event mechanics

Funding was approved for the postgrad wiki in the CSAA exec meeting today. This is a good thing.

It is a very meagre amount, but it also comes with the CSAA’s institutionality, which is perhaps more important.

Another idea that was floated was a database of sessional teachers. I am very interested in setting this up… 

I still have to come to terms with the non-direct link between my blog’s blogroll and my bloglines feed reader. Whenever I come across someone interesting or one of my old feeds has changed address and the like, I update my bloglines straight away. However, I have to get used to updating it on here. Hopefully writing this note to myself will serve as a trigger to rimind myself whenever I play with the blogroll.

A new addition is Adam Muir at http://amuir.edublogs.org/ he is a PhD at Griffith Uni. He recently changed blogs. His most recent post on his new blog is an interesting reflection on the interpersonal politics of participation by postgrads and ECRs in academia.

That good old piece of advice from public speaking about thinking of your audience as being naked can be transported into academia. Except for an important caveat, and that is a lot of the academics (and postgrads) I have met carrying on as if they would like you to think of them as naked. Or, should I say, at least like someone else to think of them as naked. Especially at conference dinners/drinks. This reverses the reassuring, nerves-attenuating advantage of such ‘imagineering’. You know, sexy cultstuds and all that… Maybe it is just the people I mix with. Or my infantile prejudices. Or adult prejudices. Or sense of humour. Or bad taste. I am not sure.

Or you could just wear black, a leather jacket, and act as if you want to live in New York.

Or bring out some class hatred, or in its milder form as disdain, towards people who wear black, leather jackets, and act as if they already are in New York. Bourgies! That goes down a treat.

But, seriously, something on this issue is going to have to be on the postgrad wiki. 

The CSAA exec meeting is tomorrow. So hopefully the wiki shall be getting up very soon.

I have setup a mediawiki wiki on another domain I own here!! Hurrah!

This is good news, because it means that I can do the wiki installation for the CSAA postgrad wiki (and other fun things).

In terms of content I already have an email interview I organised with Susan Luckman and Fran Martin co-convenors of the postgrad and ECR node of the CRN about the CSAA conference funding bursary.

Earlier today I had a good conversation with the prez, Paul, about where the wiki is going. (This spurred me into action and after some hiccups with the MySQL database it is all running sweet!) He is keen to get even more things in place for professional development of non-academic postgrads and ECRs who are part of the cultural studies association and scene in Australia.

I have set up a test postgrad wiki here. I am not sure how to set the ‘settings’ or if anyone can edit the wiki pages. Can someone go add something, please!

For examples, here is a simple entry for postgraduate students or a simple unfinished cultural studies. Plus one for me to give a very rough idea of what it could mean to have a personal page online.

Hopefully people will get the idea.

I need a volunteer to eventually help set up a mediawiki wiki. I don’t know any of the programming languages having failed computer science (ok, 1st year programming) at uni. If anyone knows MySQL and php, err, stuff and can help set up a mediawiki wiki, then can you contact me please!!! I am going to lean on some people, but the more the merrier . I sent out an email a while ago, but apparently some epople didn’t receive it!?!?!

Also, if anyone has some connections at a web hosting company and can sought us out with some server space for the wiki files and database jazz for not much then I would be grateful.

I imagine that a second test of a proper mediawiki wiki would need to be carried out.

EDIT: I need to send invitations to people. This is fine for this test wiki, but it will not be like that for the actual wiki!!! So if you want an invite reply to this post with a proper email addy in the correct email field using the haloscan comments. Or just send me an email if you already have my email.

As a number of readers would know (because they were there!), at last year’s CSAA annual conference I was shuffled in as the representative for postgrads on the CSAA Executive.

The first thing I am trying to do is to create a wiki on the CSAA website for postgraduates. This postgraduate wiki will serve as a ‘living document’ to hopefully help postgraduates during and after their candidature/degree. The goal is to begin addressing the problem of, firstly, defining what it is to be a postgraduate, and, secondly, outlining some of the common issues involving Cultural Studies postgraduate students and those who have actually completed their studies. The wiki will be constructed by postgraduates or those who have recently finished studying as postgraduates. The following are some ideas I am developing for the executive meeting coming up. Feedback from all relevant parties would be appreciated!

A document of this kind is necessary because postgraduates exist in a grey area between academic staff and students. For example, I once read that a PhD is both one’s first scholarly work and one’s last student essay. Indeed the lack of a clear definition is evident in the literature on the DEST website. University staff are most often defined in terms of academic staff and non-academic staff. Postgraduates are normally thought of as apprentice academics yet the reality is that they often do the work of actual academic staff while they are postgraduate students as research assistants, tutors, lecturers or course covenors, but once they finish their degree they can not actually get a job as an academic. In what sense is a postgraduate degree an apprenticeship, if one can not get a job in the given (academic) vocation relatively soon after finishing?

The other major issue I am trying to begin addressing with this wiki is the involvement of non-university based practioners of Cultural Studies within the association. There is a long history in Cultural Studies exemplified by individuals (such as Meaghan Morris) or entire cohorts (many of the postgraduates in the early days of the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies), whereby one did not have to have an institutional home at a university to be considered doing cultural studies research or contributing through other scholarly work or practical engagements. For example, Morris worked as a journalist for a long time, while the postgrads at the BCCCS did postgraduate research to help them with local problems in their communities. The restructuring of scholarly work around project (or ‘event’) based researching funding locks out from the association and the circuits of conferences and research funding those who have pursued different professional paths and who may be employed in the media or cultural industries or other social institutions (governments, unions, organisations, etc). The career is now though of something produced rather than something you end up with at the end ot it. The ‘career’ needs to be rethought organised around a critical commitment and expressions of this through practical engagements rather than only as a successful publication record. That is, in the context of postgraduates, ‘professional development’ needs to be rethought to take into account the realities of the current research funding situation. What does it mean to be an early career non-ECR? So the actual situation of ‘non-institutionalised’ cultural studies practioners that have completed some form of postgraduate degree/diploma. What are the actual prospects for newly minted MA or PhD students? What are the different jobs that actual graduates have pursued? How can you be involved in the CSAA more? What has to happen?

Those familiar with wikis will know the general layout. Another dimension of the wiki will be as an online resource for links to articles or other resources for postgraduate students in Cultural Studies regarding issues of graduate student labour, lifestyle/problems, variance between national contexts (here I am thinking primarily between Aus and the US), but also variance between Australian states and territories, and, a very important issue, sources of funding!

I will be calling on several friends or interested parties to write short (roughly two paragraph) ‘seed’ documents for the wiki so a basic database architecture and thematics can be established. What should these themes be is another question I need help on.

To paraphrase the hair dye ad, I am not expecting this to happen over night, but it will happen. It will happen because it needs to happen. No one is going to do it for us. We need to produce our own supports and spaces of discussion.

EDIT: Plus I need a catchy title! Suggestions?

Oh, and this has not happened yet, it still needs to go to the executive, plus the actual wiki needs to be sorted with the website guy. Patience!