Book review: 'The Cornea' edited by H.E. Kaufman, B.A. Baron, M.B. McDonald and S.R. Waltman.

Parsons' Diseases of the Eye, first published in 1907, is one of the foundation texts of modern ophthalmology. It has seen a new edition at approximately 5-year intervals throughout the century. This latest edition incorporates developments that have taken place within the specialty since the 1984 impression, but remains in a virtually unchanged format...

Book review: 'Contact lenses: The Story', by T. Bowden. Bower House Publications, Kent 2009.

This book had to be written. Congratulations to British dispensing optician Timothy Bowden for his dogged determination in researching, writing and essentially self-publishing this hefty tome. How does one tackle the monumental task of tracking the complex history of the development of the contact lens, from the production of the first human artificial glass eyes by Ludwig Müller-Uri in Germany in 1835 to the sophisticated, high-technology, multi-billion dollar contact lens industry of today? The superficial answer may seem simple: do it chronologically, but it is much more difficult than that. Multiple contemporaneous and seemingly unconnected events often converged to result in ideas that elevated contact lens technology to the next level and many developments revolved around the deliberate and sometimes accidental activities of a long list of enthusiasts, inventors, entrepreneurs, businessmen, technicians, scientists, engineers, polymer scientists, opticians, optometrists and ophthalmologists.

Book review: ‘Anterior Eye Disease and Therapeutics A-Z' [2nd ed.] Edition, by A. Bruce and M. Loughnan. Churchill Livingstone (Elsevier), Edinburgh 2011

With the ever-increasing emphasis on ocular disease recognition in the practice of optometry and especially anterior eye disease management and therapeutics, any book addressing such issues is bound to have a captive audience. This second edition of Anterior Eye Disease and Therapeutics A–Z provides a succinct yet comprehensive coverage of this topic.

Book review: ‘Cornea. Color Atlas & Synopsis of Clinical Ophthalmology. Wills Eye Institute’, by C.J. Rapuano. Wolters Kluwer/Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, Philadelphia 2012

This book is one in a series of seven atlases covering the ophthalmic sub-specialties: cornea, retina, glaucoma, oculoplastics, neuro-ophthalmology, uveitis and paediatrics. The author of Cornea and editor of the series is Christopher Rapuano, Attending Surgeon and Director of the Cornea Service at Wills Eye Hospital in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. In the introduction to the book, Rapuano states ‘The goal of this series is to provide an up-to-date clinical overview of the major areas of ophthalmology for students, residents and practitioners in all the healthcare professions’...

Boken, berättelsen, pengarna I den digitala tidsåldern [The book, the story and the money in the digital age]

År 2012 är distribution av litteratur via internet inte längre en framtidsvision, utan ett etablerat format vid sidan av traditionella format som exempelvis pocketboken, den inbundna boken och ljudboken (AAP 2011; Amazon 2011; PaidContent 2011). Men den digitala tekniken etablerar inte enbart ett nytt format, utan förändrar också grundförutsättningarna för litterära konstformer och marknader. Detta kapitel behandlar en betydelsefull aspekt av denna förändring, nämligen hur den digitala tekniken påverkar relationen mellan läsare och författare och ökar läsarens inflytande över den kreativa processen. I den digitala tidsåldern är det möjligt att skapa berättelser online i en interaktiv process som involverar både läsare och författare. Kapitlet presenterar modeller för hur sådan “samproducerad e-litteratur” förändrar marknaden för litteratur och hur den påverkar den traditionella litteraturen.

TEXTA Book Club in the QUT Art Museum

TEXTA runs as a type of book club that we have previously labelled as ‘bespoke’ (Ellison, Holliday and Van Luyn 2012). We visualise TEXTA as a meeting place between the community and the university, as a space for discussion and engagement with both visual art forms and written texts. In today’s presentation, we shall briefly establish the ‘bespoke’ bookclub. We then want to introduce the idea of TEXTA as an example of a book club that negotiates Edward Soja’s Thirdspace (1996) – a space that incorporates and extends concepts of First and Secondspace (or perceived and conceived spaces). In doing so, we showcase two recent sessions of TEXTA as case studies. We will then illustrate some ideas we have for expanding TEXTA beyond the boundaries of Brisbane city, and invite feedback on how to further extend the opportunities for community engagement that TEXTA can offer in regional areas.

An opening : twelve love stories about art [Book Review]

Review(s) of: An opening: Twelve love stories about art, by Stephanie Radok 2012, Wakefield Press, Adelaide, xiv, 168 p., ISBN 9781743050415 (pbk).

Knitted images : cartographies

Through the making of these works I research teachers. Here, I push a/r/tography (Irwin & Springgay 2008) into ca/r/tography - a process of mapping that is multitexural, mutable; moving between theorization, creation, process, research, and mapped by me as I wander between artist, researcher, teacher...

A qualitative study of small-scale artist run 'Indie' music business in Brisbane

This study is an examination of three small-scale artist run music businesses based in Brisbane. The researcher embedded himself within these three environments over the space of three years, using participant observation and content analysis to establish the key motivations, theories, and ideas which drove these businesses. As a researcher participant the author also drew on his own experiences to interrogate those investigated by other researchers in the field, with the underlying key theories influenced by Pierre Bourdieu's writings on Small-Scale production. This study provides a fascinating insight into Brisbane music culture, in particular the independent music scenes.

Settling the Pop Score : Pop Texts and Identity Politics [Book Review]

Review(s) of: Settling the Pop Score: Pop Texts and Identity Politics, Stan Hawkins, Aldershot, Hants. : Ashgate, 2002, ISBN 0 7546 0352 0; pb, 234pp, ill, music exx, bibl. , discog. , index. The scholarly study of popular music has its origins in sociology and cultural studies, disciplinary areas in which musical meaning is often attributed to aspects of economical and sociological function. Against this tradition, recent writers have offered what is now referred to as ‘popular musicology’: a method or approach that tends towards a specific engagement with ‘pop texts’ on aesthetic, and perhaps even ‘musical’ terms. Stan Hawkins uses the term popular musicology ‘at his own peril,’ clearly recognising the implicit scholarly danger in his approach, whereby ‘formalist questions of musical analysis’ are dealt with ‘alongside the more intertextual discursive theorisations of musical expression’ (p. xii). In other words, popular musicologists dare to tread that fine line between text and context. As editor of the journal Popular Musicology Online, Hawkins is a leading advocate of this practice, specifically in the application of music-analytical techniques to popular music. His methodology attests to the influence of other leading figures in the area, notably Richard Middleton, Allan F. Moore and Derek Scott (general editor of the Ashgate Popular and Folk Music Series in which this book is published).

Portrait of the artist as a feminist, practice-led researcher

Becoming a researcher, like any process of cultural initiation, is a complicated negotiation of processes and identity. While it is tempting to imagine that a researcher is just 'one who researches', the reality is far more complex and can be thought of as a journey rather than a sudden change of role. In practice-led research there is often a final and difficult assessment that needs to be made of that journey, and this requires the collation and integration of seemingly schizophrenic elements into one coherent body of findings. This paper attempts to outline the underlying “system of methods used in a particular area of study or activity” that have defined my research journey. It discusses the various elements that have informed and directed this enquiry, which include, but are not limited to: practice-led research, reflexivity, and post/academic writing, all underpinned by a feminist approach.

Book Review: "Language, literacy, and pedagogy in postindustrial societies : the case of black academic underachievement"

Mocombe and Tomlin’s Language, Literacy, and Pedagogy in Postindustrial Societies: The Case of Black Academic Underachievement is part of the Routledge Research in Education series. The purpose of the work is to set out a theoretical framework for understanding the black/white academic achievement gap in the age of globalisation and post-industrialism. The authors use each chapter to develop an explanation for the persistent black/white academic achievement gap, by theorising that the gap is an epiphenomenon of global capitalist, post-industrial structures, reinforced by education as an apparatus of the system...