[csaa-forum] early career academics and cult stud

[Joshua Green]

Anna, it is precisely your sort of experience that intrigued me.  Coming 
from a media studies background, my undergraduate training occured 
without much regard to 'cultural studies' at all, either formally or 
personally.  Now working within the Creative Industries Faculty at QUT I 
have somehow found myself either exposed to or thinking about cultural 
studies a whole lot more.  All the while I'm not really sure if I've 
ever 'done' cultural studies or whether I might be in some way 
practicing it now as I'm not entirely sure what it means any more to 
work within a single discipline and whether arguments about these sorts 
of distinctions are useful.   It appears to me now, however, 
particularly in Queensland, that creative industries is a discipline 
engaged in a dialogue with Australian cultural studies.  One of our 
orignial intentions in posting Simon's quote as a provocation for the 
September event was to start to consider what this dialogue might 
produce for young academics, those of us who may not be sure exactly 
what we've trained in or what disciplines such as cultural studies or CI 
may offer.  I suppose we thought we might prod this dialogue along.   At 
the same time we thought we'd make an opportunity, as Melissa has said 
previously, to have some sort of debate about the future of cultural 
studies that isn't overshadowed by the senior figures, I suppose taking 
advantage of new confusions such as yours and mine. 

Joshua Green

anna poletti wrote:

>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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