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Mega-month of activity for August research roundup

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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.

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

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harry

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.