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

Daisy Tam
Kong
Listening to Noise – people as sensors, data, information, knowledge. A case of food rescue in Hong
This paper draws from my current project on food rescue practices in Hong Kong. I will be presenting the
technological and theoretical aspects of the project, highlighting the difficulties as well as potential for
collective action through common practices of capturing, sharing and communicating data. The technical
part of the project explores the potential of the crowd as a means to enable a more ethical food system. The
crowd is noise – dispersed individuals who are loose and unconnected. How can the crowd become a form of
human-power sensored network that allows us to tune into the message? How can noise be used to
challenge the existing system and allow for different sets of interdependencies to emerge? How can this
model of commonality exist without collectivity? Such questions will be explored through the lens of Michel
Serres, particularly his work on “the Parasite”.
2I
Television and Australian national identity (Chair, Claire Henry)
Kate Warner
History Wars and Australian Television Drama
Many people learn history from television. This history differs from academic history but usually remains
enmeshed in official historical discourses. It becomes “popular memory,” a melange in which fiction and
science are self-reflectively mixed, making clear the construction of historical stories. Australian indigenous
historiography has long been a site of conflict. The developing understanding of the massacres, genocide and
oppression perpetrated against Australia’s indigenous people has been made controversial in so-called
“history wars” by conservative politicians and writers. This ongoing disputation has meant that television
programs about Aboriginal Australia are perceived as being involved in controversy. Recently, there has been
an upsurge in television dramas created by and featuring Indigenous people such as Redfern Now, The
Darkside, Glitch, and Cleverman. I will examine how these works represent the history of Australia and
Aboriginal people, investigating what they reveal about those histories and the controversies of historical
revision.
Jon Stratton
Representing multiculturalism in Australia in the twenty-first century
In early 2016 two shows were screened on Australian television, one about a Lebanese-Australian family
who win the lottery and move to Sydney’s exclusive north shore, the other about a Chinese-Australian family
who live on the Gold Coast in which the parents’ marriage is falling apart. Both shows were sit coms. Both
were focused on families. Both ran for six episodes. Here Come the Habibs was broadcast on the commercial
Channel 9 while The Family Law ran on the government part-funded Special Broadcasting Service (SBS). The
Family Law was praised for being an accurate and sensitive interpretation of multiculturalism. Here Come
the Habibs was criticised for being full of stereotypes. The two shows offer an opportunity to think about the
representation of multiculturalism in the decade after the conservative government of John Howard
dismantled much of the formal apparatus that had undergirded official multiculturalism in Australia since
the late 1970s.
Jess Carniel
Part of the party: Eurovision fans in Australia
In recent years, Australian Eurovision fandom has reached its peak, with millions of viewers tuning in to SBS
for the finals weekend in May 2015, when Australia was first permitted to participate in the contest as a wild
card entry. Yet Australians have been watching Eurovision for decades, since it first started screening in
67