Category Archives: Albany

Holidays, what holidays?

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Didn’t spot your lecturers on the beach this Summer?  Yes some of us were there hiding under our floppy hats and reading novel after novel … but others were still keeping the EMS ship afloat!  As well as teaching Summer School, many EMS staff have been busy on the research front over the break. Here’s a few examples of what we’ve been up to!

• Dr Jenny Lawn presented a conference paper at the Space, Race, Bodies: Geocorpographies of the City, Nation and Empire conference held at the University of Otago between the 8 and 10 December. Titled “Antigone as Male Hysteria: Pakeha Settler Masculinity and the Spectacular Corpse in Carl Nixon’s Settler’s Creek,” her paper explored Settler’s Creek alongside Sophocles’ Antigone as the springboard for an inquiry into the politics of Pakeha cultural nationalism and, speculatively, a consideration of the relationship between kinship bonds and state legitimacy.
• Also at the Space, Race and Bodies conference, Dr Kevin Glynn co-presented with Dr Julie Cupples of University of Edinburgh a conference paper on Postcolonial Spaces of Discursive Struggle in the Convergent Media Environment, focusing on case studies about Maori Television and Air New Zealand.
• Dr Sy Taffel presented a sole authored paper entitled Invisible Bodies and Forgotten Spaces: Materiality, Toxicity and Labour in Digital Ecologies to the Space, Race, Bodies conference. His paper explored social and ecological costs attributable to digital technologies which are borne by bodies and occur in spaces largely excluded from public discussions, from the Congolese children responsible for mining coltan, to the Chinese migrant workers who assemble brand-name products in informational sweatshops, and Ghanaian electronics waste workers who earn US$1 a day treating highly toxic e-waste.
• Dr Simon Sigley gave a conference presentation at Visible Evidence 21, the annual scholarly conference on documentary film, media, culture and politics, held in New Delhi, India from December 11 to 14 2014, and co-hosted by Jawaharlal Nehru University and Jamia Millia Islamia. Titled Adaptations and Relocations, his paper discussed the National Film Unit, Mythic Visions and Historical Conditions in New Zealand.
• A/Pro Angie Farrow launched her book ‘Together All Alone’: 6 shorts plays – at the PNCC Library on 8 December followed by production of plays at the Globe Theatre PN on 10, 11 and 12 December.
• A/Pro Elspeth Tilley co-published with Adult Literacy and Communication research team members Frank Sligo (first author), Margie Comrie and Niki Murray a journal article on young adult literacy learners and their experiences of the text–orality nexus in Text&Talk 2015; 35(1): 101–121.  Based on interviews with young adults in literacy training, the article argues that print literacy training cannot and does not happen in a vacuum from young people’s deeply oral world, and that an understanding of literacy, whether for teaching or research, necessarily must encompass an understanding of the oral-experiential context in which it occurs.
• Dr Kevin Glynn travelled to the USA, Costa Rica and Nicaragua to carry out field work associated with his Marsden-funded project between 13 December 2014 and 30 January 2015.
• Dr Rand Hazou travelled to Sydney to participate in ‘Connecting from a Distance’ which is a theatrical collaboration between Australia and Palestine to facilitate the transfer of skills and knowledge between theatre-makers and performers from both countries.
• Dr Ian Goodwin attended the Dangerous Consumptions Colloquium in Brisbane 11 and 12 December where he presented a work-in-progress piece derived from Marsden research project entitled ‘Precarious Popularity: Exploring Young people’s accounts of Facebook drinking photos’.
• Dr Erin Mercer presented a paper on R H Morriesons’s novel The Scarecrow at the 2015 Gothic Association of NZ and Australia (GANZA) conference in Sydney 21-22 January 2015
• Dr Sy Taffel had a sole-authored journal article entitled Perspectives on the Postdigital: Beyond Rhetorics of Progress and Novelty published in Convergence: The International Journal of Research into new Media Technologies, a peer-reviewed journal published by Sage.
• The Nielsen Bookscan 2014 Overall Bestseller’s Chart ranked Dr Thom Conroy’s novel The Naturalist as number six for the 2014 year.
• Tutor Dr Rhana Carusi was invited to speak on TV3 and write a follow-up op-ed piece as an expert on gender in regards to the effects of gendered and non-gendered toys on children, in response to the AU & NZ Green Party’s No Gender December campaign.
• The Aotearoa Creative Writing Research Network (ACWRN), directed by Thom Conroy, launched its website, featuring an introductory video, a Twitter feed on national Creative Writing news and events, a member’s directory, and online resources. Check it out at http://acwrn.ac.nz/
• A/Pro Lisa Emerson was invited to give a keynote address and workshop at the 7th Conference for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education http://www.cdtl.nus.edu.sg/tlhe/
• A/Pro Angie Farrow was invited by the organisers of the Short and Sweet Festival in Sydney to contribute to a workshop on ‘Writing the Short Play’ as well as to attend a production of her play between 26 – 31 January.

 

Research Galore!

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Happy New YearNga mihi nui o te tau hou! Best wishes for the New Year!

Whew! We got so busy at the end of 2014 we neglected to post our last quarter English & Media Studies research roundup! We had lots of activity going on, with successes among both staff and postgraduate student researchers, so here are some of the end-of-year research highlights to celebrate our farewell to 2014. We are looking forward to a massive year of more vibrant and diverse research in 2015.

Our interests span the gamut of fiction, nonfiction, media studies, creativity, theatre, poetry, communication and cultural studies (such as work on race, gender, and power). If you are interested in joining us for postgraduate studies, please do make contact – either chat to a staff member whose area of research intrigues you, or get in touch with the postgraduate coordinator Dr Jenny Lawn.

Did you know that in 1991 our own Dr Brian McDonnell came second in New Zealand Mastermind on TV with the specialist subject of ‘The Major Novels of Graham Greene’? Greene was however not only a major novelist, but also a crime-fiction writer, film critic and scriptwriter. For his scriptwriting on the 1949 Carol Reed-directed cinema classic ‘The Third Man’ Greene has been termed one of the founders of European film noir. Brian is currently researching a book on Greene’s relationship with film noir, and in September he presented some early findings in a conference paper titled “Graham Greene and Film Noir” at the international Graham Greene Festival in London, as part of an overseas research trip. Brian is gathering data about Greene at archives in the University of Texas Austin, Boston College, Georgetown University and the British Film Institute.

Associate Professor Angie Farrow won ‘Best Drama Script’ for her new play ‘Leo Rising’ at the Auckland Short and Sweet Festival in September 2014. Directed by James Bell and starring Pippiajna Tui Jane as a grieving jilted bride, Sharleen, the 10-minute monologue follows Sharleen through city streets searching for her AWOL groom and ultimately discovering an unexpected route to revenge. Then in December, Angie launched her book ‘Falling, and other short plays’ at Palmerston North City Library, followed by the launch of a taster season of the plays at the Globe Theatre, Studio 2, Palmerston North. Titled ‘Together All Alone’ and directed by Rachel Lenart and Jaime Dorner, the ‘taster’ showcased the plays: “Goodbye April”, “Leo Rising”, “Happiness”, “The Perfect Life”, “The Real Thing” and “The Body”, works which take a fresh and innovative look at some of life’s quintessential questions and experiences.

Dr Philip Steer won the Massey University emerging researcher medal in December 2014! In November he published an article that broadens our understanding of the conditions that shaped nineteenth-century New Zealand literature. Titled “Antipodal Home Economics: International Debt and Settler Domesticity in Clara Cheeseman’s A Rolling Stone (1886)” Philip’s article appeared in the edited collection Imagining Victorian Settler Homes: Antipodal Domestic Fiction (edited by T. S. Wagner. London: Pickering & Chatto, 2014. 145-160). Philip argued that New Zealand’s credit crisis of the late 1870s and the subsequent severe recession had a profound effect on the stories that colonial writers told. He made the case that Cheeseman’s A Rolling Stone—previously dismissed as a typical (and worthless) example of melodramatic domestic fiction—is actually a very good example of the hidden depths in our colonial literature: it explores ideas of debt and reputation in a range of ways that illuminate the dependence of colonial domestic life on international credit flows. Also in November, Philip gave a presentation titled “A Provisional Survival Guide for the Early Career Researcher,” at the Ka Awatea conference in Palmerston North. Philip shared his experiences successfully navigating the early career labyrinth of publishing, funding, writing and juggling research and teaching, by way of a contribution to building Early Career Researcher capacity in College of Humanities and Social Sciences.

Congratulations to Dr Robert Redmond on his PhD completion. His thesis, “The Femme Fatales in Postfeminist Hard-Boiled Fiction: Redundant or Reinventing Herself?” was supervised by Dr Doreen D’Cruz and Dr Jenny Lawn. Robert’s research explored the evolution of the ‘femme fatale’ from the ‘hard-boiled’ version of the late 1920s, who “seduced, shot and poisoned her way through pulp magazines, hard- and paper-backed novels, and films for almost fifty years” to new representations of the dangerous woman in the 1980s, in the form of the tough female detective. To what extent, Robert asked, do the changes subvert masculine hegemony and allow for a new female imaginary, and to what degree are new forms still coloured by the old? If you are interested in reading more, you can download Robert’s full thesis at the Massey online research repository: http://mro.massey.ac.nz/handle/10179/5645

Well done to Associate Professor Lisa Emerson on signing a book contract with Parlor Press for a book on scientists as writers which is due out in 2015. Lisa notes that scientists are, to a large extent, a lost or forgotten tribe of academic writers. Researchers may examine scientific writing or observe and document how scientists write in the lab, but we still know little of how scientists think as writers – about their beliefs, attitudes and experiences of writing. Conventional wisdom suggests that scientists are poor writers, with little interest in, or enjoyment from, writing well. Lisa’s book will tell a different story. She has collected a series of stories, or literacy narratives, from scientists around the globe. These include stories of scientists reaching out to engage the public with science, scientists who moonlight as poets or playwrights, young scientists who are writing in a vast, supportive community of people who share a common passion, lonely scientists who struggle to write unsupported, reluctant writers who argue that words don’t matter, and passionate writers who would choose to write all day. “My aim in collecting these personal stories of scientists as writers is to help us to see scientists in new ways: as wordsmiths who, mostly, love to write, and who, above all, want to discover and communicate something new and exciting,” she said.

Lisa along with co-authors Ken Kilpin and Angela Feekery also had an article published in the journal English in Aotearoa (issue 83, pages 13-19) in November 2014. The article, titled “Information literacy and the transition to tertiary,” is part of a much bigger project about how students transition from Year 13 to tertiary study, and in particular, how they learn to write across this transition. Lisa and her team have been working with teachers from low-decile schools to teach students how to write and learn in ways that will prepare them for study at university or polytechnics. In the paper, Ken, Lisa and Angela suggest ways in which English teachers can teach literature while supporting students’ writing, information literacy, and development as independent learners.

Dr Ian Goodwin co-published multiple items during 2014 from a large multidisciplinary Marsden-funded research project looking at young people’s attitudes towards alcohol consumption, and their self-representations of drinking culture on social media. Some highlights of Ian’s peer-reviewed outputs from throughout 2014 included:
• Niland, P., Lyons, A. C., Goodwin, I. & Hutton, F. (2014/online May). Friendship Work on Facebook: Young Adults’ Understandings and Practices of Friendship. Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology.
• Niland, P., Lyons, A. C., Goodwin, I. & Hutton, F. (2014). “See it doesn’t look pretty does it?”: Young Adults’ Airbrushed Drinking Practices on Facebook. Psychology and Health 29(8), 877-895.
• Goodwin, I., Lyons, A.C., Griffin, C., & McCreanor, T. (2014). Ending Up Online: Interrogating Mediated Youth Drinking Cultures. In A. Bennnet and B. Robards (Eds.) Mediated Youth Cultures: The Internet, Belonging, and New Cultural Configurations, pp. 59-74. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Griffin, C., Lyons, A.C., Goodwin, I. McCreanor, T., & Niland, P. (2014). Young Adults, Social Media Alcohol Marketing and the Culture of Intoxication in Aotearoa New Zealand, paper presented to Kettil Bruun Society 40th Annual Alcohol Epidemiology Symposium, Torino, Italy, 9-13 June 2014.
• Moewaka Barnes, H., McCreanor, T., Goodwin, I., Lyons, A.C., Griffin, C., Hutton, F., Niland, P., O’Carroll, A., & Samu, L. (2014). “So Drunk Right Now! Anybody Wanna Join?”: Young People, Alcohol and Social Networking Systems, paper presented to Kettil Bruun Society 40th Annual Alcohol Epidemiology Symposium, Torino, Italy, 9-13 June 2014.
• Goodwin, I., Lyons, A.C., Griffin, C., and McCreanor, T. (2014). Beyond ‘The Profile’: Multiple Methods in Facebook Research, invited presentation to the Australasian Audience Research Symposium (University of New South Wales), Sydney, Australia, 22 April 2014.

Ian also co-published a refereed article on ways in which heterosexual biases and assumptions marked the media coverage of the marriage equality debate in New Zealand: Goodwin, I., Lyons, A. C., & Stephens, C. (2014). Critiquing the Heteronormativity of the Banal Citizen in New Zealand’s Mediated Civil Union Debate. Gender, Place and Culture 21(7), 813-833.

Associate Professor Bryan Walpert had a creative non-fiction essay, “The Lazy Gardener,” published in the U.S. literary journal Rock & Sling in November. That is also, incidentally, the title of Bryan’s blog about life in New Zealand, which you can read at http://nzlazygardener.wordpress.com/

Dr Erin Mercer gave a fascinating seminar in the WH Oliver Humanities Academy series, recuperating the work of mid-20th-Century New Zealand writer Sylvia Ashton-Warner. While Ashton-Warner’s work sold extremely well overseas and received good reviews internationally, it was slated at home – Erin argues because of a lack of fit with a dominant tradition of masculinist nationalism in New Zealand literature. Here’s a link to Erin’s talk, titled “The Strange Cadences of Sylvia Ashton-Warner”: http://webcast.massey.ac.nz/Mediasite/Play/89300489315e4c8f9f4420bc12af384c1d

Also in the WH Oliver Humanities Academy series, Dr Ian Huffer gave an absorbing talk on ‘Film Consumption and New Zealand Society’. Drawing on data from the New Zealand Film Commission and NZ On Air, Ian mapped changes in consumption due to online access to movies, critically examining popular claims that open access ‘democratises’ the circulation and consumption of film. Online access differed by gender, income, age and other factors, Ian found, meaning consumption was not necessarily more democratic – watch his full talk at http://webcast.massey.ac.nz/Mediasite/Play/9bf1d98de33c41cabb7dc1b7c636d5f01d

Associate Professor Elspeth Tilley presented at the Ka Awatea conference at Palmerston North in November, discussing the participatory ‘citizen science’ project, ‘It’s My Life’. Entitled “It’s My Life Youth Smokefree Research Project: A tale of four colleges, 15 academics and 269 Massey students (plus some lives saved and a lot of lessons learned),” her talk covered both the processes of large team research and the outcomes of the 15-month by-youth, for-youth campaign.  Survey research showed that the lifespan of the campaign coincided with changes in young people’s attitudes including increases in both their desire to quit and their anger at the tobacco industry. The Smokefree It’s My Life project also launched its world-first by-youth for-youth DVD documentary in November. The DVD was created by Bachelor of Communication Honours Summer Scholarship students Janaya Soma and Catherine Moreau-Hammond with technical support from Mark Steelsmith under the supervision of Dr Radha O’Meara and A/P Elspeth Tilley. (Readers who work with young people are welcome to request a free copy of the DVD by emailing teamsmokefree@gmail.com and one will be posted out to you. You can also download individual chapters from the It’s My Life website at www.smokefree-itsmylife.org.nz ).

In November, Dr Tyron Love, Associate Dean Māori, Department of Management, Marketing and Entrepreneurship, School of Business and Economics, Whare Wānanga o Waitaha University of Canterbury and Associate Professor Elspeth Tilley, School of English & Media Studies, College of Humanities & Social Sciences, Te Kunenga Ki Pūrehuroa Massey University Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington co-presented on “Temporal discourse and the news media representation of Indigenous- non-Indigenous relations in Aotearoa” to the WH Oliver Humanities Research Series. Their talk analysed examples of media coverage of important Te Tiriti o Waitangi negotiations and showed how non-Indigenous cultural assumptions moulded the debate in particular ways. You can view the talk at: http://webcast.massey.ac.nz/Mediasite/Play/d7271aea37764aec851f6884602d9a5e1d

Massey Master of Creative Writing graduate Carol Markwell launched her latest play ‘Alice, what have you done!’, published by Steele Roberts, in December. A gripping local murder-mystery set in Napier in 1915, the play chronicles the trial of Alice May Parkinson, who fatally shot her lover. Her trial and its aftermath cause controversy throughout New Zealand. Is she a feminist heroine or a callous killer … or simply a desperate woman who ran out of choices? See more at http://steeleroberts.co.nz/books/isbn/978-1-927242-60-5

EMS Senior Tutors Tim Upperton and Joy Green, together with Spanish lecturer Leonel Alvarado, read from their “Kete Series” poetry collections at public readings throughout November. The Kete Series is the brainchild of Palmerston North-based boutique publishers HauNui Press, which specialises in alternative, ingenious ways to produce and market local books. The three poets’ books were bundled together in a traditional woven harakeke bag or ‘kete’. Tim’s collection, titled ‘The Night We Ate the Baby’, was his second book of poetry. His first, titled ‘A House on Fire’, was published in 2009, and his poems have been published widely in New Zealand and international magazines and anthologies. He won the Bronwyn Tate Memorial International Poetry Competition in 2011, and the Caselburg Trust International Poetry Competition in 2012 and 2013. Joy’s collection was her first published book of poems. Titled ‘Surface Tension’, she has performed many of the poems in festivals and literary events, and has published her work in a number of anthologies in New Zealand, Australia, the United States and Europe. See more about the three poets and their work at http://www.massey.ac.nz/massey/about-massey/news/article.cfm?mnarticle_uuid=cd91f2ec-9d4e-c4a4-2584-6a4840966c7b

Congratulations to Master of Creative Writing graduate Janet Newman, whose poetry collection beach.river.always–written during her MCW–was runner up for the 2014 Kathleen Grattan Prize in December. Janet also won the Journal of New Zealand Literature Prize for NZ literary studies in October. Her winning essay, on the poetry of Michelle Leggot, was adapted from her Honours Research Report. Eight of nine judges placed Janet’s essay first (out of three short-listed entries).

Our Senior Tutor in Theatre, Rachel Lenart, was nominated for ‘Festival Director of the Year’ at the Chapman Tripp Theatre Awards in December. Her production called ‘Constellations’ was also nominated for ‘Production of the Year’, best musical composition and two nominations for best acting. The Dorothy McKegg Actress of the Year award was taken out by Erin Banks for her work in Constellations.

EMS PhD student Angie Enoka presented her research on a media analysis of the Pacific Temporary Workers Scheme coverage to the Pasifika @Massey Annual Research Conference in November. Angie also participated as a ‘Volunteer Service Abroad’ contributor, providing pro bono media communication strategy, in Samoa at the United Nations Conference on Small Island Developing States, in September 2014, and was successfully confirmed in her PhD candidature in October.

EMS staff and students from the creative writing program worked very hard to successfully host ‘Minding the Gap: Writing Across Thresholds and Fault Lines’, the Australasian Association of Writing Programmes (AAWP) 19th Annual Conference 2014, 30 November- 2 December at Massey University in Wellington, with keynote speakers Hone Kouka, Emily Perkins, and Martin Edmond. Conference Organising Committee members from Massey were Dr Ingrid Horrocks and Dr Thom Conroy, with conference assistance from Nick Allen, Dr Hannah Gerrard, Shazrah Salam, Thomas Aitken and Lena Fransham (all Massey University). The AAWP was established in 1996, and is now the most important forum in Australia for discussing all aspects of teaching creative and professional writing as well as for debating current theories on creativity and writing. ‘Minding The Gap’ is only the second AAWP conference to be held in New Zealand. The new Poetry New Zealand journal (edited by Massey’s Dr Jack Ross) was also launched at the conference.

Following on from the conference, Dr Ingrid Horrocks co-convened, with Cherie Lacey, the ‘Placing the Personal Essay’ Colloquium. Supported by the W.H. Oliver Humanities Research Academy at Massey University, the Centre for Research on Colonial Culture at the University of Otago, and the Stout Research Centre for New Zealand Studies at Victoria University, the colloquium brought together writers, historians, literary critics, cultural theorists and interested others for a discussion about new ways of writing about place in contemporary New Zealand. It featured Martin Edmond, Tina Makereti, Ian Wedde, Lydia Wevers, Alex Calder, Tony Ballantyne, Alice Te Punga Somerville and others. See more detail at: http://placingthepersonalessay.weebly.com/

In December the Visiting Artist scheme announced that Jaime Dorner has been appointed to direct the 2015 Summer Shakespeare offering of King Lear. We look forward to a fabulous season of this most powerful work!

Associate Professor Elspeth Tilley published a team-authored article about immunisation communication in November in the journal Media International Australia: Tilley, E., Murray, N., Watson, B., & Comrie, M. (2014) New views on a ‘stuck’ issue: Communicating about childhood immunisation in Aotearoa New Zealand. MIA Issue 152 (2014). The article explores the value of qualitative and participatory research methods in shedding new light on the issue of declining immunisation rates.

Research into the Bachelor of Communication graduate outcomes found that employment data from all graduates of the Bachelor of Communication since its inception as a degree, shows a 96% employment rate. The research was conducted by Associate Professor Elspeth Tilley, Malcolm Rees, Judith Naylor, Professor Frank Sligo, and Dr Raquel Harper, as part of a SIF project led by Dr Jenny Lawn. Further analysis of the data is ongoing and more results will be released during 2015. In general they show very positive employment results for Bachelor of Communication graduates, and for many a fast track to more senior positions in the years after graduation.

New Short ‘Snooze Time’ by Matt Harris is Going Off

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The new Short Film ‘Snooze Time‘ by English and Media Studies Tutor Matt Harris is ‘going off’ and causing a bit of a stir. The short, which can be accessed via Vimeo,  has already been seen 140,000 times and received 1,920 ‘likes’.

The buzz seems to have been partly due to a short review of the the 7 minute film by Jeanette Bonds, a writer and independent animator living in Los Angeles and Co-Founder/CEO of GLAS Animation. Jeanett’s review was recently posted on the website ‘Short of the Week‘ which gave the short a 4.5/5 star rating. Snooze Time is written by Matthew (Matt) Harris and directed by Ivan Barge.

Dr. Matt Harris teaches and tutors in the School of English and Media Studies at the University’s Albany campus, where he was nominated for Lecturer of the Year in 2010. His writing has been published widely, from academic articles in Landfall to creative writing in Poetry New Zealand, Trout, Southern Ocean Review, Kokako, and many others.  His previous nine-minute film, entitled 43,000 Feet, premiered at last year’s Tribeca Film Festival in New York.

The Culture of Depression: Seminar

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Dr. Chris Howard (139.209 Speaking: Theory and Practice, Albany) will be presenting a dialogue on The Culture of Depression next Wed 1st of October @1pm in QB6 at the Albany Campus. This dialogue will explore the idea that depression is not the psychological epidemic it is presented as by the media, governments, medical institutions and pharmaceutical companies.  Rather, from a critical discourse and cross-cultural perspective, I will argue that ‘depression’ is first and foremost a social phenomenon before it is psychological.  As such, it relies on ‘knowledge-power’ games and therefore cannot be trusted.  Depression, I will venture to suggest, is not a disease of individuals, but a social pathology related to the cultural logic of neoliberal capitalism.

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Research round-up – from ‘Harry’ to the Holocaust, EMS research is diverse and defining

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Oscar Kightley as Harry Anglesea in the 2013 TV3 crime drama ‘Harry’.

Six English & Media Studies researchers took advantage of the Winter teaching break to present their research at key international conferences from Oslo to Australia last month, on topics ranging from Facebook to forgiveness.

Dr Brian McDonnell presented a paper to the New Zealand Studies Association’s “Across the Pacific” conference in Oslo. The theme of the conference was New Zealand and the Pacific, and Dr McDonnell presented on “Harry: New Zealand’s First Polynesian-centred Television Crime Drama”. His talk analysed the TV show Harry, directed by Chris Dudman and broadcast as 6 1-hour episodes by TV3 in 2013. It featured Oscar Kightley as the eponymous Harry Anglesea, a tough detective with the Major Crimes Unit in South Auckland, as well as Sam Neill as Major Crimes Unit boss Jim ‘Stocks’ Stockton.  Dr McDonnell spoke about the genre links between this show and well-known overseas examples, such as Cracker, Prime Suspect, Luther, Forbrydelsen (Danish: The Killing), The Wire, Wallander and Underbelly. He explored the genesis of Harry, especially the role of its creator and producer Steve O’Meagher, and how it broke new ground by having a Samoan protagonist.

Dr Sy Taffel presented a paper called Antisocial|Asocial|Associations: Mapping the Social in Social Media to the Australia and New Zealand Communication Association conference in Melbourne. The paper, which is being published in the peer reviewed conference proceedings, argued that media have always been social structures, so queried what’s new and different about the types of social connection made by social media? Dr Taffel used a unique combination of political economy, software studies and actor network theory approaches to answer this question, and argued that each approach reveals overlapping ways in which social media commodify and monetise social ties such as community and friendship. A particular focus was on Facebook, which famously claims in numerous marketing materials to be making the Web more ‘social’. Dr Taffel challenged the assumed meaning of the ‘social’ in ‘social media’, exploring existing definitions of the terms alongside the range of online content the term is understood to refer to.

Dr Allen Meek presented a paper to the ‘Future of Past: Representing the Holocaust, Genocide and Mass Trauma in the 21st Century’ Conference in Melbourne. The title of the paper was “Media, Trauma and Biopolitics”. Dr Meek argued that modern biopolitics, which attempts to control society at the level of biological life, provides an important perspective for understanding trauma as a model for extreme historical events. He explored the idea that while the Holocaust is commonly understood as a trauma for modern society, this can stop us from being able to see Nazi racial politics as an extreme version of something intrinsic to modern forms of power.

Dr Kim Worthington presented a paper at the Australasian Association of Literature ‘Literature and Affect’ Conference in Melbourne entitled “Confronting a forgotten past: Shame, guilt and blame in Jaspreet Singh’s Helium”. In interpreting Singh’s haunting 2013 novel, Dr Worthington’s paper engaged with the philosophical work of Paul Ricouer, whom she argued understands remembering and forgetting as not simply involuntary processes, but as ones that are often consciously willed and manipulated for political purposes. Her paper explored the complex relationships between memory and forgetting and the emotions of shame, guilt and blame. “Inevitably,” Dr Worthington said, “this also involves questions about the (im)possibility of reconciliation and forgiveness in both personal and national contexts.” The paper argued that what is needed for forgiveness and healing in dealing with historial trauma is more than a rational assessment of past (inherited) crimes: an emotional confrontation is also necessary, and Singh’s work suggests literature can provide this.

Dr Kevin Glynn presented a co-authored paper at the Institute of Australian Geographers/NZ Geographical Society Joint Conference held in Melbourne. Written with Julie Cupples of the University of Edinburgh, the paper was entitled ‘Reframing Indigeneity: The Difference an Indigenous Broadcaster Makes.’ It explored two incidents: police “terror raids” on Tuhoe in Te Urewera in 2007, and controversies over public pronouncements by Air New Zealand in 2013 about a company policy that prohibits employment of people with ta moko. Using these case studies to look at the differences between mainstream and Maori Television Service coverage, the paper argued that both events revealed contestation between competing visions of national identity, belonging and participation. While mainstream media trafficked heavily in racialised discourses of terror and securitisation in relation to the Urewera raids, Maori Television coverage drew upon grassroots counterdiscourses and counterknowledges that depicted the situation in the Ureweras very differently. By the time of the Air New Zealand controversy, Maori Television had developed around itself an active participatory culture of digitally engaged audiences making avid use of Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. The paper explored the forms of indigenous citizenship active within this new media environment to assess the contribution an indigenous broadcaster can make to challenging the epistemic violence inflicted through colonisation upon indigenous ways of knowing and being.

Dr Philip Steer presented a sole-authored conference paper at the ‘Prosaic Imaginary: Novels and the Everyday, 1750-2000’ conference hosted by the Novel Studies research cluster at the University of Sydney. Entitled “Strategic Banality: The Work of the Prosaic in Novels of Early Settlement,” Dr Steer’s paper explored the generic instability of the early colonial Australian novel, specifically its tendency to veer from narrating the vicissitudes of settler life to detailing agricultural production and other concerns more commonly associated with political economy. He argued that the strategic assertion of colonial banality across a range of registers functioned to assert the Britishness of Australian settlement. That is, if the colony’s suitability for the British subject was most immediately conveyed through the portrayal of characters’ achievement of a settled, rural lifestyle, this was complemented at a societal level by the statistical assertion of the colonial capacity for steady, regular economic production. Paradoxically, therefore, asserting the prosaic nature of settlement can be seen as one of the most audacious and wide-ranging strategies of the colonial novel.

Essay key component of Walters Prize shortlisted artwork

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Image from Maddie Leach’s collaborative artwork, ‘If you find the good oil let us know’

A creative essay by School of English & Media Studies senior lecturer Dr Ingrid Horrocks is currently featuring as part of the Walters Prize exhibition at the Auckland Art Gallery.

The essay forms a key part of Maddie Leach’s collaborative conceptual art project ‘if you find the good oil let us know’, which is a finalist in this year’s Walters Prize, New Zealand’s premier contemporary art award.  All four finalists are on display at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki until 12 October 2014.

The $50,000 Walters Prize, named after the late New Zealand artist Gordon Walters, is awarded for an outstanding work of contemporary New Zealand art produced and exhibited during the past two years. The prize aims to make contemporary art a more widely recognised and debated feature of our cultural life.

Dr Horrocks’ work of critical-creative prose  is the closing piece in the publication, ‘if you find the good oil let us know’, which is the culmination of Maddie Leach’s 2012 Govett-Brewster Aotearoa New Zealand Artist in Residence project of the same name. The project as a whole unfolds an imaginative narrative of whales, cement, art works, scientists, seafarers, migrations, and oil companies via a community of letter-writers and readers.

Dr Horrocks’s contribution works both as part of the artwork, and as the single critical response to the work as a whole. It also involves a recorded performance of her work, which serves as the audio narrative of the project in its next incarnation online in association with the Walters Prize exhibition at the Auckland Art Gallery.

Maddie Leach is a senior lecturer and postgraduate coordinator for fine arts, in Massey University’s Whiti o Rehua – The School of Art at Wellington.

Link: http://www.aucklandartgallery.com/whats-on/news/finalists-announced-for-the-walters-prize-2014-new-zealand%E2%80%99s-premier-contemporary-art-prize

Link: http://maddieleach.net http://www.aucklandartgallery.com/media/6032904/twp2014_catalogue.pdf

 

Dr. Jack Ross reading as part of ‘Poetry Central’ for National Poetry Day.

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Jack Ross (2002)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For ‘National Poetry Day this Friday – Dr. Jack Ross will be reading some poetry at the Central Library as part of ‘Poetry Central’. The readings are free and start at 6pm.

When: Friday 22 August, 6pm
Where: Central City Library, Waitemata room, Level 3
Cost: Free

Auckland Libraries and the nzepc (the New Zealand Electronic Poetry Centre) invite you to celebrate National Poetry Day with an evening of readings.

This event will be accompanied by birthday festivities for nzepc and fabulous poetry posters from Phantom Billstickers.

There will be readings by Michele Leggott, Makyla Curtis, Murray Edmond, Ya-Wen Ho, Selina Tusitala Marsh, Alice Miller, John Newton, Jack Ross and Robert Sullivan.

Join us for a welcome glass of wine at 5.30pm before the readings begin at 6pm.

To reserve your place for this event, please phone 09 377 0209 or email Ana Worner

For more information visit: http://www.aucklandlibraries.govt.nz/EN/Events/Events/Pages/poetrycentral2014.aspx

Theatre to help firms deal with workplace bullying

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In the red corner

 

‘In the Red Corner’ is a play about workplace bullying written by Dr Margot Edwards.

Feelings and emotions are often marginalised in the rational world of business, but Massey University’s expressive arts and business programmes hope to change all that with the development of a play about workplace bullying. Dr Margot Edwards, a senior lecturer with the School of Management, wanted to create an effective intervention for dealing with bullying at work. Instead of producing the usual seminar, she decided to write a play. “I wanted to actually create something interactive to get people thinking in a different way about how bullying makes people feel and what the reasons behind it might be,” Dr Edwards says.

“A play allows people to have a discussion about the characters and their behaviour, without accusing a colleague. It also allows you to reflect on your own experiences and how they made you feel. We all remember those scenes in our head when the boss came in and shouted at us, for example, and we think ‘I wished I’d said this’ – you can use those experiences to effect change.” Now Dr Edwards is teaming up with the university’s theatre studies programme to get her play, titled ‘In the Red Corner’, ready for performance. Students from the Massey University Theatre Society will workshop it through an open reading in the Albany campus’ state-of-the-art Theatre Lab tomorrow.

School of English and Media Studies lecturer Dr Rand Hazou says the project is a great opportunity for the business and expressive arts programmes to collaborate. “The reading will be part of the students’ creative development and we’ll hopefully bring some clarity to Margot’s ideas and what she’s trying to achieve,” he says. “Plays always sound different when they are read out loud so we will help Margot to see and hear how her words come alive and give insights into how it can be redrafted and improved.” Dr Hazou says the play fits well within the tradition of applied theatre, which he has a particular interest in. “We introduced a new Applied Theatre paper here at Massey last semester – it looks at theatre applied outside conventional performance spaces as a way of bringing about social change. “When Margot told me she had written a play about bullying and she wanted to develop it so it could be presented in workplaces to spark discussion, I thought, ‘Great, this is exactly what I’m interested in – theatre with a real-life application that tries to bring about change in the way we see things.’”

‘In the Red Corner’ is set in the fictional Blackrock General Hospital and shows the interaction between a bullying director of nursing and a nurse union representative. The content is inspired by the research findings of one of Dr Edwards’ PhD students whose thesis looks at workplace bullying in nursing. “The researcher, Kate Blackwood, interviewed both nurses and management in hospitals and they are all really desperate for research that can lead to effective interventions,” Dr Edwards says. “Hospitals are high pressure workplaces so the impact of bullying on a person’s mental state in that environment can lead to serious mistakes.”

Dr Edwards says she first began to think about writing plays after using role play when teaching leadership skills.“Role-playing can bring an idea alive – it might put students on the spot and make them feel awkward, but that’s what life is like. We’re always looking for ways to flip the classroom – I mean, who wants their lecturer to put up a slide that says here’s five things you should know about leadership?” Dr Hazou agrees: “The expressive arts afford different ways of knowing. If you stage something like a play, it opens up different types of spaces in which people can engage and discuss, which is what you need if you want to bring about cultural change.”

There are already plans to perform ‘In the Red Corner’ at a harassment workshop later in the year and Dr Edwards hopes customised versions of the play will be taken into workplaces where bullying is known to occur. She says her hope is that workers “walk out of the room as different people to when they walked in.” Down the track, both Dr Edwards and Dr Hazou would like to see Massey offer the services of an acting troupe to businesses, with theatre students being paid to perform thought-provoking plays in workplaces around the country. “If there’s a gap there and Massey can play a role in filling it, fantastic,” Dr Hazou says.

New creative activism paper launching 2015

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Creative ProcessesMassey University’s School of English & Media Studies will lead the way in Aotearoa/New Zealand arts education by launching a new paper in creative activism in 2015.
Launching simultaneously at Wellington and Auckland campuses in first semester 2015, 139.333 Creativity in the Community will immerse teams of students in the art and science of creative communication for social change, with guidance from experienced Expressive Arts educators. Students will be able to make a film or documentary, stage a collaborative community theatre event, use creative writing, or combine all of these, to work with a community group on a real issue.
Wellington course coordinator Associate Professor Elspeth Tilley said “communication activism pedagogy is an emerging trend internationally. It involves teaching students to apply their creative communication knowledge and skills to work with community partners to promote social justice.”
“We are seeing increasing application by social justice groups in Aotearoa of the power of the arts to drive change – for example Women’s Refuge is working on a giant statue of Kate Sheppard made up of the voices of people who want to stop domestic violence, and Greenpeace has been staging performance art all over the country with a lifesize polar bear. Not to mention the amazing work that theatre practitioners, such as the group Te Rakau Hua o Te Wao Tapu Trust to name just one, have been doing for a long time because of the recognition of the power of theatre to change lives.”
The Creativity in the Community course will equip students to plan, implement and evaluate these kinds of applied arts projects, giving them hands on experience in delivering creative activism but also requiring them to understand the ethical and managerial dimensions.
“Our Expressive Arts students already have a strong foundation in devising projects that use creative writing, theatre and multimedia by the time they reach third-year (see for example at left a student multimedia/theatre performance addressing issues of identity and binge drinking, from Wellington Creative Processes students 2014).  This paper enables them to capstone that training by taking it to the next level, working with a community partner.”
Dr Tilley said there was a strong research and scholarship base behind creative activism that students will connect with in ‘Creativity in the Community’ to understand how to make their arts interventions effective and compelling.
“Internationally, students have worked on issues such as gender inequality and violence, ethnic and racial prejudice and discrimination, and health disparities and issues affecting those who live in poverty. Our students will research their communities and team up with local NGOs to choose projects that respond to genuine need. We know that this benefits the students as well as the communities, as service learning has been proven to develop skills in teamwork, project management, risk assessment, communication, professionalism and a host of other competencies that will ensure our students hit the ground running when they enter the workforce. A big plus of creative activism pedagogy is that it also develops students as engaged citizens who feel empowered to use their voice effectively to create a better world.”
Dr Tilley will coordinate Creativity in the Community at Wellington, while at Albany campus it will be led by Dr Rand Hazou, a specialist in applied and documentary theatre who has international research links with social justice theatre projects, as well as strong connections with theatre-for-social change groups in the Auckland region.
“We are really looking forward to launching this project and seeing the students’ learning come to life in real social change,” Dr Tilley said.

Links:
139.333 Paper Information for 2015: http://www.massey.ac.nz//massey/learning/programme-course-paper/paper.cfm?paper_code=139333
Bring back Kate campaign: http://www.3news.co.nz/Kate-Sheppard-statue-nears-completion/tabid/423/articleID/354173/Default.aspx
Theatre as a tool to transform: http://artsaccess.org.nz/theatre-as-a-tool-to-transform

Cinephile: Simon Sigley

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transnat_film_culture

Transnational Film Culture in New Zealand is a niche publication, written because its author loves film.  Film was the most important medium of the 20th century, Simon Sigley says, “a protean cultural phenomenon with huge industrial and aesthetic ramifications”, and he is fascinated by its changing cultural status in his native New Zealand, the more so because for around a decade he lived in a country where film has always been given its intellectual due: France.  A film viewed in the cinema, the environment for which it was crafted – is special. Nothing, says Sigley, compares with that visceral, embodied experience of cinema, that moment when lights dim, the chatter stops, the sound swells and the movie begins.

See more at: http://definingnz.com/cinephile/#sthash.JavN9hOg.dpuf