Arts Collected Works - Research Publications
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ItemIndigenous knowledge is not an extractable resource(Academia.edu, 2021-11)Indigenous knowledge is increasingly being looked to as containing solutions to contemporary challenges, particularly climate change. Along with growing anxieties about the future of the planet is a parallel “tendency to exalt Indigenous or non-Western others as symbols of inspirational environmental ethics, modelling interspecies, interconnectedness and reciprocity contrary to a Western will-to-destruction” (Neale & Vincent, 2017, 426). Recent calls to harness Indigenous bushfire management techniques in Australia and growing interest in Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) in land and resource management globally are examples of this trend and represent important steps forward in improved recognition of Indigenous peoples. However, reaching for Indigenous knowledge when western knowledge and systems fail is to treat it as a gap-filler or additive (Starblanket & Stark, 2018, 170). While recognition is good and conversations around partnering with First peoples to resolve macro-problems are a step in the right direction, Indigenous knowledge cannot be treated as an extractable resource to be managed and used apart from the place, people and culture that generated it.
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ItemSamoa’s New Labour Trade(Centre for Samoan Studies, National University of Samoa, 2021)This article explores the context of aspirations to become seasonal workers in New Zealand or Australia and the experiences of those who worked in New Zealand under the Recognized Seasonal Employer scheme. It is based on detailed interviews with 24 people who were seasonal workers or who aspired to become seasonal workers in 2020, and on other relevant sources. The focus of the article is the recruitment processes and the economic, social and historical contexts of seasonal work in Samoa.
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ItemCinderella of the south seas? Virtuous victims, empowerment and other fables of development feminism(Elsevier, 2020-05-01)The developmental logic underpinning ‘Cinderella projects,’ in which women of the Global South are targeted for interventions intended to tap and expand their unrecognized economic and entrepreneurial potential. This version of ‘development feminism,’ constructs its female objects as both impoverished victim-subjects and as nascent market-oriented actors. Moreover, development feminist discourse, grounded as it is in seemingly universal ideas of women’s oppression, equality and economic participation, generates paradoxical effects in different social contexts. Drawing on ethnographic examples from Polynesia, the paper illustrates how a homogeneous concept of ‘woman’ makes little sense because local gender categories are complexly intersected by age, socio-economic status as well as by hereditary rank. As a result, development feminisms’ gender interventions transform local individual subjectivities in novel and often unexpected ways, producing new forms of inequality while obscuring others.
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ItemEnglish teacher education in the time of COVID: Australian teacher educators share their experiences(Australian Association for the Teaching of English (AATE), 2021-12-01)Many studies have repor ted the disruption and anxiety associated with initial teacher education programs across the world lurching in and out of online and remote teaching because of COVID-19 related lockdowns. Few studies, however, have homed in on the day-to-day experiences of teacher educators in par ticular disciplinary specialisms or ‘methods’, or explored how these disciplinary contexts shaped the experience of teaching in the time of COVID-19. This essay presents extended autobiographical accounts of four English teacher educators from different universities on the east coast of Australia, who taught English methods during lockdowns in 2020 and 2021. The study affirms the uniqueness of their experiences, but also recognises four key dimensions of the English teacher educators’ work: relational work; curriculum and pedagogical work; identity work; and professional learning. The study has implications for how English teacher education responds to the challenges of teaching during and beyond the pandemic.uring and beyond the pandemic.
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ItemDancing with Covid: Choreographing examinations in pandemic times(SAGE PUBLICATIONS LTD, 2021-07)In this paper, we explore the improvisations made in examination practices in higher education during the pandemic of 2020. Drawing on STS, we start from the theoretical assumption that examinations constitute an obligatory passage point in universities and colleges: a sacred point which students need to pass if they want to gain recognized qualifications. We base our analysis of higher education examinations on cases from six countries around the world: Australia, Belgium, Chile, India, Sweden and the UK. We use the analytical heuristic of choreography to follow the movements, tensions and resistance of the ‘emergency examinations’ as well as the re-orderings of actors and stages that have inevitably occurred. In our analytical stories we see the interplay between the maintenance of fixed and sacred aspects of examinations and the fluidity of improvisations aimed at meeting threats of spreading Covid-19. These measures have forced the complex network of examinations both to reinforce some conventional actors and to assemble new actors and stages, thus creating radically new choreographies. Although higher education teaching and didactics are being framed as a playground for pedagogical innovation with digital technologies, it is clear from our data that not all educational activities can be so easily replicated.
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ItemAccess versus integration: the benevolent undermining of an Indian desegregation policy(Routledge, 2021)Efforts to desegregate schools have consistently been undermined by privileged parents finding ways to avoid undesirable schools. In some contexts, a more complex picture is emerging, where ‘progressive’ privileged parents choose ‘diverse’ schools but still reproduce segregation. We demonstrate how the desegregation aims of an Indian education policy are similarly undermined by seemingly well-intentioned privileged actors. India’s Right to Education Act of 2009 requires private schools to educate disadvantaged children for free. The architects of this policy imagined that it would not only provide access to quality education for disadvantaged children, but also desegregate schools. Beneficiaries of the policy share the policymakers’ vision of desegregation. However, various elite and middle-class actors prioritise access over integration, and assert that segregated classrooms may be in the best interests of underprivileged children. This highlights how desegregation policies can fail not just as a result of direct opposition but also through discourses of benevolence.
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ItemAnthropocene Disease and the Undead in V Wars(Aeternum, 2021)This article discusses the recent television series V Wars (2019) that has had little academic attention to date. In V Wars, vampirism is a virus released into earth systems because of glacial deterioration due to global warming. This outbreak turns (some) humans into vampires, culminating in a species war that pits surviving humans against vampires. Focussing on the series’ unique representation of the spread of vampirism around ice melt, this article argues that V Wars’ vampires are distinctly ecological in nature. Drawing on Priscilla Wald’s theorisation of the outbreak narrative, this article argues V Wars’ representation of the vampire as a spreader of disease demonstrates the close link between human disruption of the Anthropocene and public health, since exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic, while also illustrating intricate and inextricable entanglements between humans and myriad earth others from which crisis can stem. As a vector of contagion, the vampire in V Wars promotes an understanding of Nature and potential virus-related disasters that lie in wait if humankind does not adopt better environmental practices, pertinent for our current era of pandemics, extinctions, ecological collapse and beyond. V Wars thus illustrates the need to cultivate better, more conscious relations with earth systems and nonhuman others—measures necessary to mitigate and manage the emergence of future Anthropocene disease.
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ItemVegetarian vampires of the Anthropocene: Re-reading the animal blood diet in Stephenie Meyer's Twilight Saga(Monash University, 2020-12-04)This article discusses Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Saga (2005- 8) against the backdrop of the Anthropocene and takes as its focus the depiction of vampires who choose to consume animal blood, instead of human blood. This article argues that we can read Meyer’s formulation of a so-called vampiric vegetarian diet as inflecting the concerns of a modern vegetarian diet, which stem from our ecological era. In the saga's portrayal of a vampiric vegetarian diet, this article finds a model for engaging with nonhuman species and the environment, that is necessary if we are to survive the Anthropocene.
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ItemWhy Arts graduates are needed now more than ever(Australian College of Educators, 2020)An Arts degree prepares students to think, critique and persuade, especially within the grey areas where there is no single right answer. Through the Arts degree, students learn to assess views and concepts from all sides, before formulating their own conclusion. An Arts education does not simply impart knowledge for future regurgitation, rather it helps students in learning to learn.
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Item‘Ghost’ Leaders: Enabling and Creating Student Voice and Agency in the University Space(Australian College of Educators, 2021)Beyond teaching, tertiary educators and academics assume the responsibilities of researchers, mentors, scholars, and developers. They contribute as leaders and intellectuals who influence the institutional practices, and work towards accessibility and equity of resources. They offer students a variety of opportunities to learn and participate in the academic community while upholding high standards. Furthermore, they create and support future leaders. In this way, as an intellectual and collective enterprise, teaching practice itself takes up the leadership role within its own space and scope. Such leadership is acknowledged within the university settings. In recent times, ‘third space’ academics are also emerging as leaders within higher education settings. However, the leadership that happens within the ‘third space academia’ in higher education is often unacknowledged and unrecognised. These ‘ghost’ leaders are also significant for creating strong parallel links between students, academics, and professional staff within a higher education context. This project is a thought-provoking example of a ‘non-visible’ leadership role often undertaken by third space academics in the higher education settings.