[csaa-forum] early career academics and cult stud

[anna poletti]

I'm going to have a bash at responding to the original post, and offer a
rumination on what it might mean to do cultural studies in an Australian
institution at the moment from my perspective as an 'early career academic'.

To be honest, I'm not even sure if I'm 'doing' cultural studies, or have
ever done it, given that I've never attended an Australian university which
actually has a cultural studies dept or defined cult stud stream. I did a
wonderful buffet style BA at La Trobe, which included a good smattering of
challenging teaching in gender studies, philosophy and the English dept.
Suvendrini Perera nearly blew my head off with an exceptionally rigorous
course on representations of Asia in Australian literature. Chris Palmer
taught a great subject on postmodernism through science fiction. I graduated
with honours in English, with an accompanying major in Philosophy. There was
no mention of cultural studies as a discipline throughout my undergrad -
which ended in 2002.

I've been a PhD candidate in the School of Language and Media (perhaps
that's cultural studies?) at the University of Newcastle for nearly four
years, and am about to submit a thesis which is part empirical research into
a little theorised site of Australian life writing (zine culture) and part
close reading of how those texts deploy narrative, materiality and specific,
idiosyncratic modes of textual distribution. This research has been
conducted within the context of the English program, and under the primary
supervision of a publisher/researcher dedicated to Australian literature. My
peers in the dept. at Newcastle are predominantly creative writing
postgrads, and researchers working on established genres and fields such as
poetry, published novels and film. Perhaps in response to this, I've styled
myself as an autobiography researcher. Although this doesn't seem to quite
fit with how any of supervisors think of the project. Last year I delivered
a paper on my work at an international autobiography conference which was
dominated by Australians. I didn't find any talk of Australian cultural
studies there either. 

I _think_ I'm about to have my first definable (and defined) moment of
cultural studies next week, when I give a guest lecture in a course on
Australian Popular Culture at my university. The lecture is to be on
Australian zine culture and notions of the cultural underground, and to be
honest, I'm finding it really difficult to write.

I'm hesitant to draw any conclusions from this little narrative I've posted
here; except to say that development of my career (and I am most
definitively an 'early career academic', with few teaching opportunities,
under the pressure of four year candidature, and attached to a financially
troubled institution who will cut me loose upon submission) seems to have
been shaped by factors other than cultural studies. Yet the distinct lack of
a discrete 'field' where my research really 'fits' leads to me feel some
affiliation with it, hence my lurking subscription to this list.

It's difficult then, for me to contribute to a discussion regarding the
status of Australian Cultural Studies, and given that I am a recent graduate
and current research student, I suspect that my alienation from any sense of
that field may not be unique. I do wonder whether only certain institutions
are producing and developing 'cultural studies thinkers', and whether one's
'coming to cultural studies' is partly a matter of early-development fate,
when your path is to an extent set on your form for university application,
and disciplines and fields of study are almost irrelevant for those
approaching a BA.

Anna Poletti. 

    

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