pen to paper

Wow, I really haven’t updated this blog for a long time. I blame the thesis-rock I’ve been living under.

Orlan is my new hero. :) Her lecture at the art gallery last night was fantastic. I felt so rejuvenated and inspired afterwards. She pushes all my creative and intellectual and feminist buttons.

Her lecture was basically a run-through of her performance art from the last three decades. She showed images and spoke about the philosophy behind her work and what she’s trying to do with it. She spoke in French, with an interpreter. Her speech was written down, so Orlan would read a bit, and then it would be translated. (good, because it gave me time to scribble down some notes - that I’d like to type up at some point, before I forget it all.

She uses her own body in her art - her most famous and controversial was the series The Reincarnation of Saint Orlan, where she underwent cosmetic surgery, was conscious for the entire thing, filmed it and broadcast it around the world. Her aim is to challenge standards of beauty and push the boundaries of what our culture says is appropriate for our bodies. She’s also concerned with questioning and breaking down binaries - real/artificial, good/evil, body/mind, etc.

(oh, i’m totally not doing her work, nor her lecture justice. I’ll try this again when I have my notes in front of me) :)

Lets just say I found the entire lecture engaging, challenging and profound. I was captivated for the entire 1.5 hours. So glad I went!

Some other Orlan links:
~ This one has some images of her surgery performances. (possibly NSFW)
~ The wikipedia page about her.

Thanks to Meredith Jones, of Marrickvillia for organising the event.

Wow, Jana Sawicki is in the country. I wish I’d known about this sooner.

I want to go to UQ to see this seminar.

Sawicki’s publications always stick in my mind as the work that made me begin to understand Foucault, and how he is useful for feminist theory. She made Foucault’s work on power, sex and the body really exciting and something really clicked for me.

I’ve been meaning to pick up a copy of her book, Disciplining Foucault, for a while now. I think I’ll get it.

I haven’t posted in here in a very long time. I should use this blog more often. I think it would encourage me to write more critically and in a more academic style in comparison to my everyday blog.

Below are some Essay Guidelines I developed for my students. They were based on some common errors I encountered while marking the first essay for the course.

ESSAY GUIDELINES
Referencing
When writing an essay it is very important that you correctly cite the authors whose work you are referring to. Failure to do this correctly is plagiarism.

Reference Style
For this course and most sociology courses the Harvard system is preferred. This means in-text references, illustrated below, followed by a reference list at the end, which lists ONLY the works you have referred to in the body of the essay.

For example:
Anne Summers (2003) argues that the Howard Government is intent on encouraging Australian women to have more babies.

OR when you are directly quoting:

As Summers notes, “Australia is only one of a number of developed countries with birth rates so low that the country is not reproducing itself” (2003: 226).

In the Reference List you would include:
Summers, A. (2003) The End of Equality: Work, Babies and Women’s Choices in 21st Century Australia, Sydney, Random House Australia.

Note: Generally journal and book titles are in italics, while chapter and article titles are in “quotations”. The formatting of the reference list varies slightly from journal to journal, but whichever one you choose, BE CONSISTENT.

Literature
• Wikipedia is NOT an appropriate source of information for an academic essay. You might use it as a starting point or to explore an idea you are not familiar with, but you must then find books and journal articles – published research – to inform the argument of your essay.
• Do not rely on lecture notes to back up your essay. Use the lecture material as a way of finding other resources. Go to the library and read the research for yourself.

Argument
The point of an academic essay is to construct an argument. It is an assessment task, so you must demonstrate your knowledge and understanding of a given topic. Read WIDELY. Do not just describe the literature, engage with it and form an argument that answers the essay question.

Structure your essay in a clear, logical manner. The basic outline should look like this:
Introduction - outline your argument, address the essay question and tell the reader what your essay is about.
Body – Write clear, coherent paragraphs that flow logically from one to the next and build your argument.
Conclusion – sum up your main arguments and reiterate how you have answered the essay question.

Spelling and Grammar
Make sure you proof-read your essay (or ask a friend to help). Spelling and grammatical errors detract from your argument and tend to irritate the person marking your essay. You should aim to make their job simpler by being clear and accurate.

Some common errors:
• When you mean the plural of feminist - feminists NOT feminist’s
• Please learn the difference between there and their.
• When referring to a decade, do not use an apostrophe. 1960s NOT 1960’s
• Try not to use contractions like don’t and won’t.

Further resources you might find useful:
http://www.newcastle.edu.au/school/liberal-arts/studentguide/docs/essayGuide.pdf
http://www.arts.usyd.edu.au/departs/gender/documents/GSStyleManual.pdf
http://www.theory.org.uk/david/essaywriting.pdf
http://www.newcastle.edu.au/school/ccsb/current/styleguide.pdf
http://www.newcastle.edu.au/service/library/biol1030/harvard.html
Germov, John (2000) Get great marks for your essays, 2nd edition, Allen & Unwin, St Leonards, N.S.W.

I just watched the return season of Desperate Housewives - it’s research, truly it is!! I took notes and everything. :)

More than likely, I’m going to analyse it because it’s popular among my interviewees, and I think it has something to say about the major themes of my research: relationships, family, work, marriage, feminism, etc.

So I was just pondering how I might tie in elements of the show to what I’m finding in my interviews….when I opened smh and found this article by Anne Summers, about Betty Friedan - the famous feminist whose book The Feminine Mystique is said to have inspired the women’s movement of the 1960s and 70s. She died on Saturday.

I’m not sure that I’m sold on the ‘backlash’ thesis, and I’m generally a bit skeptical when Anne Summers continually laments the future of feminism. However, in some respects I understand where she’s coming from. I think it’s good to understand the history of feminism and celebrate (and mourn the loss of) women who contributed to the opportunities that I have available to me now. More than 40 years after Friedan’s book was published, it is important to remember that there are still lots of feminist goals to be achieved.

[And thanks to Summers for so beautifully tieing Desperate Housewives in to my research about feminist generations…]

I found the comments on a recent BitchPhD entry about writing schedules really interesting.

I’m posting it here so that when I eventually start writing, I can read the comments for inspiration and motivation. I like to see how other people tackle the writing task.

I think one important thing I’ll have to do is restrict my internet time. Perhaps I’ll have to keep blogging/emailing as rewards for writing productively.

haha, I love how I keep talking about ‘when I start to write’ as if it’s this big thing happening in the distant future. I should be writing NOW.

To the editor,

I am stunned and appalled at the audacity of Tony Abbott’s refusal to remove the ban on RU-486. (Abortion bill ban stays: Abbott 15/11/05). This drug is available in many countries and has been shown to be a very safe and effective alternative to surgical abortion.

In Australia however, the pill remains banned. Initially, it was so the government could score political points from Senator Harradine. Now it appears that Abbott’s religious beliefs are dictating women’s access to abortion.

This government is great at spouting the rhetoric of choice - as seen in the ironically named WorkChoices bills - but they seem very eager to limit women’s choices. Why should a woman who wants an abortion be denied access to an effective, affordable and non-invasive option? It is clear that Abbott values his own unrepresentative morals more than the welfare of women.

Stop patronising us, Mr Abbott. Australian women do not need you or your religious beliefs when it comes to decisions about our bodies.

Yours angrily,
Penelope

I just found out that Professor Ien Ang is presenting a paper at my uni later this month.

Very exciting!

She’s a very influential figure in cultural studies and social sciences, so it will be awesome to hear her talk.

Her paper is called “SBS and the Politics of Multilingualism”. I’m looking forward to it. :) :)

Affluenza: The new illness in Australia?
By Clive Hamilton - posted Monday, August 01, 2005

It is widely accepted that people believe they need more money than they have, no matter how wealthy they happen to be. Most people act as if more money means more happiness. But when people reach the financial goals they aspire to they do not (always) feel any happier. Instead of wondering whether the desire for more money is the problem, they raise their threshold of desire; this is an endless cycle.

In fact, studies have shown that most people would prefer an income of $50,000 where the average is $40,000 than an income of $70,000 where the average is $100,000. Most people would rather be poorer as long as others are poorer still. For the middle class, rising incomes over the last decades have been accompanied by a greater increase in the levels of expectation about what is needed to live a decent life. Since the level of expectation always stays in advance of actual incomes, many people, who by any historical or international standard are very wealthy, feel themselves to be doing it tough.

Complete article can be found here, at Online Opinion.

Consume, consume, consume.

I wonder if Australians will start to realise that spending money is not what life is all about.

Last week I listened to a discussion on Phillip Adam’s late night show about generations of feminism. It featured Anne Summers, Elizabeth Evatt and Elizabeth Meryment, talking about 30 years of feminism. I took notes and should type them up soon. You can download it or listen to it here.

It was a bit annoying that the ‘young woman’ (ie. 30-something) they had, Meryment, talked about how young women aren’t feminists anymore and think of feminism as man-hating. She said they say things like “I love my brother and my father, so I can’t be a feminist”. She also hates Big Brother and talks about how it’s an example of how young women are passive, and don’t even know when they’re being sexually harrassed.

I also just listened to an interesting discussion about Big Brother and feminism, with Catharine Lumby and Elizabeth Meryment here.

Meryment annoyed me. However, they were both interesting discussions and Oh So Relevant to my PhD.

Below are some articles I’ve just found talking about young women, feminism, pop culture, career and motherhood.

Deathwatch for the sisterhood, Elizabeth Meryment

Meryment seems to be taking one university tutorial and a few episodes of Big Brother as evidence that feminism has failed. I have written before about my thoughts regarding BB and sex. I suppose I’m still in two minds about the sexual harrassment issue. It seems that a lot of people are conflating sexual play and sexual inhibition with sexual harrassment. There is sexist language and behaviour in the BB house, sure, and I object to it, but I worry when everything sexual is portrayed in the media as a threat to young women.

Kids are the new career, Elizabeth Meryment

This sounds as if people of my generation are going to start having children earlier than Gen X. Certainly, the four 19 year olds I spoke recently all wanted to have their babies *before* they hit 30. But *after* they’ve built up their career, become financially stable and been travelling. Sounds like a lot to squeeze in before 30.

Childlessness: the revolution we had to have, Virginia Hausegger

Virginia Haussegger has a new book called Wonder Woman: The Myth of ‘Having it All’. I borrowed this from the library last week. I’m about to check it out.

And some more discussion of young women’s sexuality and Big Brother:

The modern girls is aggro, on the hunt, Brigid Delaney

Are young women really more sexually aggressive and promiscuous than they used to be? It’s a bit of a generalisation, I think. And based on examples from a TV-show and a pub crawl in Barcelona… Interesting, nonetheless. It certainly questions Meryment’s claims that young women are just passive and unaware.

I’m really keen to read that book by Rebecca Huntley, “The World According to Y”. Wonder when it’s out.

This year, Newcastle is beginning to feel more like home. Especially after nights like tonight, where I’m with friends and getting to know new people. We won trivia! First time so far. ‘Tis very exciting. We won a bunch of hotel merchandise, some wine and bar vouchers. I’ve somehow become the Keeper of the Booty, or the Treasurer of the Treasure, or something - meaning I’m in charge of looking after the loot until the end of the year when our collective winnings will form some sort of postgrad prize within the school.

Speaking of uni, it seems like all the changes I talked about here, are going ahead. The University is going ahead with the staff cuts and our School (of social sciences) will be amalgamated with a bunch of other schools. A small victory is that it will be named ‘Arts and Social Sciences’, rather than ‘Arts and Humanities’, which would have been the dumbest name for a school/department ever.

I found out today that the School office has been closed, and the admin staff have been fired! They had only 30 hours notice. It’s absolutely astonishing that they are treating people in such a disgusting manner. I think a couple of them had contracts that were ending soon anyway, but to give such short notice that the whole office will be closed, goodbye, is apalling. Not only that, but students have not even been informed about this. No letter, no email, no consultation…

I only found out today when a friend posted to the postgrad online forum telling us all that we now have to go through the School of Liberal Arts office, which is in a different building. What a joke.

The university is in such a mess. And it seems like it’s just going to get worse, as the staff cuts get underway. Erk.

More positively, there are discussions afoot about how us postgrads might be able to claim some more office space for ourselves. At the moment, the school (with approximately 50 postgrad students enrolled) has a postgrad room with about *eight* (old) computers in it. And people wonder why most of us prefer to work at home….

Mitchell’s supervisor reckons now is a good time to campaign for more space… there will be offices vacated, and since there will be more students in our school, it’s only fair that we get compensated in some way! [fingers crossed]