Arts Faculty News

From Superwomen to Domestic Goddesses

On 16 July, the National Centre for Australian Studies, Monash University, in conjunction with the Victorian Women’s Trust, hosted the launch of Dr Natasha Campo’s From Superwomen to Domestic Goddesses: The Rise and Fall of Feminism.

The book was launched by Professor Marilyn Lake (La Trobe University) and by Professor Rae Frances, Dean of Arts (Monash University). It examines the rise and fall of feminism in the public imagination in the last twenty years and explains why ‘feminism failed me’ has become the catch-cry of a generation.

Published by Peter Lang International Academic Publishers, the book is available now in the Monash University bookshop.

In this photo from left to right: Mary Crooks, Director of the Victorian Women’s Trust; Professor Rae Frances, Dean of Arts, Monash University; Professor Marilyn Lake, History Program, La Trobe University; Dr Natasha Campo, author, National Centre for Australian Studies, Monash University.

Photo courtesy of The Victorian Women’s Trust – Steb Fisher Photography.

The Gendered Newsroom

Sally Jackson, from The Australian, interviews Louise North about her recently released book, The Gendered Newsroom: how journalists experience the changing world of media

Read the full article: Book reveals female journalists’ survival strategies, Sally Jackson | May 18, 2009

Dr Louise North is a senior lecturer with Monash Journalism.

Figure 1: virtual dentistry

Mohommadreza Arbabtafti, a PhD student from Tarbiat Modares University in Iran, has been visiting The Bionics and Cognitive Science Centre (BCSC) for the past nine months. During his visit he has developed a simulation for training dentists and bone surgeons, under supervision of Dr Barry Richardson Director of the BCSC. Located in the School of Humanities Communications and Social Sciences on the Gippsland Campus, the BCSC has internationally recognized facilities for research in virtual reality and Mr Tafti has been using these.  Figure 1 shows a user drilling virtual teeth with a virtual drill (visible on the PC monitor) and haptic (touch) feedback can be felt at the hand holding the stylus of the “Phantom”, as the haptic device is called.

The challenge is to make the simulation look and feel real and to achieve this Mr Tafti has been assisted by Professor Bijan Shirinzadeh Director of Robotics and Mechatronics Research Laboratory in the Engineering Faculty, Clayton Campus, where a robot manipulator equipped with a force sensor and a surgical air-turbine is used to machine real bone to measure and validate the forces involved. Subjective evaluations have also begun in which skilled dentists and surgeons will rate the system for how real it feels. The results of this collaborative research will be reported in a paper to be submitted to IEEE Transaction on Haptics. Mr Tafti returns to Iran this month to complete his PhD but collaboration between Monash and Tarbiat Modares University will continue.

Louise North

Dr Louise North, newly appointed Senior Lecturer and Deputy Head of Journalism, has just published her first book with US publisher Hampton Press.

The Gendered Newsroom: How Journalists Experience the Changing World of Media is a vivid exploration of the gendered production of news–and in particular the experiences of women–in the Australian print news media.

The book engages with the question of how gender shapes newsroom culture and in so doing is concerned with production practices and cultural processes. It considers the dilemmas, constraints, negotiations and compromises which shape journalists’ day-to-day routines.

It probes specific questions about gender in asking:
What is journalism and what is a journalist?
How is newsroom culture embodied?
How do female journalists experience newsroom culture?
How has global industry change impacted on the workplace and what does this mean for journalists?
How does feminism get played out in the newsroom?
What is the relationship of newsroom culture to the content of the news?

The Gendered Newsroom

The author’s astute empirical research provides a distinctive account of how Australian print news media journalists experience newsroom culture.

The in-depth interviews with journalists ranging in age and industry experience reveal a complex culture coming to terms with dramatic industry change.

US academic Carolyn Byerly says the book “scopes out new terrain, and it sets a new standard not just for feminist media scholarship but for all critical research on media. I have seen no other author more willing to probe so many different aspects of news production”.

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Philip Chubb

PHILIP CHUBB | For all our preparation, it was pure luck that my family survived..

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John Arnold receiving award.

Mr John Arnold enhanced the learning environment for a student with a vision impairment who took evening classes in the city.  John ensured the students independence and safety by providing travel vouchers and an enquiry point at the reception of the teaching venue to confirm the room no. and time (students are usually referred to notices).

Congratulations John.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, author Professor Jenny Hocking, publisher Louise Adler, Gough & Margaret Whitlam

The Prime Minister Kevin Rudd launched Professor Jenny Hocking’s new book, Gough Whitlam: A Moment in History, volume one of a two part biography of Gough Whitlam, on 6 November. Gough Whitlam, Margaret Whitlam and Justice Michael Kirby were among the guests entertained by the Prime Minister’s address in the Jubilee Room of NSW Parliament House.

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John Arnold

Congratulations to HUMCASS colleague John Arnold who has received a prestigious Harold White Fellowship at the National Library of Australia. These highly competitive Fellowships enable scholars to spend uninterrupted time with the National Library of Australia’s major collections. John will be taking up the Fellowship early next year to work on the Sun Book archives in the Geoffrey Dutton Papers and the Jack Lindsay Papers also held in the National Library of Australia.

Glasses Raised To John Rickard

The parish of St. Mary’s Anglican Church, North Melbourne, gathered with friends and colleagues to celebrate John Rickard’s challenging new history of the church and its community. An Assemblage of Decent Men and Women was launched by Dr John Poynter, distinguished biographer of Alfred Felton, following a dedication service led by the Archbishop of Melbourne, Dr Phillip Freier. The gathering included Dr Peter Hollingworth, former Governor General as well as former minister of St. Mary’s, and current vicar, Cecilia Francis (pictured with John Rickard and John Poynter). John Rickard is an Honorary Professor in the National Centre for Australian Studies.

Professor Bruce Scate

Professor Bruce Scates Director of the National Centre for Australian Studies has secured over $300,000 in funding in the latest ARC linkage round. His project involves the first extended study of soldier settlement in New South Wales, which ‘opened up’ vast tracts of the state in the aftermath of the Great War. ‘A Land Fit for Heroes’ involves collaboration with Department of Veterans’ Affairs and State Records NSW. Based on recently opened archives it will address emerging themes in transnational and environmental history, enrich regional/community histories and recover the largely forgotten experience of soldier settlers and their families as they battled with the land.

“The digger has an iconographic status in Australian society”, Professor Scates commented “and thousands of families have charted the service records of relatives who served in the first AIF. This project will recover the returned soldier as important an historical entity as the men (and women) who went to war. It will look at ways our society tried to recover from the trauma of war, examine veterans’ return to Australia and their difficult readjustment to civil society”. The project is perfectly placed in the National Centre for Australian Studies addressing as it does issues of national significance. “Like many in regional NSW today soldier settlers struggled against isolation, drought and financial hardship. This project will evaluate the role soldier settlement played in populating remote districts and assess its long-term environmental impacts”.

Included in the grant is an Australian Postgraduate Scholarship and amongst the projected outcomes is a website charting the fate of some 9000 settlers. Professor Scates’ fellow chief investigator is A/Professor Melanie Oppenheimer.