De-colonising Shakespeare? : Agency and (masculine) authority in Gregory Rogers's The Boy, The Bear, The Baron, The Bard

Underlying social space are territories, lands,geographical domains, the actual geographical underpinnings of the imperial, and also the cultural contest. To think about distant places, to colonize them, to populate or depopulate them: all of this occurs on, about, or because of land. […] Imperialism and the culture associated with it affirm both the primacy of geography and an ideology about control of territory.

Producing new Asian masculinities

An exploration of issues of Asian masculinity in white cultures, integrating film and literary analysis, autobiography and postcolonial theory.

Using the imagination : consumer evoking and thematizing of the fantastic imaginary

This article explores the process by which consumers evoke and thematize the fantastic imaginary when playing a fantasy-based trading card game. Interviews with 15 informants, all players of Magic: The Gathering, serve as data. The result is a new framework that reveals how the fantastic imaginary is evoked and thematized. A typology of thematizing strategies employed by consumers is also presented. Implications are discussed in relation to consumer research, imagination theory, literary theory of the evoked fantastic imaginary, and the imaginary in play.

“I woke up and realised the ground had shifted”: the shifting terrain of English curriculum

The theme of this conference comes from the epitaph on the Lewis Carroll’s gravesite. “Is All our Life then But A Dream?” This seems fitting for a time when so much change in the terrain of English makes us feel as if we are somnambulating through a surrealist landscape. Like Lewis Carroll’s Alice, (Carroll, 2003) we might find ourselves at strange tea parties with bureaucratic mad hatters, and just when we think we have a grasp of applying new theory in our teaching, we fall down another rabbit hole, to swim in confusion as some queen calls out, ‘off with their heads!’. The shifting ground in English inevitably moves in response to waves of theory influencing classroom practice. Each new paradigm has claimed to liberate language learners from the flaws of the previous model. Each linguist or literary theorist who shaped the new paradigm no doubt dreamt of a new population emerging from school as more powerfully literate citizens than the previous generation.

A study of entrepreneurship : Taiwanese digital content companies in China

China’s accession to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) has greatly enhanced global interest in investment in the Chinese media market, where demand for digital content is growing rapidly. The East Asian region is positioned as a growth area in many forms of digital content and digital service industries. China is attempting to catch up and take its place as a production centre to offset challenges from neighbouring countries. Meanwhile, Taiwan is seeking to use China both as an export market and as a production site for its digital content. This research investigates entry strategies of Taiwanese digital content firms into the Chinese market. By examining the strategies of a sample of Taiwan-based companies, this study also explores the evolution of their market strategies. However, the focus is on how distinctive business practices such as guanxi are important to Taiwanese business and to relations with Mainland China. This research examines how entrepreneurs manage the characteristics of digital content products and in turn how digital content entrepreneurs adapt to changing market circumstances. This project selected five Taiwan-based digital content companies that have business operations in China: Wang Film, Artkey, CnYES, Somode and iPartment. The study involved a field trip, undertaken between November 2006 and March 2007 to Shanghai and Taiwan to conduct interviews and to gather documentation and archival reports. Six senior managers and nine experts were interviewed. Data were analysed according to Miller’s firm-level entrepreneurship theory, foreign direct investment theory, Life Cycle Model and guanxi philosophy. Most studies of SMEs have focused on free market (capitalist) environments. In contrast, this thesis examines how Taiwanese digital content firms’ strategies apply in the Chinese market. I identified three main types of business strategy: cost-reduction, innovation and quality-enhancement; and four categories of functional strategies: product, marketing, resource acquisition and organizational restructuring. In this study, I introduce the concept of ‘entrepreneurial guanxi’, special relationships that imply mutual obligation, assurance and understanding to secure and exchange favors in entrepreneurial activities. While guanxi is a feature of many studies of business in Pan-Chinese society, it plays an important mediating role in digital content industries. In this thesis, I integrate the ‘Life Cycle Model’ with the dynamic concept of strategy. I outline the significant differences in the evolution of strategy between two types of digital content companies: off-line firms (Wang Film and Artkey) and web-based firms (CnYES, Somode and iPartment). Off-line digital content firms tended to adopt ‘resource acquisition strategies’ in their initial stages and ‘marketing strategies’ in second and subsequent stages. In contrast, web-based digital content companies mainly adopted product and marketing strategies in the early stages, and would adopt innovative approaches towards product and marketing strategies in the whole process of their business development. Some web-based digital content companies also adopted organizational restructuring strategies in the final stage. Finally, I propose the ‘Taxonomy Matrix of Entrepreneurial Strategies’ to emphasise the two dimensions of this matrix: innovation, and the firm’s resource acquisition for entrepreneurial strategy. This matrix is divided into four cells: Effective, Bounded, Conservative, and Impoverished.

Digital storytelling, podcasts, blogs and vlogs : exploring a range of new media texts and forms in English

Curriculum initiatives in Australia emphasise the use of technologies and new media in classrooms. Some English teachers might fear this deployment of technologies because we are not all ‘digital natives’ like our students. If we embrace new media forms such as podcasts, blogs, vodcasts, and digital stories, a whole new world of possibilities open up for literary response and recreative texts, with new audiences and publication spaces. This article encourages English teachers to embrace these new digital forms and how shows we can go about it.

Promoting interdisciplinarity through mathematical modelling

This article presents one approach to addressing the important issue of interdisciplinarity in the primary school mathematics curriculum, namely, through realistic mathematical modelling problems. Such problems draw upon other disciplines for their contexts and data. The article initially considers the nature of modelling with complex systems and discusses how such experiences differ from existing problem-solving activities in the primary mathematics curriculum. Principles for designing interdisciplinary modelling problems are then addressed, with reference to two mathematical modelling problems— one based in the scientific domain and the other in the literary domain. Examples of the models children have created in solving these problems follow. A reflection on the differences in the diversity and sophistication of these models raises issues regarding the design of interdisciplinary modelling problems. The article concludes with suggested opportunities for generating multidisciplinary projects within the regular mathematics curriculum.

"Theatre of the dancing language" : new possibilities in contemporary Australian playwrighting

This study focuses on trends in contemporary Australian playwrighting, discussing recent investigations into the playwrighting process. The study analyses the current state of this country’s playwrighting industry, with a particular focus on programming trends since 1998. It seeks to explore the implications of this current theatrical climate, in particular the types of work most commonly being favoured for production. It argues that Australian plays are under-represented (compared to non-Australian plays) on ‘mainstream’ stages and that audiences might benefit from more challenging modes of writing than the popular three-act realist play models. The thesis argues that ‘New Lyricism’ might fill this position of offering an innovative Australian playwrighting mode. New Lyricism is characterised by a set of common aesthetics, including a non-linear narrative structure, a poetic use of language and magic realism. Several Australian playwrights who have adopted this mode of writing are identified and their works examined. The author’s play Floodlands is presented as a case study and the author’s creative process is examined in light of the published critical discussions about experimental playwriting work.

Using Media Technologies in English

English has long been the subject where print text has reigned supreme. Increasingly in our networked and electronically connected world, however, we can be using digital technologies to create and respond to texts studied in English classrooms. The current approach to English includes the concept of ‘multiliteracies,’ which suggests that print texts alone are necessary but not sufficient’ (E.Q, 2000) and that literacy includes the flexible and sustainable mastery of a repertoire of practices. This also includes the decoding and deployment of media technologies (E.Q, 2000). This has become more possible in Australia as secondary students have increasing access to computers and online platforms at home and at school. With the advent of web 2.0., with its interactive platforms and free media making software, teachers and students can use this software to access information and emerging online literature in English covering a range of text types and new forms for authentic audiences and contexts. This chapter is concerned with responding to literary and mediated texts through the use of technologies. If we remain open to trying out new textual forms and see our digital ‘native students’ (Prensky, 2007) as our best resource, we can move beyond technophobia, become digital travellers’ ourselves and embrace new digital forms in our classrooms.

Between flagged borders, across gendered lands : the voiceless female space in contemporary representations of Australian beach

International and national representations of the beach perpetuate normative female concepts by maintaining dominant masculine myths, such as that of the heroic lifesaver and tanned sunbaker. Female experiences on the beach are traditionally associated with rhetorics of danger and peril, contrasted to the welcomed and protective gaze of the beach male. Conventional understandings of the gaze promote male surveillance of women, and although some resistance exists, the beach primarily remains a place to observe the female form. This article attempts to explore currents of resistance at the beach through a self-reflexive examination of Schoolies. Although the event is fixed within patriarchal codes and structures, small eddies of resistance exist amongst female participants in light of increasing awareness of masculine hegemony. The Australian beach remains a contested site of multiple constructs of gender and national identity. This article reveals the changing tides of resistance.

The new lows : representing Asian-Australians on television

This project utilises creative practice as research, and involves writing and discussing four sample episodes of a proposed six-part dramatic, black-comedy1 television mini-series titled The New Lows. Combined, the creative project and accompanying exegesis seeks to illuminate and interrogate some of the inherent concerns, pitfalls and politics encountered in writing original Asian-Australian characters for television. Moreover, this thesis seeks to develop and deliberate on characters that would expand, shift and extend concepts of stereotyping and authenticity as they are used in creative writing for television. The protagonists of The New Lows are the contemporary and dysfunctional Asian-Australian Lo family: the Hong Kong immigrants John and Dorothy, and their Australian-born children Wendy, Simon and Tommy. Collectively, they struggle to manage the family business: a decaying suburban Chinese restaurant called Sunny Days, which is stumbling towards imminent commercial death. At the same time, each of the characters must negotiate their own personal catastrophes, which they hide from fellow family members out of shame and fear. Although there is a narrative arc to the series, I have also endeavoured to write each episode as a selfcontained story. Written alongside the creative works is an exegetical component. Through the paradigm of Asian-Australian studies, the exegesis examines the writing process and narrative content of The New Lows, alongside previous representations of Asians on Australian and international television and screen. Concepts discussed include stereotype, ethnicity, otherness, hybridity and authenticity. However, the exegesis also seeks to question the dominant cultural paradigms through which these issues are predominantly discussed. These investigations are particularly relevant, since The New Lows draws upon a suite of characters commonly considered to be stereotypical in Asian-Australian representations.

Science and subjectivity

Science has been under attack in the last thirty years, and recently a number of prominent scientists have been busy fighting back. Here, an argument is presented that the `science wars' stem from an unreasonably strict adherence to the reductive method on the part of science, but that weakening this stance need not imply a lapse into subjectivity. One possible method for formalising the description of non-separable, contextually dependent complex systems is presented. This is based upon a quantum-like approach.

Girl in the Shadows and resilience and coping strategies in contemporary young adult fiction

The novel manuscript Girl in the Shadows tells the story of two teenage girls whose friendship, safety and sanity are pushed to the limits when an unexplained phenomenon invades their lives. Sixteen-year-old Tash has everything a teenage girl could want: good looks, brains and freedom from her busy parents. But when she looks into her mirror, a stranger’s face stares back at her. Her best friend Mal believes it’s an evil spirit and enters the world of the supernatural to find answers. But spell books and ouija boards cannot fix a problem that comes from deep within the soul. It will take a journey to the edge of madness for Tash to face the truth inside her heart and see the evil that lurks in her home. And Mal’s love and courage to pull her back into life. The exegesis examines resilience and coping strategies in adolescence, in particular, the relationship of trauma to brain development in children and teenagers. It draws on recent discoveries in neuroscience and psychology to provide a framework to examine the role of coping strategies in building resilience. Within this broader context, it analyses two works of contemporary young adult fiction, Freaky Green Eyes by Joyce Carol Oates and Sonya Hartnett’s Surrender, their use of the split persona as a coping mechanism within young adult fiction and the potential of young adult literature as a tool to help build resilience in teen readers.