December 5-7 2002, The University of Melbourne

The question of culture and its uses is at the heart of cultural studies as both an intellectual and critical enterprise. Its foundational move to reconceive culture as a network of lived -- rather than just textual -- practices with social -- rather than just aesthetic -- meanings has necessarily oriented cultural studies toward a central concern with the utilitarian. Whether in its pioneering analyses of working class life and urban subcultures; its general address of the popular and the everyday, its concern with cultural productions of identity; or its attention to social institutions, industry and governmentality; cultural studies has sought to understand and explore culture as it is actively and variously used. In turn, cultural studies has been equally engaged with questions of its own utility. From its broad status as a politically-motivated critical practice to its recent forays into policy studies and the development of neo-vocational dialogues with creative industries, cultural studies has been defined, understood and 'sold' as an intellectual project with real world uses and effects.

The utilitarian impulse of cultural studies has been an undoubted critical strength, enabling new forms and applications of cultural critique. It has, however, been equally perceived as a limitation that, by some accounts, instates a populist relativism and, by others, a wholesale adoption and academic translation of consumerist imperatives. What sense can we make of the shifting intersections between cultural studies and notions of use? Is the value of cultural studies fully dependent on its own utility? What will be the uses of cultural studies as we move into the 21st century?

The Conference committee invites proposals for panels, symposia, individual papers or other formats to be included in the general stream. Panels that bring together a number of papers based on a common theme or topic are especially encouraged.

AsiaPacifiQueer II – Report

University of Queensland, 3-4 December 2001.

The APQ2 conference on the theme of 'Media, Technology and Queer Cultures' took place at Emmanuel College on the St Lucia campus of the University of Queensland on 3 and 4 December 2001. The conference featured eight different panels where a total of eighteen presenters touched on the multiple ways in which recent advances in technology and mass communications are impacting upon queer identities and communities in the region. The organisers were particularly delighted to be able to welcome members of Brisbane's own Aboriginal queer group 'Us Mob'. Colin Ross, one of Us Mob's convenors introduced a video about the problems faced by Aboriginal 'sister girls' and led a discussion on issues relating to marginalisation of queer-identified Aboriginal people both within their own communities and within the wider Australian queer world.

Another highlight of the event was the participation of film directors Tony Ayres (Australia) and Richard Fung (Canada). The Sunday-night screening of Tony and Richard's films at the State Library was very well attended and the audience really appreciated the chance to discuss themes from the films with the directors in the Q & A session after the screening. Both Richard and Tony also attended the morning session of the conference where they discussed their past and current projects in more detail.

Many people commented that APQ provided both a rich and relaxed environment for discussing issues of both academic and community concern. There was an impressive graduate student turn out both among presenters and attendees and this underlies the importance of one of APQ's underlying mission statements: to provide a stimulating and supportive environment for the development of queer studies among graduates and early career researchers. APQ2 co-organiser and postgraduate representative Olivia Khoo explains below why research colloquia such as APQ are so important for early career researchers.

I attended both APQI and APQ2 this year – as a presenter at the first conference and as a conference co-organisor and postgraduate representative in the second. From the perspective of a postgraduate student, both conferences provided extremely interesting and rewarding experiences. The diverse range of papers presented, utilising various theoretical and methodological approaches gave attendees researching gender and sexual difference in the Asia-Pacific useful points of comparison and divergence.

Two significant things that I took from the conference were the importance of a close relationship between researchers of sexuality with the communities they are working with, as well as the importance of keeping theory and practice intimately connected. The presence of 'Us Mob,' the indigenous group from the Fraser Island area, who opened the conference, was significant, in terms of the insight they provided on a rarely discussed subject – the presence of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered indigenous individuals. Their presence at the conference was also an important reminder of the continued collaborations that need to be forged not just between indigenous communities and white Australia, but also with groups from other Asian and Pacific diasporic communities and countries.

In order to further consolidate APQ’s links with various queer communities, the Outreach Officer of the Sydney 2003 Gay Games, Suganthi Chandramohan, discussed the difficulties involved in outreaching target groups such as women and those from the Asia Pacific. This was a chance for Suganthi to make contacts with researchers and activists working in or on the area, as well as for researchers themselves to be made aware of the multiple difficulties involved in making visible the presence of marginalised members of the queer community.

As mentioned, the participation of filmmakers Richard Fung and Tony Ayres at the conference was a highlight. A chaired dialogue between Richard and Tony on the first day of APQ2 engaged conference delegates with the important requirements of the intersections between theory and practice. Richard Fung was extremely generous in his participation at the conference, attending all of the sessions and providing delegates outside of North America with useful points of comparison and departure. From a postgraduate perspective, it was extremely heartening to see someone as accomplished and respected as Richard Fung (as both a theorist/critic and a practitioner) learn from, and share with, all at the conference, regardless of the stage of their career.

Indeed, postgraduate presenters had much to offer the conference – providing papers on lesbian fandom of yuri (lesbian-themed) manga, to reading the significance of hairstyles (in particular the ‘long queue’) in Jackie Chan’s Shanghai Noon. A Cultural Studies Association of Australia (CSAA) Small Grant provided assistance to some postgraduate students presenting papers at APQ2. In particular, it aided Wendy Pearson and Susan Knabe (University of Wollongong) who gave a joint presentation on 'slash' (homoerotic fan fiction) in the Australian context. As conference co-organisor and postgraduate representative, I was also aided by the CSAA Small Grant. I presented a paper on behalf of Greg Leong on internalised racism and the work of Chinese Australian artists such as William Yang. Reading Greg’s highly personal (and personalised) paper was a truly queer experience!

APQ2 provided an extremely congenial environment where postgraduate students were able to mix with academics, filmmakers and artists working on gender and same-sex issues in or on the Asia-Pacific region. The network of scholars now involved in APQ is growing, and creating an invaluable and supportive community for those working on areas that have been traditionally marginalised in other academic arenas. The importance of being part of this growing network and the kind of support it brings, is extremely useful and necessary to early career researchers who are newly entering such a rich and diverse field of study.

Finally, the APQ organisers would like to thank all who contributed to the success of the conference. The Cultural Studies Association of Australia provided a small grant that offset the travel costs of several graduate-student presenters. The Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies at the University of Queensland and the Research School for Pacific and Asian Research at ANU offered small grants to offset venue hire and catering costs. The State Library of Queensland provided the venue for the screening of Tony and Richard's films for free. The conference on 'Transforming Cultures/Shifting Boundaries' held immediately before APQ2 offered funds to help bring Richard Fung to Australia, as did the Canadian Studies Association of Australia and New Zealand and the Canadian High Commission. Tony Ayres' attendance was funded by the Australian Studies Centre at the University of Queensland. We are also very grateful to the Intersections editors Carolyn Brewer and Anne-Marie Medcalf for once again offering to produce a special APQ2 edition of the journal that will enable the papers from the conference to reach the wider audience that they deserve.

– Mark McLelland and Olivia Khoo

Historical Database of WA Cinema Venues

Spaces for Cultural Studies
Continued Expansion or Quiet Contraction?

Cultural studies is used to living with an expectation of continuous expansion. As student numbers have boomed over the last twenty years, and as publishers have scrambled to establish cultural studies lists, the fear has been only that the field may have become an empty ‘bandwagon’.

It is by no means certain, however, that spaces for cultural studies will continue to expand. An increasing emphasis on vocational outcomes in undergraduate teaching often favour more ‘applied’ areas such as mass communication, media studies or marketing and public relations.

At the same time – and relatedly – research management in universities is increasingly oriented to industry links and competition for external grants. There are some notable examples in Australia and New Zealand of adaptations by cultural studies to this new environment. But again, there are other fields or disciplines which appear more strategically placed.

In this context, I thought it might be interesting to conduct a survey of ‘spaces for cultural studies’ in Australian and New Zealand. Contributors were asked to write a short piece on the situation at their institution reflecting on some of the following questions:

• Has there been an expansion or contraction in the number of CS-identified staff?
• Are there more or less CS units on offer?
• What are the 'growth areas' in the institution? Are they friendly or hostile to CS?
• Have the employment prospects of postgraduate students in CS increased or declined?
• Is CS receiving institutional support?

A worrying side-effect of the parallel growth of strongly vocational offerings in many institutions is the increasing perception of cultural studies as merely ‘theroetical’. In his comments on the situation at Central Queensland, Warwick Mules also points out a gendering phenomenon, where hard vocationalism is defined as ‘male’ and cultural studies is defined as ‘female’.

Of course, the survey is only a snapshot of developments – certainly not fully representative. Further contributions on this issue would be more than welcome.

Many thanks to those who took the time to contribute – sometimes at the cost of some angst over how to balance honesty with institutional loyalties!

– Mark Gibson

Canberra

Cultural Studies is making slow inroads into tertiary curricula in the ACT. Its greatest presence is in the School of Creative Communication at the University of Canberra, where a cultural studies approach is woven into subjects on cultural identity and postcoloniality, contemporary cultural practice, creative writing and globalisation. The establishment of the School three years ago marked a small victory for those who had long sought to increase the amount of Cultural Studies taught in the University of Canberra’s Communication degree. Recently the School has abbreviated its name for expediency but continues its advocacy for Cultural Studies. It is working towards the establishment of a degree of Bachelor of Creative Communication that would incorporate a Cultural Studies sequence alongside the students’ acquisition of professional skills in TV production, new media or creative writing.

Cultural Studies is finally receiving some profile at the Australian National University (ANU), particularly in the area of Women’s Studies. The School of Humanities is offering a major in Gender, Sexuality and Culture that is described as being based on Gender Studies and Cultural Studies. Up until the mid to late-1990s, the ANU had no official cultural studies presence and only a handful of scholars working in the area in the Faculties, the Research Schools and the Humanities Research Institute. The higher profile is an advance, even if it remains the case that only a handful of people are teaching in the area. A subject in Cultural Studies offered through the English Department is being mooted for next year.

Finally, the Australian Defence Force Academy has a Centre for Australian Cultural Studies. Its main emphasis appears to be on the study of historically shaped myths of Australian culture and identity and key cultural and political events, particularly the Federation centenary and the republican debate. The Centre offers annual National Cultural Awards.

– Alaine Chanter

Central Queensland University

Cultural Studies has been established as an important discipline at Central Queensland University over the last decade. Indeed it would be fair to say that Cultural Studies academics have driven reform in the Humanities and Communication and Media areas, refashioning disciplines and forming new Schools while redefining older ones. Following restructuring of the faculties in 1998, Cultural Studies courses were split between the School of Humanities and the School of Contemporary Communication, with some bridging between them in the joint offering of a Film Studies major.

Students in the Humanities, Communication and Media Studies can now take courses with a strong Cultural Studies outlook in film, visual culture, popular culture, multimedia, and the history of media.

However, students are now starting to choose between two different Cultural Studies streams: an Arts focused stream based in the Humanities which emphasises text and critical theory, and a Communication and Media stream emphasising practical, vocational, contextual and institutional aspects of culture, especially as a set of productive media.

An interesting development has been the gendering of Cultural Studies at CQU. Because Cultural Studies courses in Communication and Media have been linked to multimedia and computer skills courses, they are now dominated by male students, whereas Cultural Studies in the Arts mode caters mainly for female students undertaking an Arts degree or training in teacher education.

Cultural Studies has expanded at CQU over the last decade. From an almost non-existent beginning, Cultural Studies is now seen as a leader-discipline in both the Humanities and Communication areas. However, Cultural Studies is currently undergoing something of a transformation. More and more academics trained in media and multimedia are being hired in the Communication area to cater for large enrolments in the skills based communication and multimedia courses. As media studies, Cultural Studies risks loosing touch with its critical and analytical base, becoming instead a training discipline in vocational outcomes. This is clearly driven by market imperatives and the shift from education to training in the university curriculum. This is not so much the case with Cultural Studies in the Humanities at CQU, which continues to offer courses in the critical and analytical mode.

Postgraduate enrolment in Cultural Studies is strong, with students undertaking research in a wide range of areas, including popular and documentary film, television, music, media, gender and cultural historical studies.

As for the future, Cultural Studies at CQU will continue so long as it retains a critical, theoretical and analytical framework. Without this, Cultural Studies will inevitably drift into full blown vocationalism, making it indistinguishable from a training discipline. Students will no longer be taught to think critically, politically and ethically (to reflect on the real) but trained to work functionally within a simulated work context (to prepare for the real). This vocationalisation of Cultural Studies, foreshadowed by the policy movement of the 1990s (which was, in turn, inspired by a particular reading of Foucault) needs to be tempered with a 'return' to critical studies through a boosting of the Humanities and its role in educating, as opposed to training students.

– Warwick Mules

Melbourne University

The Cultural Studies Program at the University of Melbourne was initiated in 1994 as an interdepartmental program of the Faculty of Arts that is anchored in and administered by the Department of English. It has developed over the past eight years as one of the Faculty’s most popular programs with a current enrolment in excess of 2000 undergraduate students across a curriculum of some 30 core and optional subjects. In 1996, MA and PhD research degrees in Cultural Studies were added to the Program and we presently have about 40 higher degree candidates.

In spite of—or in part, perhaps, because of—its success, the Program has experienced its share of problems. Some of these are structural and arise because of the rather unique organization of the Program. Today the Program has four full-time teaching staff that convene the majority of its core curricula but, with student numbers increasing at an average annual rate of 15-20%, the Program is substantially overstretched. In the absence of immediate funding increases, we have recently been forced to rationalize our syllabus and scale back subject offerings. In 2002, for example, to alleviate budget pressures, we cancelled three sessionally-staffed subjects and we are presently moving to change the status of our ‘anchor’ subject, “Contemporary Cultural Studies” from compulsory to optional in an effort to free up staffing arrangements. To minimize the negative impact of these contractions, we have endeavoured to ensure syllabus diversity by alternating subjects biennially and increasing our cross-listed subjects from other departments.

Another pressure currently facing the Program relates to self-definition and public profile. Readers of this newsletter would be only too aware that most undergraduate students coming to University are unfamiliar with Cultural Studies as an academic formation and so we have to work actively to produce and sell an identifiable representation to them—a labour made all the more difficult of course by the extreme heterogeneity of the field and its celebrated resistance to ready categorization. In the past, our Program has tended to mobilize the analysis of popular culture, especially popular media, as something of a marketable handle and a strategic entrée for students into the course. Thus, for example, our 1st year curricula consists of two foundational subjects: “Contemporary Cultura and Media” which introduces students to the field through a focus on various electronic and/or audio-visual media forms, and a follow-up companion subject, “Contemporary Culture and Everyday Life” which takes students further into such ‘hard core’ cultural studies terrain as the analysis of commodity cultures and social geographies. This strategy has been largely successful for us and has been instrumental in helping realize the substantial enrolment increases enjoyed by the Program in recent years. Last year, however, the Faculty of Arts initiated a separate Program in Media and Communications Studies. While this new Program is qualitatively different from ours—it is a separate degree Program that is oriented in significant ways to fee-paying students, is vocationally-directed with a strict quota entry and its primary critical orientation is toward traditions of mass communications research—its arrival has nevertheless signalled a shift in how students perceive and approach Cultural Studies. It is still too early to gauge the full measure of this change. We will of course continue to teach media studies as an integral component of the Program but we will need to find new ways of negotiating and taking advantage of the complementary and distinctive aspects of the two programs.

In large part, this process of redefinition is already framed and aided by the interdepartmental nature of the Cultural Studies Program and the substantial diversity of its syllabus. We have always emphasised interdisciplinarity as a key to both the critical distinctions and values of the Program and we generally frame our curricula accordingly. In particular, the Program has long prioritised a series of key interdisciplinary focus areas matched broadly to the major research interests and expertise of staff including: postcolonial studies, Asian cultural studies, queer theory, and new media studies. We have used these focus areas as important resources in building a distinctive profile for Cultural Studies at the University of Melbourne and so far this strategy has been broadly effective, especially at the level of postgraduate studies where we have attracted a number of national and international research students interested in working in these focus areas.

The period ahead is one of moderate optimism for the Program. While we hope to consolidate and build on our popularity with undergraduate students, it will be difficult for us to accommodate the sort of continuing increases in enrolment numbers that we have been experiencing in recent years without a substantial compromise to our quality of service. There is some hope of funding new positions in the Program within a 2-3 year period which will certainly help alleviate some of the burden. Beyond this, the Program is being encouraged by a University administration bent on cultivating fiscal independence to canvass options for revenue-raising whether through increased intake of fee-paying students or industry linkages and so forth. Our potential for such endeavours has undoubtedly been challenged by the establishment of the aforementioned Media and Communications Program—a development that in some respects mistakenly positions Cultural Studies as a Program with a purely scholarly, theory-based profile. Our primary opportunity in this respect will therefore most likely be at the level of postgraduate studies and we will focus our energies accordingly. Indeed, one of the notable strengths of the Program, and one that we aim to optimise, is undoubtedly the energy and quality of its research culture. Academic staff in the Program have authored numerous publications of international significance and are currently engaged in various on-going research projects of note. Many of our postgraduates have similarly developed strong research profiles and have gone on to establish important careers in academia, creative industries and associated fields. The departmental postgraduate journal, Antithesis, the oldest of its kind in Australia, provides a dynamic publishing opportunity for our postgraduates, while the recent relocation to the Program of the UTS Review and its subsequent relaunch as the Cultural Studies Review will further enliven our research culture and augment our profile in both national and international contexts.

– Brett Farmer

Murdoch University

Murdoch, historically, has been something of a powerhouse of Australian cultural studies, boasting such major talents as John Frow, Bob Hodge, John Hartley, Ien Ang, Rita Felski, Zoe Sofoulis, Krishna Sen, Toby Miller, Alec McHoul and Tom O’Regan. Such a past makes a continued narrative of growth difficult to sustain. The past ten years have been a period of re-formation as all but one of the ‘first generation’ have left and as the external environment has significantly changed.

There are probably now fewer staff at Murdoch who would describe themselves first as doing cultural studies than there were ten years ago. However the situation is complicated, reflecting the dispersal of cultural studies references and approaches into other areas. In response to University directives to diversify undergraduate options, particularly in ‘vocational’ areas, Murdoch now offers majors in Media Studies, Mass Communication and Multimedia alongside the old ‘parent’ major of Communication and Cultural Studies (CCS). These new majors (particularly Media Studies) have rapidly overtaken CCS in undergraduate demand and claim the majority of new appointments. This development might be looked on pessimistically. It should be pointed out, however, that the actual appointees have sometimes had strongly ‘cultural studies’ backgrounds (eg. members of CSAA, organisers of cultural studies conferences etc.) and have introduced ‘cultural studies’ content into their offerings. This makes the balance of gains and losses for cultural studies difficult to gauge.

Certainly, the growth of more vocational offerings has altered perceptions of cultural studies. At open days for prospective students, the CCS major (the only one in which cultural studies is named as such) is presented in contrast to Media Studies and Mass Communication as concerned with ‘theory’ or ‘analysis’ rather than ‘practice’.

In the area of research management, new agendas have developed which have also tended to sideline cultural studies. Following government directives to profile areas of research strength, Murdoch has identified strengths in ‘Social Change and Social Equity’ and in ‘Interactive Media’. The former has a strongly sociological orientation, the latter an orientation to industry linkage in the area of interactive television. Cultural studies has had some input into these new initiatives but more as an ‘addition’ or supplement than as an informing influence at the structural level.

The output of individuals associated with cultural studies at Murdoch continues to be impressive, some examples here being the work of Tara Brabazon (Tracking the Jack, Ladies Who Lunge), Alec McHoul (Semiotic Investigations, A Foucault Primer, Popular Culture and Everyday Life), Mick Broderick (Nuclear Movies), Geoff Craig (The Media, Politics and Public Life) and a number of excellent postgraduate projects. Despite this, however, the area lacks a strong sense of identity or institutional profile and is somewhat at risk of losing ground.

– Mark Gibson

University of Otago

Developments through the 1990s at Otago have generated spaces for cultural studies within various programmes in the humanities. Recently introduced degree majors in Film and Media Studies, Visual Culture, and Communication Studies (all housed in the Department of Communication Studies), have significant inflections towards cultural studies. Hires through the 90s also enabled subjects or units in cultural studies to be developed by staff in more traditional areas who identify their work in this way. English, Gender and Women's Studies, and Music, are among those offering, or with staff sympathetic to aspects of cultural studies, and even more opportunities exist for work at postgraduate level.

As yet cultural studies hasn't gained institutional support as a named programme or degree. Reasons for this include the university's tradition of academic conservatism, and the prominence of academic conservatives on key committees (so that even some of the above developments had opponents -- though there was also pragmatic support for them as areas of actual and potential growth); and administrative managerialism, along with funding structures, generating a culture of departments competing rather than co-operating, to maximise their own student numbers.

While managers and traditional academics are hostile to what they see as the 'ideological, subversive and anti-disciplinary' qualities of cultural studies, students pursue and graduate in fields identified with cultural studies, and a number of staff pursue research and teaching commitments to it. Continuing staffing developments may well be changing the general institutional attitude, and a named degree programme in cultural studies would certainly be more visible and accessible to interested students planning their courses. In the meantime, there's some benefit in working through other channels, relatively free of administrative surveillance.

– Chris Prentice

University of Queensland

Cultural Studies at the University of Queensland is centred in the School of English, Media Studies and Art History. Here it is possible to do a BA majoring in 'Communication and Cultural Studies', studying a mixture of philosophical and cultural studies writing, film and television subjects, and communication studies. The 'Introduction to Communication and Cultural Studies' subject presents a strongly semiotic and communications-oriented approach to the study of culture. Cultural Studies is also present in the Contemporary Studies program taught at the regional Ipswich campus. As in many universities, there is also a School of Languages and Comparative Cultural Studies at UQ which does not teach cultural studies.

Cultural Studies became prominent in UQ in 1989, when John Frow and Graeme Turner joined (what was then) the Department of English. Cultural studies theory and popular culture were both brought more strongly into a curriculum that was at that time more strongly oriented towards communication studies and literary theory. Cultural studies authors at UQ currently include, in the School of English, Media Studies and Art History, Tony Thwaites and Lloyd Davis, who with Warwick Mules, wrote Tools for Cultural Studies; Rex Butler, author of The Defence of the Real; David Carter, editor with Tony Bennet of Culture in Australia: Polices, publics and programs, Alan McKee, author of Australian Television: A Genealogy of Great Moments; and Frances Bonner, co-author with Graeme Turner and David Marshall of Fame Games; and in Contemporary Studies, Toni Johnson Woods, author of Big Bother: Why did that reality TV show become a phenomenon? At the end of 1999 both John and Graeme left the School, the latter to establish the Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies (although he still contributes to undergraduate cultural studies teaching, and postgraduate supervision). This research centre hosts visiting scholars, and has a lively program of guest speakers, seminars and public talks. Graeme is the author and editor of many cultural studies texts, including British Cultural Studies, Film as Social Practice and Media and Communications in Australia.

– Alan McKee

Western Sydney

As a result of the restructure at UWS - which amalgamated 3 institutions into one and reorganised the curriculum and Schools – Cultural Studies is now housed primarily in a Cultural and Social Analysis key program (KP) within the BA, overseen by the School of Humanities, and a Communication and Culture KP within the BA Communications.

The amalgamation with some sociological units means that the CSA KP is now offered across 4 campuses. However, CS is not a discrete area: almost all the CSA units are found in other KPs or degrees. Few students choose to do the CSA KP, but students from other areas do many of our units. The first year unit Introduction to Cultural Studies, for example, now has about 500 students at 4 campuses. The numbers do not, however, always carry through to the advanced units. In the context of funding cuts to the Humanities, the growth of CSA remains dependent on our relations with other areas, and especially the Communications area, which has healthy student numbers.

Within the CSA KP. there are units across a wide spectrum – especially at Penrith and Blacktown – covering popular culture, everyday life, multicultural studies, globalisation, techno-science, popular film and media, an so on. There is also a high degree of transdisciplinarity within the Humanities: many units outside CSA, for example, often have a CS component.

Postgraduate study and research in CS are very healthy. The presence of the Institute for Cultural Research (many CSA academics are also members of the ICR) provides not only an attractive focus and a sense of community amongst postgraduates, it also provides a very strong core of research in CS. The ICR, with its collaborative and community orientation, also has considerable support from the University.

– Greg Noble

CSAA Small Grants Scheme

ADDITIONS to architectural history: SAHANZ XIX

Society of Architectural Historians of Australia and New Zealand annual conference
Brisbane October 4- 7 2002

Keynote Speakers
Anthony Vidler (Cooper Union NY)
Jane Rendell (Bartlett London)
Hilde Heyne (Catholic University of Leuven)

What are the issues and themes that we add to architecture in talking about it? Are these the points at which the discipline engages with a world from which it is autonomous, or the places where we need supplementation and assistance? Are these the partnerships with other kinds of thought and practice, or the unstable borders of a voracious interdisciplinarity? Do we add the things to which we aspire or the things that cause us discomfort?

ADDITIONS seeks contributors who can offer an insight on the valency of architecture - whether this is a discussion of issues, persons, or periods which have become inescapable and perennial topics, or provocative new conjunctions through which to understand architecture.

The Musicological Society of Australia

The Musicological Society of Australia was founded in 1963 at the University of Sydney and achieved a national status in 1976. The MSA currently has eight regional chapters in (ACT, Hunter Valley and Northern NSW regions, Queensland, South Australia, Sydney, Victoria and Western Australia) provide local activities, research networks and a support groups for members. It is affiliated with the International Musicological Society and the International Council for Traditional Music

It is a conscious policy of the Society to build a community of musical scholars by fostering interaction and a sense of common purpose. The activities and publications of the Society, including its journal Musicology Australia, reflect this inclusive approach with western historical musicology, ethnomusicology, the study of popular music, and music theory all represented.

Membership is open to all people interested in music research, and who embrace the Society’s aims:

• Foster debate and encourage scholarly investigation of music
• Promote education and training to the highest level of those engaged in music research
• Encourage and assist co-operation between individuals and institutions involved in music research
• Organise conferences and symposia on themes apposite to the Society’s interests.

• Email bulletins of conference and research news, employment and general research opportunities
• Regular regional meetings, where members and invited guests present seminars, lecture demonstrations or facilitate group discussions
• Biannual Newsletters, an annual refereed journal Musicology Australia and the society’s biennial Annotated Membership List
• A website containing the society’s policy documents, current and back-issues of newsletters, archives of the content of Musicology Australia, information about forthcoming conferences and events
• Annual conferences and study weekend fees, with reduced price registration fees for members of the Musicological Society of Australia.

The next conference of the Musicological Society of Australia will be taking place at the University of Newcastle in October 2002. For further information, please contact the convenor: Michael Ewans

For further information and membership enquiries, please contact:

"Queer Federations"
The 4th Australian Homosexual Histories Conference

The University of Adelaide
Friday 19th - Saturday 20th October, 2001

Presented by the Sexuality Department of the Students' Association of the University of Adelaide in association with the Australian Lesbian and Gay Archives and Feast 2001 - Adelaide's Lesbian and Gay Cultural Festival.

Treaty
Advancing Reconciliation

A National Conference on Racism, Land and Reconciliation in a global context
26 - 28 June, 2002

One concern expressed following the Australian High Court’s 1992 Mabo decision acknowledging the concept of native title as part of Australian common law was that it was new law, foreign to existing legal tradition. However, as that decision makes clear, the concept of native title had long been a legal fixture in other British colonies in North America, New Zealand, Africa and Asia. Similarly, the quest by Torres Strait Islander and Aboriginal Peoples in Australia for a treaty between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians has a long historical record. The land rights movement was not born with the Mabo decision, nor is the quest for a treaty something that arises out of that decision, the decade long work of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation in the 1990s, or recent initiatives by the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission. The quest for the acknowledgment and protection of land rights and protection of other social, political, and cultural rights inherent in the conception of a treaty between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australia are fundamentally related in both contemporary politics and the historical relations between Indigenous and settler populations in former British colonies.

The proposed conference is intended to examine both the historical roots of "the treaty question" and its contemporary manifestations in Australian political and social discourse

The conference is supported by many distinguished Australians including the Deputy President, Native Title Tribunal, The Hon. Fred Chaney AO, the Chair of ATSIC, Mr Geoff Clark, The Chief Justice of Western Australia, The Hon. Mr Justice David Malcolm AC, and Dr William Jonas AM, the Indigenous Human Rights Commissioner.

The Fifth International Congress on Sex and Gender

A conference of the International Foundation for Androgynous Studies (Inc)

The University of Western Australia, Perth,
Western Australia from October 24th -27th, 2002.

INTERSEXIONS
This is the first time the Congress has been held in the Southern Hemisphere, and we welcome the participation of peoples from the Asia-Pacific region. While there will be special focus on intersex people, one-hour seminar papers, two-hour workshops and art works are invited on themes such as the medical model, legal reform, gender violence and regional gender identities including sister-girls, fa-fa‚afine, and bissu.

Please send a 250 word abstract of a paper or workshop, a brief outline of an artwork for exhibition , and/or an expression of interest to register to attend to IFAS, PO Box 1066, Nedlands W.A. 6907 Australia before May 30th 2002.

Chris Somers 47xxy will open the Congress. Professor Milton Diamond, from the University of Hawa‚ii-Manoa and Tony Briffa , President of AISSG, will give keynote addresses. The programme includes concurrent seminars, a workshop on gender identity with Dr Vivienne Cass, an optional Conference Dinner, participation in the Pride Parade, a Playback Theatre and a riverside barbecue.

Registration fees will be AUD350 for the four days for waged and AUD100 for unwaged. Daily registration of AUD50 will be available. IFAS is interested in publishing selected papers from the congress and a book of narratives of queer experiences. Hidden Genders: Beyond the Binaries edited by Felicity Haynes and Tarquam McKenna will be on sale .

Pierre Bourdieu and the Field of Cultural Production

Centre for Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies and the School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics
Monash University

a one-day symposium on the life and work of Pierre Bourdieu (1930-2002)

Wednesday 2 October 2002, 9.30-5.00,
Monash University, Clayton Campus, Melbourne.

$50 waged; $30 unwaged; $10 students (includes lunch)

Cultural Frontiers in Question:
Nation, Religion, Refugees

School of Creative Communication and Culture Studies, Division of Communication and Education
University of Canberra

Date: 10-12 July 2002
Venue: National Museum of Australia

The conference will interrogate the form and consequences of cultural encounters between nations and religions in the current troubled global political context.

While cultural frontiers can be considered from a broad geo-political perspective, they are also about people's lives, communities and identities. At best, people learn to live together accepting each other's differences-an objective implicit in Australia's official multicultural policies. However, in Australia as elsewhere, the reality falls far short of such laudable objectives. As recent world events have demonstrated, places of encounter can also be places of human tragedy precipitated by war, terrorism, domination, racism and deprivation. These places are not always distant. The current flash points may be far away, but the encounters happen everyday, in our neighbourhoods, at our borders and in our immediate regions.

One focus of the conference will be Turkey's significance as a conjunctural place in global geo-politics, separating as it does the European continent from Asia. A delegation of Turkish scholars will attend the conference to speak on the relevant Turkish experience, both within Turkey and its widespread diasporic communities.

Conference themes:

• Cultural encounters or cultural frontiers: Islam and the West
• Cultural encounters within nations: rethinking multiculturalism
• Cultures on the move: diasporas and refugees
• Cultures out of the way: the politics of asylum seeking in Australia
• Indigenous and non-indigenous encounters and frontiers
• Media representations of encounters and frontiers

Further information:

The Rules of Art: A Symposium on the Work of Pierre Bourdieu and Social Science Thinking about the Arts

Date: Tuesday 16th of July, 2002

Venue: The Artspace, 43-51 Cowper Wharf Rd, Woollomooloo

The idea that art is a social activity is neither new nor particularly remarkable. But what is the sociology of art and how does it differ from an aesthetic theory of art? And what do we learn about the arts by understanding them in their social context?

The sociology of art advanced by the late Pierre Bourdieu highlights the type of issues at stake. Bourdieu’s sociology of art has often been accused of being ‘reductionist’ and of failing to appreciate the specificity of artistic texts and intentions. Yet, in The Rules of Art, Bourdieu felt he could claim that a social science 'analysis of the social conditions of the production and reception of a work of art, far from reducing it or destroying it, in fact intensifies the… [aesthetic] experience’. Responding to the accusation that social science explanation runs the risk of ‘killing the pleasure’ associated with experiencing art, Bourdieu suggests that uncovering the social conditions surrounding the ‘genesis’ of a work of art can complement the love of art and fulfill that love in a sort of ‘amor intellectualis’.

But what kind of dialogue and relationship is possible between these unlikely bedfellows? Social science analysis often speaks a different language to the art world and to art criticism. It employs methodologies, produces findings, and has claims to ‘value-neutrality’ that might appear to contradict the logic and raison d’être of the arts. However, the relationship between the social sciences and the arts is hardly static. We now live in societies where artistic goods are economically more important than ever before; and where the distinction between the arts and other types of goods and experiences is less well defined. This symposium proposes to debate what the social sciences can offer the study of the arts, and will ask: in the current climate of globalization, privatization of funding, ‘niche marketing’, and the supposed blurring of the high culture/ low culture divide, is it all the more necessary to understand and ‘love’ the arts in their social context?

For further information contact:

Eduardo de la Fuente, Department of Sociology, Macquarie University.