HDR Student: Aoife Wilkinson
Title: Investigating hāfu interpretations of multiculturalism in Australia and tabunka kyōsei in Japan
Abstract: In my PhD project I explore how hāfu (i.e., persons of mixed Japanese background) youth living in Australia and Japan interpret Australian multiculturalism and Japanese tabunka kyōsei (lit. ‘multicultural coexistence’). To do this, I will collect qualitative interview and questionnaire data from hāfu youth living in Australia and Japan. I will then analyse their responses through the lens of everyday multiculturalism to further examine whether hāfu see multiculturalism and/or tabunka kyōsei as discourses which have an effect or non-effect on their everyday lives and identities.
Supervisors: A/Prof David Chapman (primary), A/Prof Zane Goebel (secondary)
Publication: Wilkinson, A. 2020. Forfeiting Citizenship, Forfeiting Identity? Multiethnic and Multiracial Japanese Youth in Australia and the Japanese Nationality Law, New Voices in Japanese Studies, 12, 21-43. https://newvoices.org.au/volume-12/forfeiting-citizenship-forfeiting-identity-multiethnic-and-multiracial-japanese-youth-in-australia-and-the-japanese-nationality-law/
HDR Student: Beth Kearney
Title: Unfixing the Subject: The Role of Photography in Women's Life Writing in French in the Early 21st Century
Abstract: Photography is often framed as a medium that "fixes" its subject, freezing the image of an individual and anchoring identity and experience in a permanent, material form. For a number of decades, however, increasing numbers of women authors of French expression have included photographs in their first-person texts to achieve the opposite: photography in fact assists autobiographers in unfixing identity and experience, thus adding a layer of complexity or ambiguity to the act of self-representation.
My thesis seeks to answer the following question: how does the inclusion of photography in women's life writing in French published since 2000 assist authors in unfixing identity and destabilising notions of stability and certainty in self-representation?
To demonstrate this, I examine a series of works of photoliterature published since 2000. All the works are authored by women of French expression, with origins ranging from Québec, to Tunisia, Algeria and France. Overall, I hope my thesis will demonstrate that the contemporary authors of my corpus in fact use text and image to destabilise representations of the first-person subject, thus countering the notion that photography is bound up in a "fixing" process. By mobilising particular features of the photographic medium (namely, the tropes of death, sexuality and memory), the authors wrest the first-person subject away from binary positions and stable identity narratives. Although the authors of my corpus succeed in unfixing the Self through text, this aspect of their life writing is reinforced through the formal properties of the book, that is, through photography, a medium that in fact tends more toward a detachment from reality, rather than toward notions of truth and certainty.
Supervisors: Prof Greg Hainge and Dr Amy Hubbell
Publication:
Beth Kearney. "'Je suis amoureuse de la forêt, comme du fleuve': partage et merveilleux dans la collaboration photolittéraire de S. Corinna Bille et Suzi Pilet" ["'I am in love with the forest, as with the river': Sharing and the Marvellous in the Photoliterary Collaboration of S. Corinna Bille and Suzi Pilet"]. Œuvres photolittéraires et couples créateurs [Photoliterary Works and Creative Couples], no. 3, special issue of La Revue internationale de Photolittérature [The International Revue of Photoliterature], 2021, http://phlit.org/press/?post_type=articlerevue&p=3318.
Beth Kearney. "'Un gouffre d'où il était illusoire d'essayer de sortir': sociopoétique de la ville napolitaine dans L'amie prodigieuse d'Elena Ferrante" ["'An abyss, from which it seemed impossible to escape': the sociopoetics of Naples in My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante"]. Sociopoétiques [Sociopoetics], 2020. http://revues-msh.uca.fr/sociopoetiques/index.php?id=1239.
Beth Kearney. "The Nemesis of an Infamous Hungarian Countess: Hybris and Faustianism in La Comtesse sanglante (1962) by Valentine Penrose." Némésis, ou le châtiment inéluctable [Nemesis, or Unending Retribution], special issue of MuseMedusa, no. 8, 2020, musemedusa.com/dossier_8/kearney/.
Beth Kearney. "'Un dimanche à Mytilène': topographies de l'exotisme dans Dons des féminines (1951) de Valentine Penrose" ["'One Sunday in Mytilene': exotic topographies in Gifts of the Feminine (1951) by Valentine Penrose"]. Écrire le lieu: modalités de la représentation spatiale [Writing Place: Modalities of Spatial Representation], special issue of Postures, no. 31, 2020, revuepostures.com/sites/postures.aegir.nt2.uqam.ca/files/kearney_31_0.pdf
Beth Kearney. "'Traversé de fantômes': La hantise intermédiale d'Y penser sans cesse de Marie NDiaye et de Denis Cointe (2011, 2012)" ["'Crossed with Ghosts': Intermedial Haunting in Y penser sans cesse by Marie NDiaye and Denis Cointe"]. Sens public, 2019, sens-public.org/article1436.html?lang=fr. DOI: 10.7202/1067467ar.
Beth Kearney. "Camille Claudel as modern di Butades." Dibutade: l'origine de la création [Dibutade: Creative Origin], special issue of MuseMedusa, no. 6, 2018, musemedusa.com/dossier_6/kearney/.
Beth Kearney. "L'Art féministe de Niki de Saint Phalle" ["The Feminist Art of Niki de Saint Phalle"]. Dire, vol. 27, no. 3, 2018, pp. 18-24, ficsum.com/dire-archives/automne-2018/arts-lart-feministe-de-niki-de-saint-phalle/.
HDR Student: Jorien van Beukering
Title: Identity of unacknowledged biracial children in (post)colonial Indonesia
Abstract: My PhD examines identity among unacknowledged persons of biracial heritage with a direct familial link to the Dutch East Indies. Very little is known about these individuals who were not acknowledged by their (often European) father – most historians only describe these individuals as ‘disappearing into the kampong [‘Native’ village]’. Although research has been conducted into colonial Indies society, knowledge about unacknowledged persons of biracial heritage is scarce. The project takes the position that, in order to fully understand the ongoing impacts of Dutch colonialism on the Indonesian population, it is important to uncover the life stories of marginalised persons such as individuals of illegitimate and biracial heritage, not just the stories of the colonial elite. Specifically, the project examines identity in three groups of unacknowledged, biracial individuals: 1) persons born during the late colonial period (c.1920-1942) to European fathers and Indonesian/Indisch mothers; 2) persons born during the Japanese Occupation of the Indies (1942-1945) to Japanese fathers and Indonesian/Indisch mothers; and 3) persons born between 1946-1950 to Indonesian/Indisch women and Dutch troops serving in the Indonesian Independence War.
Supervisors: Dr. Annie Pohlman and Dr. Amy Hubbell
