[csaa-forum] Monthly MACS - Brisbane - 12 October 2007

[John Gunders]

Hi all

 

Apologies for cross-posting, and for that fact that this notice will be
of more relevance to people in the Brisbane area.

 

But please note that the MACS group, which has been running (on and off)
for a couple of years, now has a Facebook presence. If you are on
Facebook, and not in Brisbane, but would like to get involved in the
discussion, feel free to drop by and leave a comment, or join (or start)
a discussion. You can find us here:
http://uqedu.facebook.com/group.php?gid=5017818292. 

 

Monthly MACS

MACS is a cross-institutional network of early career researchers,
postgraduate students, postdocs, RAs and sessional staff working in
Media and Cultural Studies across Brisbane. Our meetings aim to provide
a regular platform for discussing issues which relate to these roles as
well as an opportunity to contribute to wider debates taking place in
the field.

The MACS group is an attempt to create a space for discussing everything
to do with our work aside from the end product, to share accumulated
knowledge and resources to gain insight into the options available
within our field of research.

October MACS
12 October 2007, 2:30pm - 4:00pm

Seminar Room, Level Four, Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies, The
University of Queensland

Special Guest: Prof John Quiggin

The final MACS for 2007 will take up the recent debates that have been
occurring in various places-notably on the Cult-Stud and Fibreculture
lists-about Facebook and other social networking sites, and address what
has become almost a mini-moral panic about the values and pressures of
maintaining an online presence through SNS, blogs, online publications,
and so on, and how this helps or impacts on our ability to research,
write, and develop professional contacts.

As one comment on the Cult-Stud debate put it:

"Apart from narcissism, the reason that people are prepared to promote
themselves on facebook, youtube, myspace and the like is because they
hope that by being in on the ground floor they will have a temporal
advantage over their competition and so get a little in front to sell
their product, which may be themselves. It's like those saddo phd
students who do poster sessions at those enormous us conferences, or who
creep round the conference hotels in the early hours sticking their
inflated cvs (resumes) under the doors of sleeping professors. Harsh but
true. People don't like to have a sense of themselves that looks like
that but it's actually how people behave."

Mel Gregg describes this as "self-branding," and while many people
voluntarily spend hours maintaining their online contacts, will those
who don't be left behind? Is maintaining a credible online presence
something that postgrads and ECRs are now obliged to do as part of their
professional development, along with publishing, attending international
conferences, collecting glowing teaching evaluations, and getting
administrative experience?

To address these and other questions, we have a special guest speaker:
Professor John Quiggin has regularly been ranked as Australia's most
productive and highly-cited economist. He is an ARC Federation Fellow in
Economics and Political Science based in the School of Political Science
& International Studies at the University of Queensland, and Director of
the Risk and Sustainable Management Group.

John is perhaps best known however for his blog (http://johnquiggin.com
<http://johnquiggin.com/> ) through which he has been commenting on
Australian and world events for over five years; his contributions to
the highly-respected international cultural/political blog, Crooked
Timber (http://crookedtimber.org <http://crookedtimber.org/> ); and for
his regular opinion pieces in The Financial Review.

Please come along and join in the conversation.

The aim of these events is to keep abreast of current debates in media
and cultural studies as well as to catch up with colleagues working
around Brisbane. More details here:
http://www.cccs.uq.edu.au/index.html?page=61795&pid=21774
<http://www.cccs.uq.edu.au/index.html?page=61795&pid=21774> 

Where: CCCS Seminar Room, Level 4, Forgan Smith Tower, St Lucia Campus,
University of Queensland, followed by drinks at the UQ staff club.

Getting here: We encourage people to use public transport to reach the
University where possible - see here for more details:
http://www.translink.com.au/uq <http://www.translink.com.au/uq> 

-------------------------------------------------------------
John Gunders, BA(Hons), MA, Grad Cert Education
Project Officer, ARC Cultural Research Network
Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies
The University of Queensland
(07) 3346 9765
0402 650 628
j.gunders at uq.edu.au
www.uq.edu.au/crn/

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