Postgraduate Research Summaries

In Alphabetical Order:

Deb Anderson, PhD
Title: Drought in a Sunburnt Country: Reinventing the Australian climate

Summary:
Mythic articulations of drought have informed the radical transformation of the Australian landscape in the past 200-odd years. Australia is the flattest, driest and oldest inhabited continent on Earth, where drought (and climatic variation in general) is a pervasive and recurrent feature of the environment. Drought has not, however, been regarded in Australia's history since European invasion as part of the 'normal cycle'. Rather, it has predominantly been represented in terms of crisis, disaster and aberration.
Drought remains a powerful signifier of 'Australianness'. Further, the dominant history of drought in Australia has been represented as a 'battle' to survive a harsh, unforgiving climate. That 'way of seeing' climate has informed the intensification of techno-industrialised agriculture in this country and promoted the ongoing construction of national identities like the battler.
I wish to examine ways of seeing drought in a bid to shed light on dominant ecosocial relations, or ways of thinking about climate and nature in Australia. Further, I aim to explore the way drought in Australia is employed in discursive strategies of risk management and (bio)technological enlightenment, which champion the ongoing intensification of land use under the guise of production efficiency - of science as progress. What are the social and environmental implications embedded in such dominant discourses of ecological modernisation in Australia and, more broadly, in the weatherisation of Australian culture through demands upon land?

Name: Scott Brook, PhD
Title: Vietnamese-Australian Social Memory and Public Culture

Summary
This thesis investigates the field of Vietnamese-Australian texts, films, events, exhibitions and built public sites that appeal to, contest, or enact 'social memory' within Australian Public Culture. The focus is on how such memory work inculcates, experiments with, solicits and avoids recognition as, Vietnamese-Australian historical experience. It situates this memory work under the sign of postcolonial history, where Australia's participation in the Vietnam War (1959-1975; Second Indochina Conflict), resettlement of large numbers of Vietnamese refugees throughout the late-'70s and '80s subsequent to the reunification of Vietnam in 1975, and developing economic and diplomatic relations to Vietnam, produce multiple zones of contention around historical narrations and cultural identity. The thesis will investiate how such ambivalence energises the forms social memory adopts - whether in novels, films, protests, comedy acts, University courses, heritage monuments and exhibitions - hence multiplying the regimes of value in which the Past can be discussed and inevitably displacing the capacity (and utility) of History to totalise this field.

Research sites include the public debate between SBS Television and the Vietnamese Community Association in 2003 over SBS's decision to broadcast Vietnam's news bulletin Thoi Su: the politics of heritage in Cabramatta's Freedom Plaza and Cabravale Park: the interlacing of Vietnam and Australia in Hoa Pham's novel Vixen and Pauline Chan's film Traps: diasporic activism in Dai Le's documentary In Limbo: and the teaching of Vietnamese Culture and History in tertiary language courses.

Jessica Carniel, PhD
Title: The Coming-Of-Age of a Community: Gender, ethnicity, identity and Italian Australian film and literature as Bildungsromane

Summary:
I am currently undertaking my PhD thesis in Gender Studies and Australian Studies under the supervision of Dr Sara Wills, Assoc. Prof. Maila Stivens and Prof. Pat Grimshaw. This thesis examines the representations of gender, culture and ethnicity in the film and literature of, and about, Italian Australians. It contends that it is possible to chart the development, or Bildung, of Italian Australian identities and their dissipation into a more mainstream multicultural Australian identity, beginning with migrant fiction and autobiographies through to the concept of 'post-multicultural' fiction wherein ethnicity, although often present and acknowledged, ceases to be the centre of conflict in the narratives. Texts under consideration include Osvaldo Bonutto's A Migrant's Story, Rosa Cappiello's Oh Lucky Country, various fictions from Venero Armanno, Archimede Fusillo and Melina Marchetta's Looking for Alibrandi.

Peter Collingwood, PhD, Part Time
Title: Space Without Place: The spatial politics of radio in Australia. Commercial radio networking in the last quarter of the twentieth century

Summary:
This is a study of Australian commercial radio over the last quarter of the twentieth century. It examines the development of radio networks and their changing contributions to actual lived democracy.

Three bodies of theory - globalisation theory, public spheres theory, and the theory of the social construction of space - are used to identify and interrogate the transformation of radio in Australia. I argue that the radio industry in Australia is a paradigm case of post-industrial transformation and transnationalisation as described in the literature on globalisation - particularly in terms of its centralisation, digitisation and ownership concentration. With the restructuring of the industry has come substantial cultural homogenisation, the commercialisation of programming and the decentring of modernist genres like news.
The research also interrogates the homogenisation and the (presumed) effects of commercialisation and changes in programming: are the 'new news' products typical of these centralised networks - panel and talkback shows - mere 'show business' as Pierre Bourdieu called them - genres whose sole purpose is to deliver audiences to advertisers? Or do they construct public spheres which facilitate political participation? I argue that this restructuring has not occurred on a political tabula rasa, but inside an increasingly complex and continually evolving institutional structure where the political processes of the newly networked commercial radio must be considered alongside the changing and developing local services of the ABC, SBS and of the community and Indigenous radio sectors.

Name: Vivian Gerrand, Phd
Title: Identity and Belonging: 21st century migration to Italy and to Australia

Summary
A comparative cultural study, this thesis begins to examine the relationship between migration, identity and belonging in Italy and Australia in the 21st century. Somali experiences of settlement, for example, shed light on the ways in which the two countries have engaged with issues surrounding recent migration. Current Italian attitudes to immigration - many continue to view fearfully the phenomenon as an emergency in spite of it being a structural fact - are offset by Giorgio Agamben's notion of the 'coming community', centred around ideas of potentiality and possibility. Rather than reinforcing the archetype of the Self and the Other, Agamben redefines the notion of the community in order to uncover an ethics of living one's potential and possibility. Armando Gnisci, who draws on the Maghrebi tradition of making oneself hospitable in order to "creolize" Europe similarly challenges the status quo as does the work of anthropologist Ghassan Hage in Australia.

By viewing culture as a mutable and hybrid entity, such a study many further comprehension of the current climate of closing borders to perceived outsiders. I intend to explore what life accounts and in-depth interviews with migrants and migration experts reveal about different notions of hospitality and community. The qualitative interviews will enable insight, alongside the ethical and creative energy of migrant literature and film, into the language of the experience of migration. Life stories are crucial to opening up perceptions of migration. They enable us to move beyond stereotypes and thus to enhance society with an awareness of simultaneous dimensions.

Rather than simply viewing migration as a problem to resolve, one can begin to see it as an opportunity to reconsider codified notions of national belonging and be enriched in the process. Factors that lead to the exclusion of migrants will be reviewed, with the intention of finding alternatives to paradigms that produce alienation or assimilation of diversity.

Hilary Glow, PhD
Title: Critical Nationalism: A Study of Contemporary Australian Playwrights and their Work

Summary:
This study focuses on the work of seven contemporary Australian playwrights: Andrew Bovell, Reg Cribb, Ben Ellis, Wesley Enoch, Hannie Rayson, Katherine Thomson and Stephen Sewell. It is argued that over the past decade these playwrights have created an active political theatre practice which can be best understood in terms of its commitment to critical nationalism. The term critical nationalism has been coined to describe the writers’ objectives both to represent the nation as a recognisable and familiar entity while at the same subjecting it to interrogation and critique.

The thesis is divided into two sections. The first section provides an historical overview of significant political theatre practices in Australia from the 1970s to the present, and considers them in the light of the cultural policies of the day. In the two decades preceding 1994, there was a confluence between the broad nationalist objectives of cultural policy and the emerging theatre practices of the time. However, from the mid 1990s, it is argued, a disjuncture has occurred. Contemporary cultural policy reflects a harnessing of economic rationalism with hegemonic national discourses, and the group of writers studied here see themselves as working against the grain of these ideas. The second section of this study investigates a group of recent plays and identifies a critical take on nationalism and national identity through their interrogation of place , race and history , and the developing discourses of neo-liberalism. This thesis explores the ways in which these contemporary Australian dramatists see themselves as actively engaged in a new and critical conversation about the national and the nature of national belonging.

The research is based on a combination of methodologies: oral interviews with the playwrights and with five artistic directors of mainstream theatre companies; thematic analyses of the writers’ plays; and an investigation of reports and other documents to provide an overview of key cultural policy developments over the past thirty years.

Jillian Graham, PhD, Co-supervision with Music
Title: Composing Biographies of Five Australian Women: Motherhood, Marriage and Music

Summary:
If there do need to be methodological differences in the writing of men's and women's lives, it is not because of essential differences between them or in their works. Rather it is because of the ways in which women's life experiences have necessarily been radically different from men's just in order for them to get to the same place: the place in which they look like apt subjects for biographies. These differences are, for the most part, familiar enough: marriage or its absence has been a more significant variable for women than for men, and parenthood a far more determinative condition.

The above quote from Ruth Solie neatly encapsulates the focus of this thesis, within which the impact of marriage or partnership and motherhood on the careers of five Australian women composers will be explored. The composers included are Margaret Sutherland (1897-1984), Ann Carr-Boyd (b.1938), Jan Preston (b. 1951), Elena Kats-Chernin (b. 1957) and Katy Abbott (b. 1971). The demands and expectations placed by society on women through marriage/partnership, domesticity and motherhood have meant that their life experiences differ from those of their male counterparts, since there has been less time and creative space available to them to develop their careers; hence they have faced greater challenges than their male colleagues in becoming publicly recognized as serious composers. Acknowledging that the challenges women face in successfully combining marriage/partnership, motherhood and career can only be revealed through closer inspection of this female experience, in-depth biographical studies of each of these women will be provided. Their individual narratives will be situated within the wider, differing historical, social and musical contexts of their eras, in order to achieve better comprehension of the ideologies and external influences that may have contributed to their choices and experiences. Methodologies derived principally from feminist biography and oral history/ethnography will form the foundations of this study.

Olivia Guntarik, PhD
Title: Indigeneity and the Mainstream: The politics of museum display from the perspectives of Indigenous Australians & the Kadazans of North Borneo.

Summary:
This thesis is a cross-cultural exploration and meditation on varying perspectives of Indigenous cultural identity and politics. In this thesis, I consider the changing dynamic within Indigenous knowledge and the contradictions that arise through new forms of cultural interpretation and engagement. How has the globalisation of Indigenous culture transformed museums into agents, or deterrents, of social and political change? In what ways are museums viewed as a space for expressing the struggle over and assertion of identity? I examine these questions by exploring contemporary mainstream representations of two Indigenous cultures: Aboriginal Australians and Kadazan Malaysians. For this project, I invite Indigenous curators, artists and consultants on museums, as well as museum visitors, to discuss their perspectives concerning the implications behind the hegemony of Eurocentric museology. Part of this research also involves examining cultural exhibits within the Bunjilaka Centre at the Melbourne Museum and the Sabah Museum in north Borneo. By debating the political nuances of these representations, I explore Indigenous interpretations of Western aesthetic desires, the role the museum plays in the transmission of cultural values and the narratives that inform popular, and in particular, Indigenous understanding of curatorial practices in mainstream spaces. Out of these insights, a new consciousness for conceiving the museum as a site for nationalism, globalisation, resistance and reconciliation emerges.

Kirsty Harris, PhD
Title: Not Just 'Routine Nursing': The roles and skills of the Australian Army Nursing Service in World War I

Summary:
In 21st century Australia we take for granted the availability and success rate of modern medical care. However, during World War I it was a nurse's skill which often directed a patient's healing in the absence of now common medicines such as penicillin.

This dissertation seeks to reveal what military nursing was actually like in that period, highlighting the importance of trained female professionals in caring for soldiers within many medical systems. Official histories concern themselves more with the administrative arrangements for the Australian Army Nursing Service than with hands-on nursing; and secondary sources tend to highlight the impact of war on the nurses themselves. Only through additional examination of nurses' and other medical staff diaries and papers is the picture of the raw and uninviting face of early 20th century war nursing revealed.

Australian army nurses did not limit their war work to nursing. There were military administrative roles to perform such as orderly officer and home sister. They took on auxiliary roles as anaesthetists, assistant surgeons and masseuses. They also provided important mental comfort, moral support and friendship, often providing the only female face to soldiers who had been at the front for months. In many cases, the expansion of their roles and skills helped them to save lives.

Noè Harsel, Masters by research
Title: The Shepherd Kings

Summary:
This thesis is a general study of the privatisation of public space in our cities through development and the commodification of heritage for the purposes of marketing 'place'. It raises the question of how identity is defined.

Specifically, it concentrates on the changes in spatial definitions in the development of the Batman's Hill precinct, Docklands, Melbourne, Victoria. Batman's Hill is an incongruous 18-meter hill that no longer exists, having been bulldozed in the 1860s in the name of progress. Batman's Hill is important as it was considered to be the 'birthplace' of white settlement of Melbourne, named after one of the 'founders', John Batman.

This paper discusses how the Hill has changed and been remembered from settlement to its current manifestation as a high-rise retail and residential precinct in the largest urban renewal project the City of Melbourne has ever undertaken. It is not a detailed history of the area, rather it is a discussion of key planning points in the development of Batman's Hill. The purpose is to consider past and present planning proposals and usage in relation to history and public imaging of the area, and therefore to Melbourne. It questions how and why history has been used, and is used today, to commodify, name and otherwise identify 'place' and culture. It questions how and why John Batman has been erased from Melbourne's identity and how and why he has been re-instated.

Felicity Jensz, PhD
Title: Collecting Cultures: the Moravian Missionaries in South-East Australia

Summary:
This is a history of four Aboriginal Mission stations run by German-speaking Moravian missionaries and intends to look at the object of Aboriginal material culture that they sent back to Europe.

Name: Elizabeth Kleinhenz, PhD
Topic: A biographical study of Kathleen Fitzpatrick

Summary
Kathleen was a lecturer and Associate Professor in the History Department at the University of Melbourne from the late 1930s until her early retirement in 1962. This period saw many changes in the University, changes which, in many ways reflected the great social, political and economic changes of the war and post war periods.

Kathleen was a prominent member, arguably the most prominent female member of the University staff, not only in the History Department, but in the University as a whole. She was widely acclaimed as a teacher of the highest calibre. So popular were her lectures that some people would come back to hear the evening repeats of her daytime lectures. And these were the days of the great professors - MacMahon Ball in Politics, Max Crawford in History Boyce Gibson in Philosophy and AD Hope and Ian Maxwell in English.

Kathleen had an interesting life outside of her university career. She herself recorded much of her early years in 'Solid Bluestone Foundations' an autobiographical account of her childhood and youth. The title refers to 'Hughenden' the home her grandfather, JR Buxton built overlooking Port Philip Bay in Middle Park and in which she spent much of her childhood.

In later life, Kathleen completed her study of Henry James which, to her great disappointment, never found a publisher. She spent her time between her apartment overlooking the Botanic Gardens in South Yarra, her property on the Great Ocean Rd at Eastern View and travelling in Italy, with her beloved sister, Lorna.

Elizabeth's study will be a chronological story of these and other aspects of Kathleen's life. It will be of special interest to those with an interest in the lives and careers of women of the period.
The thesis is being supervised by Stuart MacIntyre. Fay Anderson is the assistant supervisor.

Fiona Kinsey, Masters by Research
Title: In Focus: Women, cycling and photography in late 19th Century Australia

Summary:
This research project examines how women cyclists in late 19th century Australia intersected with photography, both as photographic subjects and as photographers.

In the 1880s cycling and photography underwent dramatic technological changes that gave birth to the safety bicycle and the simplified handheld camera. These mechanised leisure pursuits tapped into a growing consciousness about nature, and a developing tourism and recreation industry. By the 1890s cycling and photography had become world wide crazes for the middle and upper classes. It didn't take long for the two hobbies to converge. Indeed, it became popular for cyclists to carry cameras, and some photographers used bicycles to move around on.

Both cycling and photography were avidly adopted by women, with cycling having a great liberating influence on women's lives. Indeed, the bicycle became emblematic of the 'New Woman', who sought social, political and economic equality in the late 19th century.
Using case studies of Australian women who cycled and photographed, this study will explore women's photographic practice and representation in the late 19th century. It provides a fascinating opportunity to re-focus the history of photography in Australia. The history of photography has traditionally privileged the artist, the commercial operator and the 'serious amateur' photographer. Both women and the more casual amateur photographer have been marginalised, and kept in the blurry background of history.

As well as providing a new window into the history of photography in Australia, this study will also offer insight into the history of technology, leisure, gender politics and cultural identity. Fiona is seeking Australian women who cycled and were photographers in the late 19th Century, to use as case-studies. She is also looking for photographs from this period that feature women cyclists. Please contact her by email if you can assist: f.kinsey@pgrad.unimelb.edu.au

Elaine Lewis, PhD
Title: Australian Books in Europe
Considerable progress has been made in charting the history of the book in Australia and its emergence from dependence upon the UK but less attention seems to have been paid to the history of Australian books in Europe. This study will investigate how Australian books have reached Europe and how they have been received by a number of European countries. This will include a general study of the marketing and promotion of Australian books in Europe, an examination of the translation and publishing of Australian books in Europe and two case studies. An interactive online database will be established and it is hoped that interested parties will contribute relevant information which will be freely available to writers, translators, publishers, academics and all those who are concerned with Australian books in Europe.
Books and writers are an essential part of our identity and, given the current changes in the marketplace it would seem that there is now an urgent need for a review and refinement of past strategies in order to make Australian books and culture better-known and better-understood in Europe.

Kiera Lindsey, Masters by Research, Part Time
Title: Free Way, The Hume Highway as Spatial Narrative

Summary:
Roads perform a vital function in the imaginary and everyday life of Australians and offer a dynamic way of reflecting upon our national self. Characterised by linearity and mobility, roads inscribe actual and cultural space with order, purpose and meaning. Such inscriptions can be understood heuristically by retracing previous acts of travel and hermeneutically through the application of narrative theory that interprets a road's distinctive grammar, syntax and signs. By thinking of the road as a spatial narrative that consists of multiple acts of traversing, we can trace the parallel process through which established trajectories and inscriptions have been reiterated or rewritten and codes of meaning constructed and consumed. This Thesis develops this methodology by applying it to Australia's most used road The Hume Highway.
Submission date: October 2005

Moya McFadzean, PhD
Title: The Glory Box: Marriage, migration and material culture, 1930-1960

Summary:
The glory box (marriage chest, dowry chest, bottom drawer) is a material and metaphorical object, and a container of memories, which can be used to examine social, economic and cultural experiences of women, particularly from the 1930s to 1960s. By drawing principally upon memory and material culture, the glory box and its related signifiers can be rediscovered and repositioned within public history. As a metaphor for female experiences, the glory box is a potent and ambivalent material tool through which to explore issues of economic dependence, identity, sexuality, consumerism and artistry.

The glory box is an integral part of the rite of passage of innumerable Australian women from a myriad of cultural backgrounds. Customs converge and depart as women have transported their rituals, memories, boxes, and collections to create a rich local tradition of material marriage preparation with universal resonances and often ancient origins. This project will explore cross-cultural synergies and departures as a study of Australia as a catchment for these universal traditions and experiences.

Simeon Moran, PhD
Title: Ordinary Australians

Summary:
The Australian nation encompasses a marginalised indigenous population and a national citizenship that is becoming increasingly more multicultural within world contexts of globalisation. Whilst Australian society grapples with an increasingly heterogeneous social reality, resistance to these global processes often manifests in an attachment to an imagined homogenous nation. This is a racialised fantasy, which privileges an idealised whiteness and configures diversity as national fragmentation. This study concerns itself with the social implications of such growing diversity within a traditional model of nationhood that privileges homogeneity
My project focuses on ordinary people in a middle-class suburban location in Melbourne. It is an area that has popularly been considered as a white urban heartland but has undergone demographic change in its recent history. This setting is likely to provide an insight into the urban reality of multicultural change, and thus also the ways in which white middle Australia configures, understands and responds to localised and lived experience of this change. Within this context my research explores the ways that race structures lived white Australian identities, focusing on how being white is reproduced as socio-culturally significant through the everyday course of white suburban lives.

Les Morgan, PhD
Title: The Significance of Diaspora Aesthetics

Summary:
This thesis, The Significance of Diaspora Aesthetics is essentially an exegesis that sets out the social, cultural and political frameworks that proved formative to my intellectual development and positioning as a diasporic artist. The term ‘diaspora’ derives from the Greek word ‘diaspeiran’; ‘dia’ means over or through, and ‘spieran’ means sow or scatter (Proctor 2004 p.131) . The term diaspora originally referred to the Jewish experience of dispersal, but has since come to have wider applicability following the rupture and upheavals of modernity. Diasporic aesthetics is an approach that engages with the experiences of separation and entanglement, of living in a place but not of it.

Belinda Nemec, PhD (part-time)
Title: The Grainger Museum as a museum of its time

Summary:
This thesis examines the Grainger Museum at the University of Melbourne in the context of the history of museums, particularly those in Europe, the United States and Australia, during the lifetime of its creator, Percy Grainger (1882-1961).

Drawing on the collection of the Grainger Museum itself, and on both primary and secondary sources relating to museum development in the late nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth, as well as sources on a number of the topics covered by Grainger in his museum collection, the thesis aims to demonstrate that the Grainger Museum reflects many of the concerns of museums of Grainger's day, particularly of the years prior to his relocation to the United States in 1914. The thesis also proposes that Grainger was raised in a social and cultural milieu in which collecting, classifying and displaying artefacts were widely accepted and popular practices for both children and adults. Grainger's lifelong concern with preservation and memorialisation, although in his case taken to an extreme degree, was part of his family and broader heritage.

The Grainger Museum is more than an autobiographical record, however; through it Grainger was attempting to demonstrate that he was both part of international musical modernism and Australia's first composer. I argue that Grainger was ahead of his time in believing that white Australia had a worthwhile cultural life and future which merited preservation and communication through a museum.

Vivienne Nicholson, PhD
Title: Grassroots Democracy: Assumption or reality?

Summary:
The community group, Save Mornington Alliance (SMA), was formed in 1994 to oppose what it considered to be inappropriate development for Mornington. What started as a local protest against a proposed shopping centre evolved into something more complex wherein issues of democracy, local government, and active citizenship were brought into prominence. Placing this protest within its historical context adds to the complexity of this discussion. For a democracy to flourish, it is essential to have an active and engaged citizenry. There is an assumption and expectation that the political process is inclusive of its citizens. This thesis will argue that in reality it often excludes them. This exclusion is reflected in the current case study. This thesis will also test the assertion that the perceived disconnection between the political process and its citizens is a contributing factor in the current disenchantment with political processes and institutions within Australia.

Karen Pickering
Title: "Manufacturing Discontent: the cultural politics of the New Right in Australia, 1996 - present. "

Summary
This PhD is currently being supervised by Michael Cathcart and Nikos Papastergiadis. I am investigating the cultural politics of the New Right in Australia, with an emphasis on the period 1996 to the present. The critical framework relies on the concept of hegemony and the role of cultural politics within it. Central to these processes is the rhetoric of public language in the dissemination of free market ideology and illegitimate notions of cultural difference. By exploring case studies that highlight the relationship between government, media outlets, and private enterprise, it is possible to trace patterns of influence within the public sphere. I will further contextualise the project by canvassing the global development of the New Right since the 1970s. By interrogating the processes that maintain its ascendancy, this research will hopefully contribute to a broader project of cultural renewal already underway in Australian public life.

Chelsea Rodd, Masters by Research
Title: A comparative study of policy and media representation of refugees under the Liberal governments of Malcolm Fraser and John Howard

Summary:
My research examines the nexus of public opinion, media representation and government policy relating to refugees arriving in Australia, analysing two periods of recent history during which Australia was a significant site of refuge for people rendered homeless and stateless by circumstances beyond their control in their home countries. I am investigating the late 1970s as compares and contrasts to the present. Specifically my work positions the federal elections of 1977 and 2001 as respresentative socio-political microcosms of the representation of boat-arriving refugees of both periods of Liberal command.

Denis Shephard, MA
Title: From Gondwanaland to Waaia. A landscape history of the central Murray Valley

Summary:
This thesis will explore the many and varied ways changing land use practices have impacted on the physical and social landscapes of the central Murray Valley. Spatially, it will cover the country bounded by the River Murray to the north, the Broken Creek to the south and the towns of Cobram and Picola in the east and west respectively. Particular emphasis will be given to the Parish of Waaia, which sits in the middle of this area. Temporally, the thesis will concentrate on the period from the 1840s to 2000 but reference will be made to the eons of geological evolution and to the thousands of years of human occupation prior to the arrival of European settlers.

A 75-hectare farm in Hawker's Road, Waaia, will guide, inform and inspire the thesis. This farm contains features reflecting its own past as well as that of the central Murray Valley. The old and dying box trees are evidence of the pre-European vegetation, an old fence post hints at past farming practices and a survey peg leads into a discussion about land division. These features are, in essence, a 'map' - a physical representation - of both the past and present social and physical landscapes of the central Murray Valley.

This thesis will explore the physical and cultural forces that have interacted over time to create the landscape we see today.

Annette Shiell, PhD
Title: All the Fun of the Fete

Summary:
This thesis explores the history and development of the fund raising fete in Australia through an examination of schools, churches and charities that have held fetes over a long time period. Aspects to be investigated include the history of fetes in Australia and its antecedents here and overseas; the fete in the context of a fundraiser/social activity/amusement for those involved; and the fete in the context of a community event/celebration.
This project seeks to document the changes over time of the entertainment/activities, produce, crafts and the like that feature at such events, as well as the effect on the fete of changing social conditions such as the political climate in schools, migration, the increased number of women in the workforce, falling church attendances and increased working hours leading to less free time for voluntary activities. It also explores the impact of technological advances, questioning the extent to which fetes are kept alive by nostalgia and the level of interest in the type of goods and activities on offer. The impact of health and safety regulations and of government legislation and the demographics/locale of fetes are also considered.

Kathy Temin, PhD
Title: The Process of Identification

Summary:
This thesis focuses on the process of identification with stars, artists and popular cultural icons and the importance of identification in the creative process, in the form of art and short stories. I am in the process of researching and editing a publication, asking artists and writers to respond to who they have been a fan of in the form of visuals, essays and stories that are both personalized and constructed.