Newsletter 31 August 2009
State of the Industry Update
Listening Project Publication Outcome
Methodologies to Capture Listening
Australian Television and Memory: A Workshop
Annual Meeting Update
New Book
Forthcoming CRN Events
State of the Industry Update
Thank you to those of you who have provided contact details for research partners. Please keep
the details coming in:
As you are aware, the State of the Industry Conference is not only a discussion about the future
of cultural research in the university, it is also a showcase of the very successful research that the
CRN has conducted over the past five years. The conference organisers would like to send
personal invitations to people and organisations who have assisted, or who have been involved in
this research. I would be grateful if you could send me the contact details of any individual or
institutional research partner who contributed in some way to the CRN’s research. The
conference organisers will then contact them personally to invite them to the conference.
Listening Project Publication Outcome
The latest edition of Continuum is a Listening Project special issue, with contributions from many
of the project’s CRN participants.
http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=g913341079~db=all?jumptype=alert&alerttype=
new_issue_alert,email
Methodologies to Capture Listening
This latest Listening Project workshop was an extremely successful CRN event in July 2009 that
consolidated and extended productive discussions from the 2008 themed workshops on listening.
The workshop was an opportunity for participants to consolidate the research agenda articulated
in the special issue on ‘Listening: New ways of engaging with media and culture’1 by turning
attention to the question of methodologies. This question arose in a number of the themed
workshops and is of particular interest to CRN members seeking to develop ARC grant
applications on listening for 2010.
One of the most immediate outcomes of the workshop was to identify a set of methodological
problematics:

What is the relationship between listening as metaphor and aurality? Do the methods
suited to researching particular forms of listening translate across forms or contexts? Or
are specific methods required to research different forms of listening?


What research methods are appropriate to exploring ecologies of listening? How does
this challenge and extend the two-way model of communications that underpins audience
and reception studies?
How can we capture listening as an intersubjective process? In what ways does this shift
or transform the concern with outcomes associated with research examining voice or
recognition?
These problematics will be explored in a co-authored article by the conveners as well as ARC
grant applications on listening being developed by participants, which constitute the medium-term
workshop outcomes.
Read the full report on the CRN website: http://www.uq.edu.au/crn/activities/listening-workshopone.html#report
Australian Television and Memory: A Workshop
Friday 16 October 2009, Melbourne
Convenors: Kate Darian-Smith (Uni Melb) & Sue Turnbull (La Trobe)
The CRN’s Cultural Histories & Geographies and Media Histories Nodes will host a one-day
workshop on ‘Australian Television and Memory’ on Friday 16 October. We are interested in
exploring histories of Australian television, but also aim to consider the way television, as a
popular media form, contributes to broader process of cultural memory formation and
contestation. In this way, the workshop is designed to bring some of the theoretical approaches to
memory developed within the areas of memory studies and history to bear on Australian media
history.
CRN participants are invited to submit brief proposals (250 words) for 20 minute papers on any
aspect of the theme ‘Australian Television and Memory’. CRN members are also encouraged to
extend this invitation to relevant postgraduate students, early career researchers and interested
colleagues.
Please email abstracts to Kelly Butler ([email protected]) by 30 August. For more
information please contact the convenors, Kate Darian-Smith ([email protected])
and Sue Turnbull ([email protected]).
Attendance is free.
Annual Meeting Update
Fergus will have contacted most of you by now in order to start sorting out flight times for the
Annual Meeting. Just a reminder that it is your responsibility to ensure that you have completed
whatever academic absence obligations are relevant to your institution. In most universities this is
a requirement that ensures that the traveller is covered by that institution’s travel insurance. If you
are uncertain as to the obligations, contact an admin person in your school or faculty.
New Book
Globalization, Violence and the Visual Culture of Cities, edited by Christoph Lindner, Routledge.
This book offers fresh insight into the problems and potential of cities around the world, including
Beijing, Berlin, London, New York, Paris, and São Paulo. With specially-commissioned essays
from the fields of cultural theory, architecture, film, photography, and urban geography, this
innovative volume will be a valuable resource for students, scholars, and researchers across the
humanities and social sciences. It includes a chapter by our own Stephi Donald.
Forthcoming CRN Events
Cultural Studies: Past, Present and Future, 3 September, UQ
Material Geographies of Household Sustainability, 4 - 5 September, RMIT
Chinese Media and Cultural Studies: state of the field symposium, 4 - 5 September, University of
Sydney
In transition: media distribution, exhibition and consumption in regional and rural Australia, 9 - 10
September, Screen Australia
Creative Collaborations, 18 September, Deakin University
Obsolescence Workshop, 1 - 2 October, Uni of Wollongong
CRN - Australian Television and Memory: A Workshop, 16 October
ARC Cultural Research Network
[email protected]