my other blog

this is the blog i did for my final assessment in graham's class

trilogicalconversations.blogspot.com

i'd be interested in feedback if you want to take a look

thanks

Thesis plan

I'm not sure how much traffic this blog is getting, but I thought I'd give an update of how my thesis is (not) coming along. I really don't feel like I have done nearly enough research, but have attempted to work out a bit of a plan outlining what I want to cover in my thesis. At this stage it will include three chapters plus a literary review.

LITERARY REVIEW
-will explore major theories regarding Australian hip hop
-what has been said, what needs to be said
-how these arguments affect my thesis

CHAPTER 1
-will explore the dissemination of hip hop to places outside the USA
-what are the factors that have made hip hop so easily dispersed and embraced by Australian communities?
-globalisation; homogenous characteristics of hip hop (e.g uniform notions of authenticity) makes it easily adaptable to other contexts

CHAPTER 2
-connections to grassroots communities
-Mitchell’s argument that African American culture of hip hop difficult for Anglo-Saxon Australian to feel comfortable relating to… therefore adopted by other communities such as, indigenous, Pacific Islander and other migrant groups
-“credible alternative to the normative ‘whiteness’ of Australian society" (Tony Mitchell:2003)

CHAPTER 3
-this will be the ‘how’ chapter.
-how the hip hop sentiment has been utilised to gain sense of empowerment
-eg. hip hop work shops
-knowledge important- gives sense of origin; place that comes with hip hop; can lead to feeling of validation for participants.

I guess my main concern is am I trying to cover too much? Perhaps my thesis will be best served by having a narrower focus, though I'm not really sure. I guess it won't be until I've done more reading and can refine my actual topic even further that I decide.

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.