[csaa-forum] csaa-forum Digest, Vol 131, Issue 35

[Andrew Hickey]

Dear Jon,
Your earlier notes regarding the seeming incompatibility of the list of
keynote speakers for this year's CSAA Conference have indeed resonated,
even though visible posts in response may not have been forthcoming. While
some genuine debate is nice to see on the List, perhaps it is a
combination of factors, and not just 'the neoliberal turn' (as clumsy as
that concept is) that have led to a silence on this issue.

The nature of Australian Cultural Studies is, as you keenly note, one of
distance and outliers. This has resulted in something unique in the way
that Cultural Studies comes to be done in Australia and the sorts of
topics of inquiry it finds itself confronting. It also occurs that
Cultural Studies' dynamism has often come from Australia's regional and
non-metroplitan Universities and is the work of scholarly Œtroublemakers'.
This is something that should be remembered, and just as with the
formation of British Cultural Studies, Australian Cultural Studies has a
distinction of having had prominence within and access to sites of
scholarly interest other disciplines have ignored. But it should also be
noted that dynamic and important work is continuing to be done by
emerging and talented newer voices in Cultural Studies. That familiar
modes of address and sites of discussion aren¹t as prolific as they
perhaps once were isn¹t a sign of waning interest or neglect. (From the
Association¹s perspective, the Intermezzo Symposia convened through
2013-14 stand as testament to the talent that younger members of
our community possess. There was some genuinely inspiring leadership and
scholarship provoked by ECRs during these events).

It also occurs that these are 'tough times' for universities (and
academics in the humanities) and like previous tough times, uncertainty
around the position Cultural Studies scholars hold in the academy surfaces
in the form of some of the things you highlight below. I would like to
think though that it isnt solely through a sense of fear or reverance (or
whatever this might be) that newer members of the Cultural Studies
community have 
chosen not to respond; if this is the case, we most certainly have
a problem for what might continue to be called Cultural Studies and how it
is we might regard our community¹s Œelders'. Perhaps it is more through
just being plain 'flat out', focussed on research and teaching targets and
increasing pressure to engage with community in defined ways and undertake
service that leaves most of us with precious little time to engage in
discussion such as this (and if this too is the case, we still have a
problem, but one that presents on different terrain). In short; this is a
moment of 
intensity and uncertainty in the academy that I think can be extrapolated
to the list of keynotes for this year¹s conference, but not for the reason
you identify. 

To get to the point; I am quite sure that there has been no cynical
intent on behalf of this year's conference organisers to exclude or
marginalise. All are 'good folk' (to use a phrase I think is one of the
best endorsements one can make of a colleague), with a genuine desire to
do something interesting and innovative. The people involved are aware of
the nature of Cultural Studies, the place of the periphery in Cultural
Studies' history and how this relates to the theme for this year's event.
That the speakers list includes people from a couple of close-by locations
primarily is, I gather, largely one of pragmatism; having spoken directly
with the organisers I know that the cost of having people from further
away has been an issue, but this aside, the list of speakers is regardless
a good group, well qualified to speak on the topic of 'minor culture'.

The CSAA has engaged in a productive discussion with our colleagues at the
University of Melbourne in planning for this year's conference and the
sorts of themes it might cover. The announcement of the theme for the 2015
Conference noted during last year's conference in Wollongong was met with
significant interest, and the reception of this topic since has been
highly positive. I realise that this isnt the point of your concern, but
note that it isnt through any attempt to enforce a division that this
year's conference or list of speakers has been determined. From the CSAA's
perspective, it should always be the prerogative of the convenors of
the conference to determine who will be invited to deliver keynote
addresses and why. As the individuals responsible for conceptualising the
theme, identifying expertise for potential addresses and (as is becoming
increasingly significant) cobbling together the funds to convene these
events, perhaps it should be respected that there are some very good
reasons for why things are being done the way they are.

On a final note; this dialogue is a very positive dialogue and discussions
like this should feature within this listserv more regularly. I hope that
members and list subscribers will take on the points noted here and reply.
I also note that a sigificant mark of distinction in the CSAA is that of
its 'care' and collegiality. The Association has worked very hard to
ensure that a sense of collegiality is present amongst the membership, and
in this regard I hope that dialogue such as this will indeed continue,
without fear of offence or ridicule, regardless of the reputation of the
discussants and their status.

Andrew Hickey 
President of the CSAA



Dr Andrew Hickey, Ph.D
Senior Lecturer (Communications)
School of Arts and Communications
Faculty of Business, Education, Law and Arts
University of Southern Queensland
Toowoomba | Queensland | 4350 | Australia
Ph: +61 7 4631 2337 | Fax: +61 7 4631 2828 |

Email: Andrew.Hickey at usq.edu.au <mailto:XXXXXXX at usq.edu.au>

- President, Cultural Studies Association of Australasia









On 27/03/2015 1:54 pm, "csaa-forum-request at lists.cdu.edu.au"
<csaa-forum-request at lists.cdu.edu.au> wrote:

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>Today's Topics:
>
>   1. Re: Call for Papers: 'Minor Culture' CSAA Conference 2015
>      (Jon Stratton)
>
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>Message: 1
>Date: Fri, 27 Mar 2015 11:54:34 +0800
>From: Jon Stratton <jon_stratton22 at outlook.com.au>
>Subject: Re: [csaa-forum] Call for Papers: 'Minor Culture' CSAA
>	Conference 2015
>To: "csaa-forum at lists.cdu.edu.au" <csaa-forum at lists.cdu.edu.au>
>Message-ID: <SNT150-W85D903407C19E5D0E8F753C7090 at phx.gbl>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252"
>
>
>
>
>Dear List members,
>
>
>       This is
>really a musing about the reaction to my email expressing concern about
>the
>geographical focus of the speakers listed for the upcoming conference.  I
>have had a number of responses to my email,
>all supportive; but none publicly on the List. These responses have come
>from
>people I know in academic capacities, people who trust that I would not
>pass on
>their emails or publicly reveal their names.  There have been no public
>responses at all. 
>
>
>
>I wondered about this and so started asking why it might
>be the case that people were not prepared to publicly endorse the
>comments in
>my email.   The replies were always the
>same: that academics down the food chain were worried about offending
>senior
>academics who had power over their jobs, or potential employment.  The
>neoliberal turn in higher ed, which has
>seen tenure all but disappear, which has seen many universities revising
>their
>staff lists through ?spill and fills?, and which has generally made
>academic
>work increasingly insecure not least with the spread of contracts over
>continuing positions, seems to have had an unedifying effect on
>disciplines.  
>
>
>In Australian cs, at least, it seems that hierarchy has
>become entrenched, certainly in the understanding of postgrads and ECRs.
>People fear upsetting senior academics and
>worry that other ECRs will be given preference if they speak out of turn.
> I don?t know if this is the fear of the
>powerless or if there is actual practice that feeds this fear.  Either
>way, it is a troubling phenomenon.
>
>
>Not least because
>of the history of cs, because of what cs always prided itself as being.
>For me, anyway, Stuart Hall and the work of
>the BCCCS, was central to my understanding of what cs is.  For Hall and
>his colleagues, cs was a
>situated practice, an ongoing work which critically engaged with daily
>life.  CS addressed the issues and
>silences of minorities, espoused values of egalitarianism and democracy
>in the
>face of those who attempt to minoritise and exclude.  CS has a tradition
>of a generation or more
>now of critiquing class and race, and the subordination of women, and more
>recently those minoritised for other reasons such as disability.
>
>
>But I?m sure that I am telling you things you all already
>know.  What I have watched happening to
>Australian cs over the last ten and more years has been a loss of a
>political
>edge.  Now, it seems, this is coming home
>to roost in unfortunate ways.
>
>
>I have always thought of cs academics as trouble makers?or
>seen as trouble makers by those who hold power.
>We trouble their sense of rightful power and their easy assumptions of
>what in their eyes the world should look like.
>It worries me that, at least in the perceptions of postgrads and ECRs,
>the traditional hierarchical structure is being replicated in Australian
>cs.  It would seem that neoliberal
>practices have dealt a crucial blow to people?s confidence to speak out
>and
>that, perhaps, senior cs academics have not realised this.  Perhaps this
>is a situation we should strive to rectify?
>
>
>Personally, if their work was of an appropriate standard
>I would prefer to employ a trouble maker because they are the people that
>get
>things done.  They are the people who
>kick back against the impositions of the powerful.
>
>
>Anyway, just a few thoughts.
>
>
>Thanking you all for your time,
>
>
>Jon.          
>
>
> 
>From: jon_stratton22 at outlook.com.au
>To: timothy.laurie at unimelb.edu.au; csaa-forum at lists.cdu.edu.au
>Date: Sat, 21 Mar 2015 16:45:52 +0800
>Subject: Re: [csaa-forum] Call for Papers: 'Minor Culture' CSAA
>Conference 2015
>
>
>
>
>Dear Rimi and Timothy,
>     Thank you for organising this conference and for the splendid list
>of speakers. My apologies for not having attended the annual conferences
>recently. If I had I may already know the answer to my concern. It is
>that all the speakers, with one exception, come from universities in
>Sydney and Melbourne--unless there are some changes in affiliation of
>which I am not aware. To put it differently, there are, I think, no
>speakers listed from Adelaide, Perth, Darwin, or, with the very
>honourable exception of Graeme Turner, from Brisbane. Nor are any
>speakers listed from Aotearoa/New Zealand. This makes the conference
>appear terribly Sydney/Melbourne-centric. I am sure that the two of you,
>with degrees from a Perth uni and an Adelaide uni, can aapreciate how
>this feels to those of us who live and work outside of the traditional
>core nexus. This seems to me an issue of particular relevance given the
>exciting topic of the conference. Minor Culture, related to matters of
>place, ident
> ity and marginality, are of great importance to those of us in places
>still identified as peripheral to the old Australian core. Is there a
>reason that I don't know about why the conference has been configured in
>such a traditional and exclusive a way?
>
>To remind list members of a small portion of a complex and diverse
>history; Perth figured large in the early development of Cultural Studies
>in Australia not least because the city's historically marginal status in
>Australia replicated the early concerns of Cultural Studies with
>marginality. The Australian Journal of Cultural Studies was founded in
>Perth. The journal's home subsequently shifted to the United States and
>it became the journal we know of as Cultural Studies. Continuum: Journal
>of Media and Cultural Studies, which I believe still has a link with
>CSAA, was founded in Perth and its senior editor still works in Perth.
>
>With best wishes,
>Jon
>
>From: timothy.laurie at unimelb.edu.au
>To: csaa-forum at lists.cdu.edu.au
>Date: Fri, 20 Mar 2015 02:06:39 +0000
>Subject: [csaa-forum] Call for Papers: 'Minor Culture' CSAA Conference
>2015
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>Call
> for Papers:
>
> 
>
>MINOR CULTURE
>
>Conference of the Cultural Studies Association of Australasia, Dec 1-Dec
>3, 2015 
>
>
> 
>
>Minor Culture
>creates a space for inter-disciplinary dialogues around the study of
> place, identity and marginality, and addresses research on everyday
>cultural productions and media texts, cultural policy and discourses of
>sustainability, digital life and creative industries, and public cultures
>in the Asia-Pacific region. The conference
> also invites responses to the following questions:
>
> 
>
>?               
>How are minor cultures inhabited? When do minor cultures become
> uninhabitable? 
>
>?               
>Is the concept of minority still useful in explaining contemporary
> forms of cultural marginality?
>
>?               
>How do categories such as indigeneity and Aboriginality, gender
> and sexuality, class, disability, race and citizenship produce
>minoritising effects? How might these categories change when mobilised
>through governmental discourses, newsmedia, and everyday usage?
>
>?               
>Who narrates experiences of minoritisation? For whom are these
> narratives produced? How is minoritarianism articulated through film,
>music, television, literature, performance, and digital cultures?
>
>
>?               
>In what ways do practices of government and cultural policy
> shape relationships between local, national and transnational cultures?
>To what extent are legal regulations implicated in the formation of
>minoritarian practices?
>
>?               
>How do new minor or major cultural formations emerge? Through
> which means do political practices resist or intervene in these
>formations?
>
>?               
>Do minor cultures require novel theoretical tools or research
> methodologies? What do experimental approaches to cultural research look
>like? What alternative kinds of knowledge could such approaches make
>available?
>
>
>?               
>Is minority a humanist concept? What place could majority and
> minority have within post-anthropocentric thinking?
>
>?               
>And when do minor cultures cease to be minor?
>
> 
>
> 
>
>Time & Location
>
>University of Melbourne, Parkville Campus
>
>Nov. 30: Prefix Postgraduate Day (incl. workshops on theory and
>methodology from senior cultural studies researchers)
>
>Dec 1-3
>Minor Culture conference
>
> 
>
>Keynote Speakers
>
> 
>Distinguished Professor Ien Ang (Professor of Cultural Studies,
> Institute for Culture and Society)
> 
>Professor Jose Neil C. Garcia (Professor
> of English, Creative Writing and Comparative Literature at the
>University of the Philippines Diliman, Quezon City)
>
> 
>
>Professor Meaghan Morris (Professor
> of Gender & Cultural Studies, University of Sydney)
>
> 
>
>Invited speakers also include
>Dennis Altman, Tony Bennett, Catherine Driscoll, Ghassan Hage, Koichi
>Iwabuchi, Peter Jackson, Stephen Muecke, Greg Noble, Elspeth Probyn,
>Katrina Schlunke,
> and Graeme Turner.
>
> 
>
> 
>
>Abstracts
>
>Please send an abstract (250 words max), a title for the presentation (15
>min max), and a short bio (30 words max) including your name, email
>address, degree level
> and institutional affiliation to: csaa2015 at lists.unimelb.edu.au
>(both in the body of the email and as an attachment) by June 1, 2015.
>
>
>Presenters will be notified of their acceptance no later than July 1.
>
> 
>
>Conference Co-convenors
>
>Dr. Rimi Khan & Dr. Timothy Laurie (Screen & Cultural Studies, University
>of Melbourne)
>
> 
>
>Conference Organising Committee at the University of Melbourne
>
>Assoc. Prof. Chris Healy (Screen & Cultural Studies)
>
>Assoc. Prof. Fran Martin (Screen & Cultural Studies)
>
>Assoc. Prof. Scott McQuire (Media and Communications)
>
>Professor Angela Ndalianis (Screen & Cultural Studies)
>
>Professor Nikos Papastergiadis (Director of the Research Unit in Public
>Cultures)
>
>Assoc. Prof. Audrey Yue (Screen & Cultural Studies)
>
> 
>
> 
>
>Feel free to email any questions about the conference to
>csaa2015 at lists.unimelb.edu.au
>
> 
>
>Website URL tbc, but for general information about CSAA, see
>www.csaa.asn.au
>
> 
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>Dr. Timothy Laurie |
>Lecturer in Cultural Studies
>
>Room 237
>John Medley Building
>
>The School of Culture and Communication
>
>THE UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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>
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>End of csaa-forum Digest, Vol 131, Issue 35
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