politics of the posthuman

I love the luxury of part time honours! I'm sure I'm going to learn a lot from watching everyone's thesis evolve over the next year.

My still nebulous thesis is beginning to coalesce around ideas about the intersection of technology and the body. For the last decade theorists have been talking about the end of the human era, suggesting it is giving away to a new (post)evolutionary step; the 'posthuman' - a hybrid of organism and cybernetic mechanism.

I'm going to argue that this human/posthuman distinction is artificial. technology is a central part of human oncology; we have always augmented and extended ourselves through tools and technologies. Technologies aren't artificial or unnatural; they form a central part of who we are. Cyborgs don't break with historical continuity, they do not represent a new species or way of being; they are the logical next step for us homo faber.

My thesis will probably look at cyborgs in theory and in fiction focusing on our uneasy relationship with technology, especially technologies that permeate the membranes of our bodies.

I'm sure this is all going to change drastically over the next 12 months, but i guess this gives people a basic idea of what I'm interested in.

Thanks to everyone

for posting your provisional thesis title and a little bit about your topic. This will now enable me to pass on this info to Di Mitchell; the librarian who will be taking our seminar on Library database skills in week 9. Your topics look fascinating. You'll find that they start to take on a life of their own! I look forward to reading more about your progress.

‘The rise and change of documentary’

(will probably change alot!!)

Documentaries today are getting bigger releases and bigger audiences than in the past. Now why would that be? It could be argued that today's documentaries are ‘better’, more dramatic films than those of the past. Filmmakers are bringing narrative techniques to truth-telling.

My research hopes to answer the following questions.
1.Are the boundaries that mark out the factual genre becoming increasingly blurred as film and program makers come under ever-greater commercial pressure?
2.What do the new developments in the documentary genre mean for the future of documentary?
3. With the narrative shift in the documentary form can such films truly be called documentaries? Or are they just "docu-ganda”?
4. How, in today's media environment, can documentary preserve some of its fundamental ambitions to give us insights into contemporary and historical realities?

Thesis topic

While it does still need some refinement, at this stage my thesis topic will be Austalian hip hop as a vehicle of political dissent. I hope to look at the use of hip hop culture as a form of subversiveness while also giving a brief history of political activism in popular music. I want to look further than Australian hip hop music however, I'll also explore other elements such as graffiti and also the embrace of hip hop by different communities. Examples of this are hip hop workshops provided for young people in certain areas and hip hop in Aboriginal communities.

As for a title, I'm still not sure though any suggestions are most welcome!

History of Celebrity

I probably still need to refine my topic a bit more, but basically it's going to look at the history of celebrity culture. I thought for example I could try to trace and explain how we got to the bizarre world of paparazzi snapped celebrities of today. As celebrities are obviously not natural, but rather cultural constructions, I thought that by looking at different celebrities in different time periods I could perhaps reveal something about the society which created and consumed them. For example I would really like to use the Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton affair as a case study for the 1960s, as it occurred around the same time that many social values and morals were changing. I suppose my thesis will mostly focus on the 20th century, but I was also hoping to briefly discuss the concept of celebrity in other ages. For example gladiators in ancient Rome often achieved a celebrity like status.

Duncan's Thesis Title

Hey all,

I'd never have imagined 6 months ago that I would be involved in not one but two blogs but here I am. As far as my thesis is going I'm thinking:

The Decline and Fall of Coppola's Empire
The downfall of New Hollywood cinema

From the reading that I've done I've found that the part of New Hollywood which I'm most interested in is the way it fell apart as a result of both the unprecedented level of power attained by the director and the arrival of the blockbuster film. I use Francis Ford Coppola (The Godfather, Apocalypse Now) in the title as he was probably the central figure of the rise of New Hollywood, the director who the others looked to for guidance, but was also one of the key figures in the downfall when he himself was guilty of losing control of his own power.

A Beginning

Hiya everyone,

I guess I better start off;

I came up with a lame kind of title for my thesis this afternoon (not snappy enough in my opinion)

A Trivial Pursuit?
Discussing the synergy or segregation of daily and tabloid news

It's a working progress, but basically i'm looking at the distinction between tabloid/celebrity news and everyday news and whether its worthwhile clarifying that distinction and being aware of the present consequences (the neil postman argument) or whether we should abolish the distinction altogether (the catharine lumby hooray for everything argument).

Working Title

I don't know if this is a reasonable working title for my thesis or not, but I guess that's the advantage of a working title - it can be changed later:

Straightjacket Beauty: The Insane Culture of the Impossible Body

I will be looking at how culture dictates the idealized female form through media production (specifically two different monthly women's magazines). It is bigger than the body although obviously that is the headlined feature - the performance of being female is inscribed, not discovered. I'm thinking already I should change the "Body" at the end to "Image"

Welcome to our Thesis Prep Blog

I hope this will be a useful space for us to communicate ideas, research and any info you might come across on eachother's thesis topics. I would like your first blog to include the topic of your thesis; title and any other info that you might like to share with others. This doesn't have to be especially detailed but just try to give us a feel for your subject area.