Crossroads in Cultural Studies Conference 14-17th December 2016 Program Index

5O
Queer cultures, media and the everyday (Chair, Grace Sharkey)
Kerryn Drysdale
When Scenes Fade: Everyday Investments in Sydney’s Drag King Culture
Events hosting drag king performances were a regular feature on the lesbian social circuit between 2002 and
2012 in Sydney, Australia. Established within a broader tradition of live performance culture but also
significant within an urban lesbian night-time economy, Sydney’s drag king scene provides a site for mapping
social meaning as it intersects with cultural phenomenon. Yet, little evidence of this decade-long
engagement exists. By drawing on data collated from a series of group discussions held between thirteen
participants at the time of the scene’s demise, my research reveals the movement by which a contemporary
social moment is realised as an historical investment. Via the case study of Sydney’s drag king scene, I make
an argument for considering how everyday archival practices preserve otherwise ephemeral social
experience. In doing so, I offer insight into the temporal conditions that might structure all scenes: their
emergence through to their expansion or contraction and, inevitably, their fading.
Stefanie Duguay “The more I look like Justin Bieber in the pictures, the better”: Analysing performances of
LGBTQ women’s cultures through image-based mobile media
As women who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, or queer (LGBTQ) become increasingly visible in
mainstream media, social media provide networked infrastructures for remixing popular representations
with everyday identity performances. On Instagram, photos with #lesbian and related identifiers include a
range of content from porn to celebrities, memes, idealised “lesbian” depictions, and users’ selfrepresentations.
This research investigates what such representations communicate about contemporary
LGBTQ women’s identities. It also examines the arrangements of technology, users, media, economies, and
mainstream discourses shaping these representations. It does so through mixed methods, combining
analyses of the app’s technological architecture, political economy, visual content, and user interviews.
Findings indicate Instagram’s potential for self-actualisation, identity validation, and community building
through the interaction of queer women’s culture with technological affordances. These outcomes are,
however, tempered by platform practices and discourses giving prominence to normative and
commercialised identity performances.
Lucy Watson
Not “just like us”: a study of how queers read celebrity media
This paper presents some preliminary findings of research into how queer people read, engage and interpret
celebrity media. In the 21st century, we consume celebrities, whether intentionally or not, across all media
platforms. Existing research on how people (particularly women) read celebrity indicates that celebrity
media is consumed for pleasure, as a way to engage in “safe” gossip amongst imagined, as well as real,
communities about standards of morality, and as a way to understand and debate social and cultural
behavioural standards. However, the world of celebrity is an overwhelmingly heterosexual one. Queer
audience studies indicate that it is common for queer readers to subvert understandings of media, and seek
out a subtext, by appropriating mainstream texts to read them as if created for a minority audience. This
paper attempts to understand how queers might read, interpret, and subvert celebrity media, beyond
readings proposed by Hermes (1995) and Jenkins (2013).
5P
Terror, governance and media (Chair, Mark Gibson)
Ramaswami Harindranath
Labour, terror, media, mobility: some thoughts on “context”
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