Aboriginal culture, I propose that it is not sufficient to identify what and where exhibitions occurred, the historic backdrop, politics, and people involved, also require consideration. Through a close reading of archival material, the chapter structure reflects four narrative themes emergent from analysis of exhibitions and events as case studies. These themes are: Aboriginal art as historic Australian art, as cultural, Stone Age, and fine art. The following research questions guide this study: what were the major representations of Australian Aboriginal art and culture in the United States? What informed the narratives of these events? Lastly, what parties were involved in the organisation of these cross-cultural displays and what impact did this have? This thesis argues that investigation into the geographic reception of Australian Aboriginal art in America provides evidence of its shifting conception and value. This has significant impact given recent statements that it was the American reception of Aboriginal Art that facilitated its acceptance as high art in Australia. Case studies include: Art of Australia, 1788-1941 (1941), a touring exhibition that began at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, funded by the Carnegie Corporation and guest curated by Theodore Sizer; and Arts of the South Seas (1946), organised by Rene d’Harnoncourt that showed at the Museum of Modern Art. Also considered are the promotional efforts of anthropologist Charles Pearcy Mountford and his cross-country “Australia’s Stone Age Men” lecture tour that eventuated in the American-Australian Scientific Expedition to Arnhem Land (1948). In 1966 three separate exhibitions showed in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Kansas. Edward Lehman Ruhe who was a major but largely unknown Aboriginal art aficionado is discussed for his pioneering efforts exhibiting Aboriginal art from his private collection from 1966-1977. The findings of this thesis suggest that Americans conceived and represented Aboriginal material as a form of art in the 1940s and 1950s, before Australia. Case study analysis also evidences that the exhibition of Aboriginal art was used for cultural diplomacy between Australian and the United States in the years surrounding World War II. Finally, certain individuals were particularly influential in realising exhibitions of Aboriginal art, and their legacies laid the foundation for displays today.
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ItemWild articulations: the Wild Rivers Act 2005 (Qld), conservation, development and sustainable futures in remote Australia( 2014)This thesis examines issues of development, Indigeneity and environmental conservation byconsidering how the controversial Wild Rivers Act 2005 (Qld) was debated, reported on,celebrated and condemned in Cape York Peninsula, northern Australia between 2004 and 2012.The Peninsula has long been constructed as a ‘wild’ space, whether as terra nullius, a zoneexcepted from settler law or a biodiverse wilderness region in need of conservation. The past twodecades, however, have seen two major changes in the political and social composition of theregion, the first being the legal recognition of geographically extensive Indigenous land rights andthe creation of a corporate infrastructure to govern them. Second, the Peninsula has been thecentre of national debates regarding the market integration and social normalisation ofIndigenous people and the site of substantial investment in Indigenous policy reform. Ironically,the Queensland state government’s own attempts to ‘settle’ land use through the Wild Rivers Act2005 (Qld) brought out the immanent tensions within the region’s present political formation.This thesis adopts an interdisciplinary approach to examine how and why the controversy overthe legislation occurred and what it indicates about present imaginaries of the governance andpotentiality of Indigenous lands and waters in northern Australia. The thesis shows thathistorically embedded forms of ‘wildness’ continue to shape debates about Cape York Peninsula’sfuture, debates in which economic and social development are often conflated and conceptualisedas beneficent transformations. Ultimately, the thesis contends that close consideration of thisevent provides insights into the future dilemmas of development, conservation and Indigenouspolitics in remote Australia.
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ItemCritical habitations: cultural studies and the politics of intellectual location.( 2000-03)Over the past four or so decades, a number of social transformations—including in particular the dramatic expansion of the tertiary education sector—have impacted significantly on the role and status of the intellectual in contemporary life. While the authority of the intellectual was once based on a claim to universality, the openly professionalised nature of contemporary intellectual life has thoroughly problematised such claims. Accordingly, the broadly representative role that so-called “public” intellectuals were once said to have played has increasingly been challenged by more “specific” models of intellectual practice, models that have emerged in particular out of new fields of knowledge such as cultural studies. While cultural conservatives have argued that this challenge marks the declining status of the intellectual in contemporary society, the emergence of a variety of “new” intellectual models linked to specific social and institutional formations suggests that, far from declining, concerns over the status and responsibility of the intellectual are ongoing. This thesis examines the complex relations between contemporary intellectual practices and social and cultural location. Focusing in particular on the field of cultural studies, I examine the careers and biographies of four intellectuals. In my introductory chapter I review the major theories of intellectual practice circulating within cultural studies and conclude that a new, more “located” approach to understanding intellectual practice is required. Putting this new approach to work, the first part of my thesis examines the personal and intellectual biography of the black British intellectual Stuart Hall and—using the trope of “diaspora”—positions him in relation to the field of British cultural studies. In part two I focus on the largely academically-situated intellectual practices of Lawrence Grossberg and Andrew Ross, two prominent American-based cultural studies practitioners. Taking them as exemplars of American cultural studies, a highly academicised and disciplined field, I place into question the common assumption that the institutionally-located intellectual lacks critical autonomy. In part three, I discuss the life and career of the Australian intellectual, Meaghan Morris, focusing on the transnational and trans-institutional genealogy of both Morris and the Sydney-based strand of cultural studies with which she is associated. Finally, I conclude the thesis with a brief postscript reiterating my argument for the increasing importance of a “comparative cosmopolitan” model of intellectualism—that is, an approach to intellectuals that is able to engage with both broad-based and transnational concerns while, at the same time, also acknowledging their responsibilities as a geographically and socially-situated group.
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ItemPicture perfect: Hollywood’s ideal communities and the perils of dream-building( 2013)This study explores the interaction between the depiction of idealised communities in post-World War II filmmaking, and the efforts of urban planners and property developers to actually construct such idealised communities. It examines the ideals of community as depicted in small-town films of the 1940s and suburban sitcoms of the 1950s and explores how these imagined places were an inspiration for post-war suburban development. However, these ideals were also a source of discontent as people grappled with the realities of dispersed, centreless, car-oriented suburbs and found them wanting compared to imagined communities, and the study examines the way in which such anti-suburban sentiment was expressed in popular culture. It examines attempts to respond to this discontent through the creation of new built environments that better reflect media ideals. The attempts by Walt Disney to create such places, first at Disneyland and then in planned communities, are explored. The study then examines the way in which urban planners responded to these influences at the planned communities of Seaside and Celebration. Finally, the study examines the way in which anxiety about the impossibility of imposing a film-like perception of the urban environment has been reflected in films such as The Truman Show (Peter Weir, 1998) and Pleasantville (Gary Ross, 1998). I argue that the way urban planners have approached the development of cities and towns has been shaped by cultural depictions of the such places, and is frequently “sold” by resorting to cultural ideals, but that the blurring of boundaries between real and imagined places has also spurred a great deal of criticism of urban planners’ approaches.
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ItemEvolving multilingualisms in poetry: third culture as a window on multilingual poetic praxis( 2011)In this thesis, I compare the understanding and construction of multilingualism across linguistics, cultural studies and literature in an effort to interrogate the popular notion that multilingual individuals – and creative writers in particular – are conflicted and fragmented as a result of their multilingualism. I locate the source of that assumption in the monolingual bias that arose when Western European thinkers adopted the idea that nations should be built around and defined by language. I then trace its development and influence on attitudes towards multilingualism and multilingual expression across disciplines to the present day. In particular, I examine the work of contemporaneous multilingual writers and assess how their work is both shaped by and resists these developing popular and academic conceptions of multilingualism. I identify three distinct types of multilingual writers in the process, who I refer to as traditional multilingual poets, cross culture polyglot poets and third culture polyglot poets. The first write in only one language at a time and do not mix codes, the second combine two languages usually connected through a history of colonialism, switching between them in the body of a single poem, and the third weave three or more languages that may or may not have any colonial history into poetry that is meant to be performed rather than read. I argue that polyglot poetry, particularly third culture poetry, as it is marked by a lack of conflict between the languages, represents a challenge to the dominant monolingual perception of multilingualism. Polyglot poetry reframes the idea of the fractured multilingual as a multifaceted one, with each identity and language representing not a shattered fragment but a new dimension. Creating polyglot poetry, then, is a political act in that it takes a dominant, sometimes colonizing, language, claims ownership of it, and then infuses it with the music of the Other. Rather than see their multifaceted identities as a hindrance to national belonging, I argue that polyglot poets represent a large number of people around the world – multilinguals all – whose identities exist harmoniously across multiple languages and national affiliations. This thesis puts forward a new framework for studying the movement of multilinguals between their languages, and specifically provides a new language for studying highly activated multilinguals.