CURTIN UNIVERSITY POSTGRADUATE STUDENT ASSOCIATION ISSUE 2 | SPRING 2014
The Postgraduate
Bulletin. If On a Summer’s Day a Postgrad The Postgrad Experience at Curtin
Adocacy from Adversity
The event that made this Medal of the Order of Australia recipient the fierce advocate for social justice and human rights she is today
A Hero for All How an accomplished author is using her research to “Challenge the core”
The Postgraduate Bulletin. The Postgraduate Bulletin is run by postgraduate students and brought to you by CUPSA, aiming to keep you in the loop with all the happenings at Curtin. As a postgraduate student at Curtin you will receive these newsletters twice every semester, providing you with up to date information about events, social and academic networking opportunities, news on Curtin and our community as well as interesting articles by students like you!
| contact e | cupsa@guild.curtin.edu.au p | (08) 9266 4911 w | www.guild.curtin.edu.au Curtin Student Guild Building 106f, Curtin University Kent Steet, Bentley WA 6102
| contributors Editor & Graphic Designer Keturah Mudhan
CUPSA is the representative body of all postgraduate students at Curtin. With around 8,000 postgraduate students enrolled at Curtin, it is vital that we have a strong and active presence on campus. We’ve been around for over 12 years, so we know the issues, have an excellent reputation and have never been more committed to enhancing your experience at Curtin. We offer a variety of activities that aim to foster a collegial atmosphere at Curtin in which postgraduate students from all disciplines can interact, network and socialise.
Dr Andrew Cameron Andrew recently completed his PhD in Creative Writing, and is a sessional academic in the School of Media, Culture and Creative Arts. Andrew also coordinates the Postgraduate Mentor Program. Kay Danes Kay is a recipient of the Medal of the Order of Australia, and is undertaking her Masters degree in Human Rights. Bonnie Roche Bonnie is currently on exchange at the Copenhagen Business School, and is working toward her Master of Marketing. Alizee Bourgault Originally from France, Alizee is undertaking a Master of Biomedical Sciences at Curtin. Alisa Krasnostein Alisa is a recipient of the World Fantasy Award, and is completing her PhD in Publishing. Sara Dawood Sara is a sessional academic whilst also working on her PhD in Chemical Engineering. Karen Lowry Karen is studying a PhD in Media, Culture and Creative Arts, and regularly writes and performs poetry.
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CURTIN UNIVERSITY POSTGRADUATE STUDENT ASSOCIATION A department of the Curtin Student Guild
Inside the Bulletin. CUPSA Events
Some of the attendees of the Semester 2 HDR Orientation Lunch hosted by CUPSA. Members of CUPSA Council are pictured here with several new HDR students.
| cover story
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If On a Summer’s Day a Postgrad PhD graduate Andrew Cameron’s take on the postgrad experience at Curtin.
| faculty feature
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Advocacy from Adversity The inspiring story of a Curtin Postgraduate student who has used her experiences in life to fuel her passion for social justice.
| coursework corner
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Out and About Perth Meet the founder of this locally grown Instagram account, and how it is reconnecting Perth residents with their city.
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Just a Pinch of Salt Alizee Bourgault tells us about the health benefits of the little known Himalayan Salt.
| HDR corner
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Meet and Greet
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A Hero for All
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Poetry and Video Games
Meet Sara Dawood from Science & Engineering.
Alissa Krasnostein’s success in advocating social issues through fiction.
Karen Lowry explores the interactions between the two worlds of poetry and electronic literature.
An Exploration of the Postgrad Experience at Curtin STORY Dr. Andrew Cameron School of Media, Culture and Creative Arts You are in the final month of your PhD. The
manuscript is in your hands and you are doing the last stages of formatting and proofreading. The End is in sight, those fabled two words which once receded before you like an intangible dream. But you’re suddenly faced with an ontological crisis. As you look at the pages of your thesis, the white spaces between the words appear more numerous than the words themselves. They threaten to engulf you. Your thesis is reduced to a feeble spattering of ink on paper. The page is haunted with all the things left unwritten. You fear that you understand less about your subject than the day you started. What does it mean to be a postgraduate? You have been studying for three years, yet you cannot answer that simple question. While you’ve been scribbling down results in the lab and spending long nights hunched over the computer, the postgraduate experience seems to have eluded you. Well, there’s only one solution! You put down your manuscript and decide to seek out the essence of what it means to be a postgrad. It is a fine summer day. Walking under the pines at Henderson Court, you encounter your mentor from the Postgraduate Mentor Program. She listens as you explain your crisis, offering words of support and encouragement. All research students face these moments of uncertainty. Sometimes there is wisdom in forgetting your thesis and seeking answers in the world beyond your office. Your mentor takes you to the CUPSA office, where students have gathered for morning tea. The CUPSA representatives explain how they are working to improve the postgraduate experience at Curtin and invite you to contribute at their next meeting.
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Leaving the CUPSA office, your mentor suggests that you attend the final of the Curtin 3MT – the Three Minute Thesis competition, where postgrads explain their research to a non-specialist audience in less than three minutes. The variety of presentations showcases Curtin’s vast interdisciplinary research community, and you are impressed by the caliber of the competitors. By the time the competition finishes, you are already planning your own 3MT presentation for next year. There is an exhibition on at the John Curtin Gallery. It features the work of graduates from Curtin’s School of Design and Art. The paintings and designs offer a glimpse into different worlds and different lives; you are humbled by the diversity of perspectives. You can sense a yearning behind them, something that challenges what it means to be human. It gives you a sudden new perspective on your own research. Once you’ve finished at the gallery, your mentor invites you to a meeting of the Postgraduate Open Door Society (PODS). The friendly group of students listen to a presentation by one of their members, then provide feedback. He is happy to hear your comments, and you spend an hour discussing the merits of his research. There is a certain satisfaction in knowing that you have helped a fellow student to better understand his project. It is getting late in the day. Outside the Curtin Stadium, you recognize a group of postgrads on their way to badminton practice. They play on the weekends as part of the CUPSA Social Sports. They have a spare racquet, so you join them for a frantic hour of diving across the court, swiping at the shuttlecock. Somehow, your problems don’t seem as important anymore. When you return to your desk, those white spaces on your thesis no longer seem as overwhelming. They are there to frame your written words, to distinguish them from each other. And while they still remind you of all the things left unwritten, you find a strange comfort in their presence. Without those unwritten things, there would be no thesis.
Postgraduate Open Door Society PODS meets every 3rd week at a variety of locations within the Curtin University Bentley campus and Technology Park. As a welcoming research community, this CUPSA initiative aims to provide Curtin research students with a relaxed environment in which to practice their presentation, feedback and networking skills. Attendees are also able to interact with peers from other faculties and disciplines to expand their field of view. Presentations in the past include: The Efficacy of an Antenatal Resilience and Optimism Workshop (AROW) in Preventing Postnatal Depressive Symptoms. Josephine Ratna, School of Psychology Constructing Counter-narratives to terrorism: A Comparative Analysis of Collective Resistance in the aftermath of the terror attacks in Bali and Norway. Anne-Marie Balbi, School of Media, Culture and Creative Arts (MCCA) Customer relationship: The impact of self-service technology upon retailer loyalty. Mitra Maboud, School of Marketing
If you would like to present at PODS, attend a session or just find out more about the program, contact our PODS Cordinator today. Elnaz Vafaei elnaz.vafaei@postgrad.curtin.edu.au CUPSA Office cupsa@guild.curtin.edu.au (08) 9266 4911 PODS has a Facebook group! Join now and start sharing your ideas with other bright researchers at Curtin. www.facebook.com/groups/PODS.CUPSA
Postgraduate Mentor Program This program was designed to provide new postgraduate students with access to a student mentor who can provide guidance and support during the first six months of their degree.
Registrations to be a mentor or mentee in semester 2 will be opening very soon, to find out more information and to access the application form, you can contact the program coordinator. Dr. Andrew Cameron a.cameron@guild.curtin.edu.au +61 8 9266 2913
Curtin Scrabble Club Scrabble is a great way to socialise, relax and practice your English! Join us every week with fellow students and get the chance to speak with CUPSA represenatives.It is free to join and all materials are provided, so what are you waiting for? If you would like to know more, get in touch with the Curtin Scrabble Club team: Jamal Esttaifan CUPSA Councillor jamalohan.isteevan@postgrad.curtin.edu.au Nadine Gibbons CUPSA Humanities Faculty Representative nadine.gibbons@postgrad.curtin.edu.au
Student Opinion Being an online student and balancing the roles of a student, mother and provider. Just when you think you can`t do it all, you can! Presently I`m a Postgrad student based in Melbourne studying Health Promotion part-time online, as this fits into my lifestyle and compliments past studies in Community Development. My passion has always been to work with people and to contribute to improving the quality of life. I have worked 15 years in local governments and presently not for profit as a Volunteer Program Coordinator. I now manage to study as a single mum with a primary school age child. Though only recently a single mum, it was initially daunting and still is a challenge to manage a 45 hour week for work, add in parenting and squeeze in study commitments. My days are often 16-18 hours long to achieve all with no family support. I guess the greatest compromise is insufficient quality time with my child, and sacrifice to sleep is not a great combination. At the end of the day you have to get ahead and avoid poverty today, to provide a good quality of life for a child, self and have opportunities for a good retirement plan. The evidence based data suggests that a good education leads to a good income to enable provision for good access to health care, and everyday life expenses to be able to meet basic needs and luxuries like holidays. So for me, this means a strong sense of self-motivation, determination, commitment and sacrifice and assignment extensions!! At the moment, I get to see the joy on the faces of people in Aged Care that I provide a Community Visitor to. I help reduce social isolation, and have learnt the greater value of maintaining connections for social & mental health with social media. You can do it all! Yet, I still wish I had left school like my mother told me at 15, got a trade and been working without a huge HECS debt that will sure follow me to retirement! Action must occur to support people who least can afford tertiary education, to stop the shadow of debt and maintain accessible education for all, so it’s not just for the elite and better support people like myself to gain better work, life, and balance! Karleen Joss-Knight
Karleen is an online student located in Melbourne undertaking a Postgraduate Diploma in Health Promotion. 02
| faculty feature
A Curtin University postgraduate student’s journey to being awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia (2014) for service to the community through promoting social justice and human rights. 03
The Postgraduate Bulletin | Issue #2/14 On 23 December 2000, Australians Kay Danes and her husband Kerry were working for a British security company in Laos when they were abducted by secret police. The couple were centred in a dispute between the Laos Government and one of their clients. They spent almost 12 months in a Laos prison, where they were interrogated and tortured before diplomatic efforts secured their release. Since that ordeal, Kay Danes has worked tirelessly throughout the world raising awareness of human rights and social justice. Earlier this year, on the 26th of January 2014, Kay was awarded the
Government were serious about upholding my right not to be arbitrarily detained or tortured. One interrogator responded rather matter-of-factly “You have the right to die no problem! Since then a lot of things have happened but my passion for human rights and social justice has never diminished. I have become quite vocal in supporting human rights awareness worldwide and have spoken at several US Congressional Forums on democracy and trade relations, the US Conference on World Affairs, and various other international platforms. My humanitarian work in Afghanistan was
at much more I’ve learned.... and I firmly believe that education is critical to our self-development and essential to the development of civil societies. I believe that we all have something valuable to contribute to society and in my case, I am eager to advance the discourse on human rights and social justice. I have found a wonderful kinship with like-minded individuals at Curtin. People who share that same passion for justice and believe that we really should not take our freedoms for granted; and that we should consider the impact our actions have on others but not be afraid to speak out where there is injustice.
“Kay and the children” courtesy of Kay Danes prestigious Medal of the Order of Australia for service to the community through promoting social justice and human rights. Watching my husband being repeatedly tortured for not signing a false statement was bad enough. Being separated from our three children and not knowing if we’d ever see them again was horrific. Witnessing the torture of fellow prisoners every day is something I imagine will remain with me forever. It is almost incomprehensible watching torture, let alone enduring it. I really struggled to understand how the Lao secret police were able to get away with it. I remember telling my interrogators that torture was against the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant for Civil and Political Rights that their Government had signed only 13 days before my abduction. I figured that in signing those agreements the Laos
an integral part of a national debate on Australia’s commitment in Afghanistan and Iremain committed to supporting those most vulnerable there, and elsewhere in the region. I also support a number of campaigns that improve literacy among indigenous Australians, and women and children in poverty-stricken regions throughout the world. At present I am completing my Masters Degree in Human Rights which I’m doing online through Curtin’s Bentley Campus. It’s a wonderful degree and has really challenged me, particularly in the areas relating to asylum seekers and the complexities associated with National Security. I thought my life experiences had taught me quite alot about the world, and that I had a pretty open-mind before I began studying at Curtin, but I’m astounded
My life really has been a series of incredible adventures. It has taken me to some of the most hostile places in the world and to some of the most beautiful. I have met the most amazing people and have experienced so many different cultures and languages that truly make me feel blessed. Sometimes life throws us challenges we think are unbearable but I’ve learned that there is no magic formula to surviving adversity. You really just have to keep getting up when life knocks you down! Kay is the bestselling author of Families Behind Bars (second edition 2011), Standing Ground (2009) and Beneath the Pale Blue Burqa (2010). On 9 July 2014, Kay was appointed as an Envoy Extraordinary to Australia of the Association of Envoys Extraordinary of the Royal Lao Government in Exile Worldwide.
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| coursework corner
OUT & ABOUT PERTH How a Curtin postgrad is raising our city’s profile, and connecting its residents to an evergrowing Perth culture. 05
STORY Bonnie Roche IMAGES Courtesy of Instagram @outandaboutperth @outandaboutperth is an Instagram account that has gone from 1 follower (myself) to just over 1500 followers in a mere 4 months. Outandaboutperth (OAAP) is my personal contribution to the development, promotion and activation of Perth and is an expression of my personal vendetta against anyone who has ever told me that “Perth is so boring, I cant wait to move to Melbourne”. This article is a short non-fiction about how it all happened. The account (which has become somewhat of a hobby) was started whilst writing a report for one of my first units in my Master of Marketing degree at Curtin. The task was to analyse a marketing campaign, critique it and to then make recommendations for how the campaign could be improved. I chose the City of Perth’s ‘Get to Know Me’ campaign, a campaign that aimed to encourage Perth locals to reconsider the common perception that Perth is a cultural wasteland and to get back into the rejuvenated and activated CBD. The campaign targets an attitude rather than a conventional target market of demographics and geographics and puts it’s target market into one of 3 ‘buckets’: Advocates, Neutrals or Disengaged. The campaign aims to move the consumers upward in the bucket ranking with the overall goal of having the majority of locals being Perth city ‘Advocates’. The campaign has had a lot of success in moving consumers from bucket to bucket and has received positive feedback from residents who said that the campaign encouraged them to re-explore the rejuvenated CBD. Despite this success however, the management consultant in me couldn’t help but nit-pick and thus the largest part of the report was my critique.
overhaul the campaigns instagram account (@perthcityaus). Despite an impressive following of over 4000 instagrammers, the account did little to interact with its users; providing them with no useful information on what was happening in the city or giving them any incentive to re-experience the city. To elaborate, consumers who are well acquainted with a product may not feel the need to actively search for information about it. This means that the residents of Perth may not feel any desire to research what is happening in their own city, particularly not via government websites like the Get To Know Me site. As a personal example, as an advocate and resident of Perth, I gain most of my information on events and venues via social media- in a very passive fashion. Until analysing this campaign, the idea of visiting a Perth council website to obtain information never crossed my mind.
“OOAP is the voice of a resident.” Furthermore, residents who have had a bad experience with what the city has to offer may be unlikely to even consider the city as an option when seeking culture, food or entertainment and would therefore be very unlikely to activity seek information on what’s happening in the city. The solution? An account that employs ‘push marketing’ and actively provides consumers with tangible information on what is on and what is good in Perth. In this strategy, information is given to consumers rather than require them to look for it or be aware of it previously; luring residents back into the city with a display of desirable
activities and venues. Whilst my recommendation was directed at the City of Perth (being the impatient person that I am) rather than wait for my opinions to be heard, I decided to validate this flaw and create the account myself- and @ outandaboutperth was born. This account seeks to achieve the same objectives as the ‘Get To Know Me’ campaign, but with a greater emphasis on pushing information to the consumers, rather than require them to seek. The ‘Get to Know Me’ campaign acts as the ‘voice of the city’, whilst OAAP is the ‘voice of a resident’. Despite competing with some other great Perth themed accounts, I believe OAAP has found it’s little niche in the market by providing a lighthearted and realistic insight into the city. The report itself didn’t score any awards, but the analysis of the campaign and the creation of the account has seen success. I plan to continue to develop the account, with the next steps being the development of a logo and the creation of a Facebook page. The account (whilst like an unpaid part-time job) has become very rewarding, it enables me to interact directly with the consumers and be that little voice in the background rooting for Perth. The account has given me a chance to act on my values and opinions whilst also employing theories learnt during my degree. I have since sent my report to the City Of Perth, but regardless of their response, it has been and will continue to be a great project. As a final note and plug for the account- if you are not already following, please do. And for any reader who is currently searching for jobs and apartments over east- prepare to be dazzled. Bonnie Roche
“with the overall goal of having the majority of locals being Perth city ‘Advocates’.” As can be guessed, one of my recommendations for improvement was to
You can follow OOAP on Instagram using @outandaboutperth in your Instagram app or www.instagram.com/outandaboutperth.
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| Coursework corner
Just a
pinch salt of
In the supermarket, our hand goes automatically for the big white ‘Table iodized’ salt bottle. Why? Because it’s the cheapest? Or because we know little about the other salts? And yet, would you have thought that the salt you use could have a big impact on your health?
Alizee Bourgault STORY WIkimedia Commons IMAGES
Raise your hand if you’ve heard of Himalayan salt! All salts come from salted bodies of water, but are extracted differently. Himalayan salt, the white gold, is hand-extracted from salt mines. The main mine is located in Pakistan but there are a few in the region. Because it has been ‘maturing’ in areas of tectonic pressure, it has been less exposed to impurities and toxicities, unlike ocean salt. Himalayan salt is promoted as being healthier than table salt, because table salt is processed and dried which changes the natural chemical structure of the crystals and removes trace elements, and anti-caking agents are added. Himalayan salt contains more than 80 elements (macrominerals like calcium, iron and potassium, and trace minerals like boron, copper and zinc), and the crystals are small enough for cells to absorb easily. Examples of health benefits from this are promoting a stable pH balance in the body, promoting cell hydroelectric energy creation, promoting absorption capacities of food elements, and improving vascular health. In comparison, table salt cannot be processed as easily by our cells because crystals are isolated. Cells use more water to neutralize the sodium chloride, and this can lead to cellulite, rheumatism and arthritis. year. So next time you need salt, think about the Himalayan one.
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It’s pink! Any guesses why? It is due to the iron oxide content. And if this article has opened an interest in salt for you, read about others like sea salt, kosher or black salt. Himalayan salt crystals. Note: every salt has to be consumed with moderation, the recommended daily intake for the average adult is 2300mg.
Alizee moved from France at 14 years old with her family. After a Bachelor of Arts and Sciences at UWA and a few travels, she is now doing Master of Biomedical Sciences at Curtin.
If you have interesting information that you think fellow postgrads would appreciate, email us at cupsa@guild.curtin.edu.au to share it.
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| Research corner
My PhD thesis comprises editing and publishing four works of speculative fiction – a short story anthology, two short story collections and a novel – and an exegesis. A year into my studies, this August saw the publication and release of the first of these creative works, Kaleidoscope: Diverse YA Science Fiction and Fantasy Stories. My research topic, “Challenging the core: the potential for political editing and publishing”, includes researching methodologies a publisher might use to deliberately push for changes to the publishing, and fiction, status quo. Critics of science fiction and fantasy have long challenged the dominance of white males both as authors and story protagonists. More recently, similar criticism has been aimed specifically at the lack of diversity in young adult fiction. Kaleidoscope celebrates diversity across numerous spectra including nationality, race, gender and gender identity, neurodiversity, disability and sexual orientation, across both the authors and the protagonists.
Kaleidoscope isn’t an issues book with stories about this diversity. Instead, it’s a book of fun, edgy and hopeful fiction that happens to have diverse protagonists. It’s a book that aims to have a story that will connect with every reader. Kaleidoscope was crowdfunded through a successful Pozible campaign in 2013 with the international book release promised at the World Science Fiction convention held in London in August 2014. I was excited to be able to showcase the book at the convention. Five of the authors were in attendance and joined me and my co editor Julia Rios at the book launch. Each read an excerpt of their story during the wellattended event. In addition, Worldcon’s formal programming included many discussions on diversity and young adult fiction. Kaleidscope was often mentioned as a positive example during these discussions and the result was that the book had lots of buzz, and sales were strong.
Meet: Sara Dawood PHOTOGRAPHY Keturah Mudhan
Sara is undertaking a PhD in Chemical Engineering under the supervision of Dr Tushar Sen and Professor Shaobin Wang.
published two articles in Water Research and Water, Air, & Soil Pollution journals with total citations of 101 so far.
Sarah is focusing on the removal of toxic dyes from wastewater by adsorption. She has successfully developed various adsorbents such as acid treated biomass and biomass based activated carbon. Sarah has received a Don Watts Medallion for the most innovative research project from Curtin University in 2012. Also, she attended an oral presentation at ICEAI conference in China and
Currently, Sarah is working on the development of metal oxides nanoparticles through w/o microemulsion in the removal of toxic dyes from wastewater. Sara holds an APA scholarship and works as a sessional academic at the departments of chemical engineering and engineering foundation year.
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The Australian book release of Kaleidoscope is October 1st with distribution through Scholastic Books into Australian school libraries. It will be available for sale in print and ebook through my website (www. twefthplanetpress.com), all good booksellers as well as online retailers like Amazon. With the first of my creative productions completed, tracking the success of it has begun, as well as reflection on what I’ve learned so far. As an editor, especially, this project pushed me out of my own comfort zone in many respects. It has challenged me on my own assumptions as to what makes a good story or what makes a story good? Kaleidoscope has highlighted to me that editing only for stories that “speak to you” or that the editor needs to connect with on a gut level, will always carry the inherent bias of stories that reflect the editor’s world view and experience. This is problematic if editors in a genre all come from the same world view or backgrounds.
The Postgraduate Bulletin | Issue #2/14
A HERO for all Alisa Krasnostein STORY
Alisa Krasnostein is editor and publisher at independent Twelfth Planet Press (www.twelfthplanetpress.com), a creative publishing PhD candidate and recently retired environmental engineer. She is also part of the three times Hugo nominated Galactic Suburbia Podcast team (www.galacticsuburbia.com). In 2011, Alisa won the World Fantasy Award for her work at Twelfth Planet Press. She was the Executive Editor and founder of the review website Aussie Specfic in Focus! from 2004 to 2012. In her spare time she is a critic, reader, reviewer, podcaster, runner, environmentalist, knitter, quilter and puppy lover. And new
The Postgraduate
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mum. Alisa’s PhD thesis is titled “Challenging the centre: the potential for politicised editing and publishing”. She focuses on speculative fiction (science fiction, fantasy and horror) to examine the potential for independent publishing to advocate for social issues through the production of fiction which values diversity (including gender, sexuality, disabilities and race). The creative production of a series of speculative fictions works will be coupled with a critical exegesis which examines the process of these works and the editorial and publishing practises best suited to successfully producing and distributing socially diverse fiction.
If you would like to share your research, experiences, or ideas with fellow postgrads, contact us and you could appear in the next Postgraduate Bulletin! Email us at cupsa@guild. curtin.edu.au with your expresson of interest.
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| Research corner
Poetry and
video games STORY Karen Lowry
My research involves a creative production that utilises both poetry and gaming techniques. Although it builds on the existing body of work surrounding electronic literature, my work focuses more on using poetic techniques in electronic literature than on narrative ones. The research question I’m addressing is: how might the techniques used in electronic literature be utilised in the online verse novel to explore tensions that occur when trying to define Australian suburbia? My response to this question will be a hybrid work of electronic literature and poetry as well as an exegesis that will complement the creative work. As I’m half way through my PhD, I’ve now almost finished the first draft of the poetry manuscript and have started coding the final work using HTML, CSS and JavaScript. To summarise it briefly, my research falls into four broad boxes; exploring the convergence electronic literature and video games might have with the poetic techniques that are used in the verse novel, identifying and analysing the key narrative and poetic strategies that are used to represent the suburban subject in poetry, exploring
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existing research on game elements and what importance other scholars have given to their role in electronic literature and investigating how the convergence of these techniques might practically come together and what benefit this might have to enhancing the representations of suburbia in poetry. In order to explore these four points further, I’ve been looking at the techniques each genre uses to achieve narrative fragmentation, in particular metalepsis. Karin Kukkonen explains that metalepsis “occurs when an author enters or addresses the fictional world he or she created, and when characters leave their fictional world and address their author and their readers,” (1). One of the common techniques that novelists and poets use to create metalepsis is the voice of a narrator, or in poetry, the voice of a narrating persona. Although I’m looking at different genres that employ different techniques, both electronic literature and poetry have similar techniques for using a narrator to achieve metaleptical transgressions. My research focuses on how this can be utilised to experiment with voice in suburban poetry and whether or not it can be used to create narrators who represent the different classes and ethnicities in the
suburbs without also representing them as minorities. I’ve also been looking at the existing connections between electronic literature and poetry, even between modern video games and poetry, which involves looking at the very core techniques used to create each respective work. For poetry these are poetic and narrative techniques such as metaphor, plot and simile. For electronic literature and games, this involves looking at both the visual aspects of the work (desired end result), as well as the very basis of how they were created—the code. My research focuses these connections on a specific form of poetry, the verse novel, which is a hybrid form as it uses both narrative and poetic techniques. In most cases, a verse novel presents as a series of individual poems that are arranged to form a narrative in chapters like a novel. The verse novel is also primarily focused with the quotidian. Many modern examples of this genre focus on individual voices in everyday life with poets putting a strong emphasis on their persona’s self-reflection and personal relationships. This makes the genre suitable
for exploring representations of Australian suburbia through one or more narrating personae. Having read a wide variety of poets who have attempted to define and write about suburbia, I’ve come to somewhat agree with Tim Rowse’s suggestion that suburbia has a habit of being “preoccupied by a search for the ‘average’ Australian home and its lifestyle” (4). He explains that this generalisation means that the ethnic and class differences “that are recreated daily in the context of work and reinforced by government policies” (4) in the suburbs are ignored. This is where metalepsis comes in: metalepsis can be used to represent different duelling ideologies (such as clashing cultural, ethnic and socio-economic differences) within the one story because it occurs when entities from different domains interact with each other when they normally can’t (Bell, Alice and Alba 167).
That being said, experimentation with the fragmentation of voice in narrative and poetry predates electronic literature. For example Mark Saporta’s Composition No. 1 (1962), colloquially known as a “book-in-abox” came in a box with the pages shuffled. Each page was a self-contained narrative and the reader decided the order that they read the text (Tredinnick 170). Online hypertext novels such as Douglas Cooper’s Delirium (1994) made it easier for the reader to navigate through the different narratives within the text by including links that took them to different pages without having to shuffle through pages in a box. N.Katherine Hayles is one of the first scholars who suggests that electronic literature and games might be too intertwined to clearly define which is most important, she explains that “the demarcation between electronic literature and computer games is far from clear; many games have narrative components, while many works of electronic literature have game elements,” (8). It is therefore part of my thesis to investigate whether these game elements have become more prominent in electronic fiction as the form has evolved and what impact this might have on using metalepsis in a work of electronic literature to represent voice in poetry about suburbia.
References Many programs are now available that can be used as tools in creating a work of electronic literature. These programs provide varying levels of support depending on how much code you want to write and how proficient you are working with technology. When experimenting with electronic literature, it’s a good idea to do an assessment of the various programs available so that you can choose the one whose constraints are most closely based on your current skills and abilities. Below is a small selection of those programs. Twine Twine is a great program for its versatility. You can choose from their pre-programmed styles and use dropdown menus to make hyperlinks between passages in your story, or if you’re up for it, you can add your own code, as little or as much as you like. It’s also
a good program for organising your story as it’s very visual and shows each passage of your story as part of a tree. Inklewriter
Bell, Alice and Jan Alber. “Ontological Metalepsis and Unnatural Narratology.” Journal of Narrative Theory. 42:2, 2012. Pp 166-188. Cooper, Douglas. Delirium. Hyperion: New York, 1998. Hayles, N. Katherine. Electronic Literature: New Horizons for the Literary. Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2008. Kukkonin, Karin. “Metalepsis in Comics and Graphic Novels.” Metalepsis in Popular Culture. Ed. Karin Kukkonin, Sonja Kilmek. Berlin: Walter De Guyter GmbH and Co, 2011. Pp 213-231. Rowse, Tim. “Heaven and a Hills Hoist: Australian Critics on Suburbia.” Meanjin. 37:1, 1978. p3-13.
Saporta, Mark. Composition No 1. Visual Editions: London, 2011. Tredinnick, Luke. “Post-structuralism, hypertext, and the World Wide Web.” Aslib Proceedings 59.2 (2007): 169-86.
Inklewriter creates better looking games, but there is no room for you to change their designs or use your own code. It’s a great program if you’re a beginner and just want to have a go because they have a built in tutorial and guidelines to help you through every step of the game. ADRIFT Developer Adrift is very similar to Twine but the program recognises objects and places without any code. In Twine the code is simplified, but if you want the game to recognise and understand objects and rooms as being separate to text, you need to have some basic programming knowledge. In Adrift you can create files for each one and use drop down tabs to decide what to do with them, however a lot of commands get lost in the menus and it only plays if you download the interpreter, you can’t just email it to your friends and expect it to work.
Karen Lowry is studying a PhD in Media, Culture and Creative Arts. She writes and performs poetry under her maidan name, Karen Murphy, and has a website that she hasn’t been updating. She promises that will change if you promise to stop by, read more here: www.karenlouisemurphy. com
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