Category Archives: Academic Writing

Celebrating the Work of Massey Alumnus Layal Moore

English and Media Studies alumnus Layal Moore has just kicked off Mooreish Creations, an online creative enterprise that can be accessed here.

Mooreish Creations is a culmination of Layal Moore’s best creative work to date.  It arose from a strong desire to share her work and incite collaboration with others. For her, art and writing is a means of living and is very much inseparable. It provides a form of catharsis, yet also yields self-affirmation and reassurance.

Layal says: “I create to live and I live to create. This stuff just ‘comes’ to me, who knows from where, but it’s a means of processing. I’ll never sell my creative soul”.

Reframing Literature Through a Maori and Pacific Lens

A new Massey University course looks set to radically reframe what we traditionally consider in the study of literature.

Novelist and Massey creative writing lecturer, Dr Tina Makereti (Te Ātiawa, Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Ngāti Rangatahi) has created a unique course entitled ‘Oceanic Literatures of Aotearoa: Ngā Tuhinga Kōrero o te Moana Nui a Kiwa.’

The course is being launched for second semester study both on campus and by distance and will allow students to explore customary Māori and Pasifika creation narratives, visual narratives and oral traditions.

Dr Makereti says when considering Aotearoa’s literary past, people tend to think of the first Māori literature as being produced in the 1960s and 1970s. But she says Māori and Pacific cultures were weaving narratives long before English explorers arrived on the scene. “Written literature was never alien to us because our ancestors were already using sophisticated coding built into carving, weaving and ta moko to tell our stories. Our wharenui are libraries of stories built into the walls and into the very faces of our tipuna.”

She says it is time academia acknowledged this visual communication is as much literature as oral and written forms and she believes students, especially Māori and Pacific students, need the opportunity to study the richness of their literary heritage.

“Viewing Māori and Pasifika literatures as a recent development devalues them – we can see this in the lack of courses on this subject available nationally, and the lack of research in this area. By re-contextualising the history of our literatures, I hope to re-energise interest in our contemporary writing too.”

Along with studying pre-colonial literature, students will also look at contemporary Māori and Pasifika stories and poems in English and critically evaluate how cultural and historical bias is embedded in reading and writing.

Full details of the course can be found here and it will commence on July 15.

Related articles

Māori literature deserves academic recognition
Excellence in Māori literature celebrated

Nights with Frankenstein – juggling BA and family

Writing an internationally acclaimed essay on the feminist themes of gothic novel Frankenstein may not be typical of how mothers spend precious evenings when their youngsters are in bed.

But for Helen Peters – Bachelor of Arts graduate and mother of four – immersing herself in writing about the social significance of a story about a mad scientist and his monster was bliss.

She graduated from the College of Humanities and Social Sciences (in absentia) last week and says being able to combine her passion for studying literature and history with motherhood was demanding but well worthwhile – for her personal fulfilment and being a role model to her children. The way she calmly deals with intermittent requests for rice crackers, ‘Gwain-Waves’ and drinks of water while discussing her intellectual life is evidence of her juggling panache.

Helen began her degree by distance three years ago by enrolling in one paper when she was living in Australia with four small children underfoot.

“I chose Massey because I could do it extramurally and I’d heard really positive things about the distance programme from friends,” she says.

She got an A+ for her first paper on Academic Writing, which boosted her confidence and encouraged her to continue studying.

Graduating is a milestone but being awarded a prestigious Highly Commended Undergraduate Award from the Ireland-based organisation was a highlight last year. She was one of four Massey BA students (the only ones from any New Zealand university) to receive the honour, after Massey lecturers impressed by her writing urged her to enter.

Discovering Frankenstein during a Gothic literature paper was a revelation that led to her award-winning essay. She’d had preconceived ideas about it from movies and popular culture. “I thought of it as a man with bolts in his head and a crazy scientist – a story that’s all about men. It is narrated by a man but it’s actually about women, and women’s place in society as the moral compass,” she says. “If you try and ignore this – like Victor Frankenstein does when he creates his monster – it leads to chaos and the breakdown of relationships and family. It was written in the 1800s by Mary Shelley, who grew up without a mother.

“I will never read another book again without seeing so much more – even one paper opens your world.”

Parenting and study?

The key to studying with young children, she says, is to have a great support network.

“It’s essential that you have someone who understands that you need that time to study, and also to reflect on what you’re studying as well – it’s not just reading something out of book and then regurgitating it. You’ve got to have that time to think it through and process it.”

Her husband Carl is her main support. “He jokes he’s supporting me so that one day I’ll have an awesome job and be able to buy him fancy golf clubs!”

Helen treats the time her kids are at school as her working day, from 9am to 2.30pm. From 7pm to 9pm, her husband helps by cooking dinner, bathing and putting children to bed.

“Even though all I wanted to do at the end of the day was curl up on the couch and watch TV, I would study while they were in bed.”

Her advice for students with young kids? Find that time of day that works best for you to study. If you do not have a partner as support, maybe extended family or friends can take kids for a few hours, she says. “Don’t be afraid to ask for time to study. It’s not selfish to ask for help – remember that the end result will benefit everybody.”

Another key to success in studying with kids is that “you have to have that real passion and drive for it,” says Helen, who wants to be a role model for her offspring, aged ten, eight and twins aged six. “When I’m studying I say to them ‘you can see mum making a big effort – one day you will go to higher education too’.”

Social history of maternity homes for unwed mums

With a BA under her belt, Helen plans to follow her passion for New Zealand history to do a master’s thesis on the oral histories of women in the mother and baby homes of the 1950s, 60s and 70s – a topic that has had little attention to date. She wants to examine how women were treated in these homes, inspired after seeing the 2009 New Zealand film Pieces of My Heart.

“As the tide of social mores was turning in 60s when birth control became more readily available, attitudes started to shift from conservative ideas about unmarried mothers into the attitudes we more or less see today,” Helen says.

“It’s no big deal having a baby out of wedlock today. I want to look at that era and have something tangible for those women to show; ‘this is what happened to me’ – for others to know about.”

While she senses some might question; “Why dredge up sad stories?” Helen believes women spend so much of history on the side lines. “There’s so much about women that the history books don’t record because they are more focused on men. Yet the history of women can tell you so much about the prevalent attitudes of society.”

She wants to find 20 women to interview who were accommodated in maternity homes around the country. “Girls would be sent ‘up north’ and come back seven months later, and nothing else was said. It was hushed up because of shame. As women, we want to talk about these big things. It would have been exceptionally painful to have had and held her baby and had it taken away, then go away and never talk about it.”

With her sights set on becoming a full-time academic engaged in teaching, research and writing, Helen believes the study of history – and humanities and social sciences in general – is vital.

“As a historian I think we live in extremely exciting – or interesting – times right now. You’ve got Trump, North Korea and more – one day I think people will look back at this time and think ‘what shall we read to understand what was happening?’.”

Her academic goals and dreams have evolved since she first began her BA journey, enrolling straight out of school in a law and arts degrees at Victoria University, eventually deciding law was not for her, but that she loved history. Helen studied on and off for two years until she moved north to be near her parents to catch her breath after a difficult relationship and mental health issues (post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and anxiety).

Her life direction changed when she met her husband, got engaged and pregnant, resuming study with a new sense of direction and a growing family.

Love for the BA

Helen is a keen champion of the BA, despite the negative attitudes she’s encountered. “There’s this feeling that a BA is just fluffing around reading books or sitting around talking about poetry. What people don’t realise is that it teaches you to critically think about people and society.”

She believes it is important we have people who can “read books, peel back the layers and see what a novel is saying about society. And people who study history – imagine if we didn’t record the Nuremburg trials after WW II and any other atrocities? All of this is important. Engineering helps to build things, but it doesn’t tell us about what society is like.”

She sees plenty of fertile areas for further research and envisages herself writing history books on “byways” of New Zealand history, including the lives of women as criminals, and women in mental health institutions. In her own family, a relative was put away for her ‘uncontrollable rage’. “What is that exactly? How many women were put away to be out of their husband’s way?”

Studying history has the potential, she says, to spark interest and awareness about tricky areas of our past and to track social change. “Women are expected to be silent – you have a baby and it gets adopted out and you can’t say anything. Or somebody gropes you at work and you have to be silent if you want that job.”

That’s why the history of women is her focus. “It’s a real privilege to do a masters and give a voice to these sorts of silences.”

Helen exemplifies what’s achievable for mature students with families. Her children enjoy coming to the Manawatū campus library to help her carry books, as well as the enriching conversations her study sparks on diverse topics and ideas.

Nurturing the life of the mind is essential counter to the everyday challenges and busy-ness of family life. “When I sit down at my computer and start writing I feel ‘I just love this!’.”

(Helen graduated in absentia due to the logistics of family life, but plans to cross the stage to be capped for her masters).

Auckland Writers Festival – 16-21 May 2017

Four writers associated with the School of English and Media Studies are presenting at this week’s Auckland writers’ festival at the Aotea Centre. Do go along to support them if you can!

Tina Makereti: “Poutokomanawa — the Heartpost,” free public lecture on Māori and Pasifika writing  – Wed. 17 May 5 pm

Gina Cole, PhD student in Creative Writing: Gala opening, 18 May 7 pm and “Pacific Tales” 19 May 2:30 pm

Hannah August: Chair for a discussion with Lloyd Geering and A.N. Wilson, 20 May at noon

Sue Wootton, graduate: “Matters Medical” 20 May at 4:30 pm

More information and venues at: http://writersfestival.co.nz

Visiting Fellow – Peking University

David Gruber was recently chosen as one of ten Visiting Fellows to The New Zealand Centre at Peking University, 2017 (http://nzc.sfl.pku.edu.cn/10VFS.html). As a result, in April, he traveled to Peking University in Beijing and delivered an invited talk entitled, “Neuroscience and the Media.” He discussed his own research into the public understanding of neuroscience and outlined future trajectories of the field area, encouraging more cross-cultural and interdisciplinary research projects. During his visit, he also met with professors from Peking University’s School of Communication and Journalism to promote Massey’s School of English and Media Studies. Toward the end of the week, he had the opportunity to visit an English class where he met with students and gave a thirty minute lecture on the importance of re-writing.

Marvelly’s Villainesse media site launching soon

CaptureShe’s been described as a national treasure, has toured internationally with opera star Paul Potts, and her pop music has sped up the charts.  Now gold-album-selling singer/songwriter and EMS graduate Lizzie Marvelly is calling all young creative writers and artists to be part of her ground-breaking new feminist media project, Villainesse.

Marvelly, who has credited her songwriting creativity to her English studies, will graduate in April with a Massey BA in English and Psychology.  Villainesse is her next big challenge.  She says “the basic idea of Villainesse is to create smart, no-filter media for young women aged 16-25”.

She hopes to build a global group of student writers whose work will be published on Villainesse, as well as branching out to include students’ videos, podcasts and other media. Villainesse will also feature the writing of well-known young women columnists and Marvelly is planning to create connections between student writers and established journalists/writers in the field.

She is looking for “smart, articulate, socially conscious students” who would be interested in writing about young women’s issues and perspectives and connecting with like-minded women around the world – and if that sounds like you, now is the time to get your creative work in to Villainesse for the launch in May.

“It’s very much at the start-up stage at the moment and the site won’t launch until May, but I’m putting the call out to writers and collecting articles now,” Marvelly said.

“I’m looking for a mixture of hard news, features, investigative features, opinion pieces, creative non-fiction, and hybrids of those forms. The idea is for writers to write about issues that they’re passionate about (that would be relevant to young women aged 16-25) from their own unique perspectives whilst upholding a code of ethics and aiming for sound and balanced journalism”.

Marvelly, herself just 25 years old, hopes the site “will grow to become a space to foster debate, creativity and, well, girl power”.  She says “For the project to be truly authentic to women in this age group it’s important to have young writers writing for their peers, with some older inspirational figures adding to the dialogue.”

Click through to the Villainesse website below to register your interest, see their page on Facebook, or contact the Villainesse team directly at editor@villainesse.com

Links:

http://www.villainesse.com/

http://www.facebook.com/TheVillainesse

Previous stories about Marvelly and Massey

http://www.massey.ac.nz/massey/about-massey/news/article.cfm?mnarticle=marvellys-songwriting-debut-a-credit-to-her-english-studies-21-07-2014

http://www.massey.ac.nz/massey/about-massey/news/article.cfm?mnarticle_uuid=98A2339A-0334-93FB-0434-F20415BB2FA3

 

Research Galore!

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.

Mega-month of activity for August research roundup

terrors of uncertainty

Associate Professor Joe Grixti’s book Terrors of Uncertainty has been re-released, along with other classic humanities texts, as part of the Routledge Revivals series

From Gothic and horror fiction to e-waste and the grand successes of The Naturalist, it’s been another very busy month for EMS research and scholarship – check out our news in this latest Research Roundup!

• Dr Erin Mercer co-edited a special issue of M/C – A Journal of Media and Culture on the Gothic, and published an article on the difficulties faced by contemporary New Zealand writers attempting to use the Gothic genre without reactivating colonialist tropes of haunting Maori, skeletal remains and a Gothicised New Zealand landscape. In the issue’s editorial, titled ‘Gothic: New Directions in Media and Popular Culture’ Dr Mercer and co-editor Dr Lorna Piatti-Farnell of AUT discussed the continuing importance of the Gothic mode in contemporary culture and how that mode is constantly evolving into new forms and manifestations. They argued that the “multi-faceted nature of the Gothic in our contemporary popular culture moment is accurately signaled by the various media on which these special issue essays focus, from television to literature, animation, music, and film. The place occupied by the Gothic beyond representational forms, and into the realms of cultural practice, is also signaled, an important shift within the bounds of Gothic Studies which is bound to initiate fascinating debates. The transformations of the Gothic in media and culture are, therefore, also surveyed, so to continue the ongoing critical conversation on not only the place of the Gothic in contemporary narratives, but also its duplicitous, malleable, and often slippery nature”. Check out the special issue at http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/showToc/current along with Dr Mercer’s article on Supernaturalism and Settlement in New Zealand Gothic Fiction – tantalisingly titled “A deluge of shrieking unreason” at http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/viewArticle/846

• Dr Radha O’Meara and Dr Alex Bevan were co-organisers of a symposium entitled Loops and Splices: Changing Media Technologies, on August 1st 2014. The symposium explored a recent turn in media scholarship that uncovers the overlooked and under-examined media technologies that contribute to historical and contemporary practice. Papers looked at how different media technologies have functioned in relation to historical and social practices, aesthetic traditions and specific cultural moments. Keynote speaker Prof Ian Christie (Anniversary Professor of Film and Media History at Birkbeck College, University of London) presented on ‘Denying depth: uncovering the hidden history of 3D in photography and film.’ English and Media Studies staff were also well represented as presenters at the symposium (more below). You can see EMS staff member Dr Sy Taffel’s blog about the symposium at http://mediaecologies.wordpress.com/

• Dr Sy Taffel presented a paper entitled “ArchEcologies of Ewaste” at the Loops + Splices Symposium. The paper explored how media archaeology and media ecologies can be complementary methods in examining a range of issues pertaining to materiality and the damaging effects of the toxic digital detritus that we discard. He focused particularly on ewaste in New Zealand, where there currently is no mandatory (or even free) nationwide ewaste collection scheme, unlike in the EU where the WEEE directive mandates that all ewaste is recycled in high tech local facilities. More than 80,000 tonnes of ewaste annually enter New Zealand’s landfills, adding noxious elements like mercury, arsenic and lead to the soil and water table. Dr Taffel argued that ideas from media archaeology (a way of exploring past technology with a view to creatively reassembling and reusing technology rather than seeing earlier products as obsolete) combined with media ecologies (a reincorporative model of cyclical technological redesign) could point us towards a new age of ‘repair’ ethos, where waste was reduced and new designs resulted from the creative clash of old and new. You can see Dr Taffel’s presentation at http://prezi.com/iap-xqlsvb2o/archecologies-of-e-waste/

• Dr Kevin Glynn presented on “Technologies of Indigeneity: Māori Television and Convergence Culture,” a research focus that has emerged out of his Marsden-funded project working with Dr Julie Cupples (University of Edinburgh) on ‘Geographies of Media Convergence: Spaces of Democracy, Connectivity and the Reconfiguration of Cultural Citizenship.’ Dr Sy Taffel reports on his blog that “the paper focused on New Zealand media representations of the Urewera raids of 2007, and a more recent case where Air New Zealand, who prominently feature Maori iconography in their branding, terminated an interview with a woman for having a ta moko (traditional body markings), which they claimed would unsettle their customers. The paper explored impacts associated with the introduction of Maori TV and social networking software such as Facebook and Twitter on the ability of Maori to represent themselves and partake in mediated debates surrounding cultural identity”.

• Dr Allen Meek presented at Loops and Splices on “Testimony and the chronophotographic gesture.” The paper addressed the role of gesture in Holocaust testimony. Specifically it looked at some sequences from Claude Lanzmann’s long documentary film Shoah. Dr Meek argued that most scholarship has tended to discuss this film in terms of the transmission of the trauma of the Holocaust from the survivor to the viewer. Instead, he drew on the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben’s essay on gesture to develop a different reading of Shoah. Agamben argues that photography and the moving image have taken the autonomy of human gesture away from the individual person. When human gestures and movements are recorded they become a form of visual information that can be used for purposes of political control and economic exploitation. Dr Meek’s paper showed how Holocaust testimony forms part of a larger history of recorded gesture in the cinema that we need to consider if we are to understand its relation both to the Nazi system of power and to our recording and viewing of testimony today.

• In other recent research highlights, Associate Professor Joe Grixti’s book Terrors of Uncertainty: The Cultural Contexts of Horror Fiction has been re-released as part of Routledge’s ‘Revivals’ series of classic and important books. Routledge Revivals is a programme designed to reissue a wealth of out-of-print and unavailable titles written by some of the leading academic scholars of the last 120 years. To date, the programme includes titles by the likes of Sir Andrew Motion, Hermione Lee, Zygmunt Bauman, Karl Jaspers, Malcolm Bradbury, Simone Weil, Emile Durkheim, Charles Kindleberger and W. Arthur Lewis, now along with our own Head of School of English & Media Studies, Dr Grixti. Terrors of Uncertainty covers horror fiction from Frankenstein and Dracula to Psycho and The Chainsaw Massacre, illustrating how horror fiction has provided our culture with some of its most enduring themes and narratives. In selecting the text for reissue Routledge notes that: “Considering horror fiction both as a genre and as a social phenomenon, Joseph Grixti provides a theoretical and historical framework for reconsidering horror and the cultural apparatus that surrounds it. First published in 1989, this book looks at shifts in the genre’s meaning – its fascination with excess, its commentaries on the categories and boundaries of culture – and at interpretations of horror from psychology, psychoanalysis, sociology, cultural and media studies”. Terrors of Uncertainty brings together a provocative range of perspectives from across the disciplines, which combine to raise important questions about the relationship between fiction and society, and the way in which we use fiction to resolve or evade our fears of uncertainty. Available in both hardcopy and e-book at: http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9781138794511/

Essential New Zealand Poems: Facing the Empty Page was recently published by Random House featuring work by a number of staff and PhD students from the School of English and Media Studies: Dr Ingrid Horrocks, Dr Jack Ross, Tim Upperton, Sarah-Jane Barnett, and Aleksandra Lane. Ingrid Horrocks and Aleksandra Lane were named by reviewer Philip Matthews in the Dominion Post as two of half a dozen of “the best of a new and younger generation” of poets to whom readers should “Pay attention now and in the future” (Your Weekend, Dominion Post, 5 July 2014, p. 27).  For more information, go to the publisher’s site at http://www.randomhouse.co.nz/books/siobhan-harvey-harry-ricketts-and-james-norcliffe/essential-new-zealand-poems-9781775534594.aspx

• A launch event for Essential New Zealand Poems – Facing the Empty Page held at PNCC Library on 7 August featured local poets Johanna Aitchison (former Visiting Artist and Tutor) and Tim Upperton (Tutor and current PhD stuent) in conversation with Harry Ricketts, poet, academic editor, reviewer and cricket writer. Johanna, Tim and Harry discussed and read from the recently published ‘Essential New Zealand Poems’ edited by Siobhan Harvey, Harry Ricketts and James Norcliffe (another former Massey University School of English & Media Studies Visiting Artist).

• A creative essay by Dr Ingrid Horrocks which forms a key part of Maddie Leach’s collaborative conceptual art project if you find the good oil let us know, features until September as part of the Walters Prize exhibition at the Auckland Art Gallery. See our previous post on this fascinating artwork and Dr Horrocks’ involvement here.

• Associate Professor Lisa Emerson along with Massey colleagues from Education and Communication ran multiple workshops in the lower North island for tertiary teachers on Literacy in the Transition to Tertiary Education. These presentations are based on their research, funded by the government’s Teaching and Learning Research Initiative (TLRI) fund, on transitioning into tertiary study through academic literacy development, and were supported by Ako Aotearoa.

• Dr Thom Conroy launched his book, The Naturalist, on Friday 15 August – the book then spent several weeks at Number One in the NZ Bestseller list. See previous post here. See also: Thom’s interview with Kim Hill, available at: http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/saturday/audio/20145074/thom-conroy-channeling-dieffenbach

• Senior Tutors Joy Green and Tim Upperton launched their books as part of the Kete Series – Manawatu Poetry at the PNCC Library on Poetry Day – Friday 22 August 2014. This series, published by HauNui Press features Joy’s and Tim’s poetry collections as well as that of Leonel Alvarado, School of Humanities. See more here.

• Dr Thom Conroy spoke on the Intersection between History and Fiction in Historical Fiction at Te Papa, 28 August.

• On August 25, two final-year undergraduate Bachelor of Communication students from CoHSS participated, with Associate Professor Elspeth Tilley, in an applied communication research project involving collaboration with Massey’s Joint Centre for Disaster Research, the Department of Conservation and Geological and Natural Sciences. The project, which involves gathering data on Mt Ruapehu to help understand and improve lahar warning and mountain safety communication effectiveness, was reported on Radio New Zealand’s Our Changing World Science and Environment program, see more here.

• Associate Professor Angie Farrow won won ‘Best Drama Script’ for her new play ‘Leo Rising’ at the Auckland Short and Sweet Festival 2014.