[P]lucky Jane et al: ideal types in the legal academy?

This article started as a response to a decision by Deakin University's Law School late last year to embark upon a major recruitment of new staff. That decision caused the writer to wonder what published sources of advice were available to assist aspiring legal academics in choosing and shaping a career. To date it would seem that whilst there is no dearth of sources about what law schools should teach, or on the content and structure of the curriculum, research on the selection and formation of academics is somewhat less common. This is changing. In 2003 a short biographical study of six law teachers, based on structured interviews, was published and in 2004, a major study of the identity of 54 law teachers became available. There have also been significant studies on the particular issues encountered by female academics in the legal academy.

Comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable: the role of journalism in the academy

The new professional disciplines such as journalism and public relations face unique challenges in entering the academy and as they formulate their own methodologies, pedagogies and theoretical frameworks there arises inevitable tensions between them and the more traditional disciplines.

As recently as January of this year in announcing the establishment of a new institute of journalism at Oxford University backed by £1.75m funding from Reuters, the vice chancellor of Oxford University, Dr John Hood, outlined plans to make this new centre one of the most authoritative sources of reliable analysis of journalism at an international, national and local level.

He went on to say that the aim of the institute would be to "break down the barriers of incomprehension and distrust which have tended to define the relationship between the academy and journalism." It is that ambivalent relationship which provides the focus for this paper.

As late as the mid 90s in the Australian academy focus was on the so called "Media Wars" with proponents of a pure and empirical form of journalism education declaring "No More Theory!" Tensions remain at least in the Australian context between the profession and practitioners and those who have moved to journalism education. Even within the ranks of the educators there are still divisions between those who see themselves only as practitioners with skills to impart, and those who see themselves as also building the disciplinary base.

Interdisciplinarity is often seen as the solution to such tensions but such hybrid mergings bring with them their own problems. This paper looks at the "Media Wars", their aftermath, and provides a case study of a discipline still seeking its own secure methodological and theoretical niche within the academy. It also poses its own solution in suggesting that it is time for a riotous Feyeraband type of play to produce the kind of disciplinary pastiche which will help in securing that niche.

'Creative destruction': knowledge economy policy and the future of arts and humanities in the academy

Policy conceptualizations of the global knowledge economy have led to the channelling of much Higher Education and Research and Development funding into the priority areas of science and technology. Among other things, this diversion of funding calls into question the future of traditional humanities and creative arts faculties. How these faculties, and the disciplines within them, might reconfigure themselves for the knowledge economy is, therefore, a question of great importance, although one that as yet has not been adequately answered. This paper explores some of the reasons for this by looking at how innovation in the knowledge economy is typically theorized. It takes one policy trajectory informing Australia's key innovation statement as an example. It argues that, insofar as the formation of this knowledge economy policy has been informed by a techno-economic paradigm, it works to preclude many humanities and creative arts disciplines. This paper, therefore, looks at how an alternative theorization of the knowledge economy might offer a more robust framework from within which to develop humanities and creative arts Higher Education and Research policy in the knowledge economy, both in Australia and internationally.
1 This article draws on the Australian Research Council project, Knowledge/economy/society: a sociological study of an education policy discourse in Australia in globalising circumstances, being conducted by Jane Kenway, Elizabeth Bullen and Simon Robb. This 3-year project looks at how understandings of the knowledge economy and knowledge society inform current education policy and, in turn, how this policy translates into educational practice. The methodology includes policy analysis, interviews with policy makers in government, and supranational organizations. It also includes cameo studies of innovative educational practice, two of which we draw on here.

Alice's academy

Kate McInally approaches censorship from perspectives we often overlook in censorship discussions: self-censorship and the censorship of evasion. Using two novels by Australian author Doug MacLeod, McInally explores the subtle queering of heteronormative ideologies, the art of, perhaps, gently twisting depictions of sexualities and desires rather than overtly transgressing the expected norms. McInally commends MacLeod’s humorous and incisive questioning of those hetero-norms, yet questions some of his editorial decisions, wondering if he has stopped short of the story he really hoped to tell.
- Caroline Jones, editor Alice's Academy

Sleeping with the enemy : creative writing and theory in the academy

This paper will contend that as literary studies elevates creative writing to the highest level, by studying and analysing creative texts; creative writing is similarly enhanced when it is underpinned by theory. This flies in the face of the view that theory has no relevance to the needs of contemporary writers. This paper will examine the way in which theoretical insights and their applications are essential to the creative writing process and propose that without theory, creative writing classes might be at risk of constantly going over the same ground, with no way of being elevated to the next level.
Without the study of literary theory in creative writing, writers are in danger of producing imitations of acclaimed literature. Similarly, without studying creativity in literary studies, writers are at risk of imitating the language of French theorists in translation and failing to harness imaginative ways to create new ideas and theories. This paper encourages new ways of thinking about the union of literary studies and creative writing by focusing on theories and poetry of the sublime. This can assist creative and analytical writers with the anxiety of the blank page and the problem of the ineffable, through an examination of the role of imagination and reason in this process. Creative writing and theory should be studied simultaneously; they invigorate one another and this paper focuses on this important reciprocal relationship.

'Very inflated rhetoric polysyllables and so on': the public intellectual and jargon in the academy

The public intellectual, by their very definition, aims to reach a large sector of the public or publics. This requires proficiency, or at least the capacity to communicate in a variety of forms. As a large proportion of the public, to which the public intellectual appeals, is an online or cyber public, the importance of blogs in a computer-literate public cannot be under-estimated. The immediacy of the blog and the way in which an online presence facilitates immediate communication between the public and the public intellectual through the posting of comments online allow for a broad recognition of the intellectual in the public arena. My arguments will hinge on my interviews with contemporary American public intellectuals (Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Todd Gitlin, Camille Paglia and Stephen Greenblatt) and their views on communication in a society experiencing a decline in the publication of print media.

New modalities of state power: neoliberal responsibilisation and the work of academy chains

This paper draws on interview data gathered as part of a broader study around issues of equity and schooling. It features the voices of the Executive Director and four Head Teachers from one of England's top performing academy chains, ‘CONNECT’. The notion of neoliberal responsibilisation is drawn on to examine, first, the ways in which Head Teachers describe their work and, second, the chain's expectations of them as CONNECT leaders. Responsibilisation of the self was apparent in Head Teachers' construction of themselves as ideal neoliberal workers – performing and enterprising subjects who readily accept the business principles and results-orientation of their ‘data-driven’ environment. Responsibilising of Head Teachers by the organisation was evident in the rigorous ‘non-negotiable’ standards and accountabilities at CONNECT that they were expected to comply with. These non-negotiables cultivated and rewarded Head Teachers’ entrepreneurial identity of achievement motivation. The paper illustrates how such neoliberal responsibilisation is both a crucial and highly troubling element in the work of academy chains as new modalities of state power.