Recent decades have seen dramatic changes in the economic landscapes of the region, and also in academic approaches to the study of Asian and Pacific societies and cultures. The transnational impact of globalising markets, new media and communications technologies, and mass human movements have called for new research methods that focus on phenomena that cross national boundaries. At the same time, the continuing geopolitical dominance of the West and the residual impact of imperialism have seen the emergence of critical approaches that challenge Eurocentric forms of knowledge. While going by a variety of names, these critical and transnational approaches are often called cultural studies of Asia and the Pacific.
Cultural studies explores the relation between cultural practices, everyday life, and material, economic, political, geographical, and historical contexts. It uses a wide range of critical methods to challenge the division between "high culture" and "popular culture", viewing the mass cultures of the market place as equally valid objects of academic attention as traditional elite cultures and politically inflected "national cultures". Cultural studies also seeks to give value to the cultures of diverse ethnic, religious, gender, sexual, and other minorities that are often excluded from dominant national frameworks. This field is especially interested in developing new approaches relevant to analysing contemporary cultures, arguing that established theoretical methods often fail to fully grasp the character of emerging cultural forms associated with new media and communications technologies. Some of the most exciting work in the area has been in the area of transnational and diasporic studies, as well as postcolonial, globalisation, and new media studies.
Cultural studies of Asia and the Pacific draw on the critical methods of cultural studies to understand the rapidly changing forms of contemporary cultures across the region. These methods – including poststructuralism, postcolonialism, globalisation studies, transnationalist approaches, and queer studies – provide platforms for interrogating and understanding the diversity of Australian, Asian, and Pacific cultures and histories, and their interconnectivity with each other and with the rest of the world. Some specific focuses are:
- Diasporas and transnationalism
- Cross-border cultures and cultures of globalisation
- Postcolonial critiques of Eurocentrism
- Inter-Asia cultural traffic
- Nativisms and fundamentalisms
- Asian (post)modernities
- Asian and Pacific cinemas and popular cultures
- Asian and Pacific regionalisms
- Digital and new media networks
- Critical perspectives on gender difference
- Emerging same-sex and transgender cultures
- Resurgent religiosity and religions of the market place
These concerns feature regularly in key Australian and international journals in the field, including:
The establishment of the Faculty of Asian Studies and the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies in the 1960s reflected a national level commitment to improving understanding of the histories, cultures, politics, and economies of the countries geographically closest to Australia. In the half-century since the university was established, the ANU has become recognised internationally as a major centre for teaching and research on modern Asia and the Pacific.
A range of scholars and graduate students at ANU are involved in critical new approaches to the study of Asia and the Pacific. However, the institutional structure of the University has not kept pace with changes in the international academy. The structure of the ANU has tended to isolate Asian and Pacific Cultural Studies scholars and students from one another. The new college structure of the University has also tended to cement established disciplines and area studies methods in their current forms, setting up additional institutional barriers that have had the effect of inhibiting emerging multi- and inter-disciplinary approaches such as Asian and Pacific Cultural Studies.
The transnational scope of much research in Asian and Pacific Cultural Studies means that it often does not mesh with single country or even regional area studies models, and much innovative research on the region is now taking place outside departments labelled as "Asian studies" or "Pacific Studies". At the same time, the newer critical methods drawn upon in Asian and Pacific Cultural Studies research cross the intellectual divides that separate established disciplines, and scholars based in discipline-oriented departments may have limited engagement with colleagues in the same department working on predominantly Euro-American issues.
Because of a lack of institutional support, ANU Asian and Pacific Cultural Studies scholars have often developed more productive networks with colleagues in other Australian universities and overseas than locally within this University. This has prevented the development of a public profile for Asian and Pacific Cultural Studies at ANU. Rightly or wrongly, many younger scholars, both in Australia and internationally, tend to see the ANU as an institution more concerned to preserve established disciplines and area studies approaches than to support theoretically innovative approaches to the study of Asia and the Pacific today.
The ANU Asian and Pacific Cultural Studies Network aims profile the numerous internationally important initiatives in Asian and Pacific cultural studies being undertaken at this University and to provide a campus-wide forum for the significant body of research and teaching that crosses the frontiers of the region’s nation states and traverses the boundaries of established disciplines. Some of these initiatives in research and teaching at ANU are detailed below.
The establishment of an Asian and Pacific Cultural Studies Network will have a number of long-term benefits for the ANU:
The network will alert undergraduate and postgraduate students to the scope of Asian and Pacific Cultural Studies research conducted at ANU, potentially increasing enrolments from students who currently look to other universities to pursue their interest in contemporary Asian and Pacific cultural issues.
The network will enhance the public profile of studies of Asia and the Pacific at ANU. The Asia- and Pacific-oriented research of scholars based in departments outside the College of Asia and the Pacific is at times overlooked in promotional information about the ANU. This means that the ANU often undersells the full range of Asian and Pacific expertise amongst its staff and research students.
The network will promote research by helping graduate students interested in pursuing transnational and cross-disciplinary topics find PhD and MA supervisors, and establish supervisory panels that marshal the expertise of scholars from a range of fields across the University’s colleges.
The following provides a snapshot of some nationally and internationally significant initiatives in Asian and Pacific Cultural Studies being led by scholars in both the Colleges of Arts and Social Sciences and the College of Asia and the Pacific.
Asian Australian Studies
Dr Jacquie Lo, School of Humanities, Faculty of Arts, CASS
Asian Australian Studies (AAS) is a growing field that investigates the diasporic cultures, politics and histories of those of Asian descent in Australia. An interdisciplinary field influenced by developments in contemporary cultural theory, particularly in the areas of transnationalism and diaspora, the AAS purview includes analysis of literature, film, theatre, visual art, cultural policy, social anthropology, politics, history, and heritage management. While race plays a crucial role in the construction of Asian Australian identity, it is not deployed as biological 'fact’ but rather as a unifying platform for enabling political solidarity and critical purchase.
Jacquie Lo co-convened the inaugural Asian Australian Identities conference at ANU in 1999, at the height of Hanson politics. That conference is now regarded as the founding moment of Asian Australian Studies as an academic field of studies. Although the Asian Australian Studies community is relatively small, it has a strong sense of identity, which is sustained by regular communication and resource sharing through electronic mailing lists, discussion groups, conferences, symposiums, and informal 'live meet-ups’. It is arguably in the area of research that Asian Australian Studies scholars have been making the most impact. Over the past ten years, the Australian Research Council has invested large sums of money in this field through a number of leading projects including diasporic Vietnamese women’s writing, Chinese Australian masculinities, Asian influences in Australian theatre, and the emergence of Asian Australian cultural politics within the context of Australian nationalism. Another indicator of the research strength of Asian Australian Studies is the growing number of scholarly publications since the appearance of pioneering texts such as Diaspora (Gilbert et al, 2000) and Alter/Asians (Ang et al, 2000). The growing archive of Asian Australian studies include monographs as varied as Tseen Khoo’s Banana Bending: Asian Australian and Asian Canadian Literatures (2003), Ien Ang’s On Not Speaking Chinese (2001), J.V. D’Cruz and William Steele’s Australia’s Ambivalence towards Asia (2003), Regina Gantner’s Mixed Relations: Asian-Aboriginal Contact in North Australia (2006), John Fitgerald’s Big White Lie: Chinese Australians in White Australia (2007), Gilbert and Lo’s Performance and Cosmopolitics:Cross-cultural Transactions in Australasia (2007) and Khoo’s edited Locating Asian Australian Cultures (2007).
In 2008, Jacquie Lo and Tseen Khoo (Monash University) received funding to establish the Asian Australian Studies Research Network (ASSRN) with a membership drawn from within Australia as well as overseas. The AASRN, jointly-located at the ANU and at Monash University, represents the peak network for Asian Australian Studies internationally. It aims to build research capacity and profile, and sustain momentum in the field of Asian Australian Studies. Current projects include mentoring early career researchers, joint publications and exhibitions, collaboration with inter/national/regional cultural institutions, and seeding future funded projects. The AASRN recently formalised an exchange visiting fellowship with the Asian American Studies Centre in UCLA. Plans are underway for similar programs in Hong Kong, Canada, and UK.
Jacquie Lo currently teaches an Honours course in AAS and draws on AAS works in a range of undergraduate English courses. She plans to develop an AAS course for undergraduate students in the near future, in collaboration with other ANU colleagues.
For more information see: http://www.asianaustralianstudies.org
AsiaPacifiQueer Network
Associate Professor Peter Jackson, Division of Pacific and Asian History, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, CAP
Queer studies critiques the idea that heterosexuality and traditional gender roles hold a monopoly on supposedly "natural" or "proper" ways of being. More specifically, queer studies uses critical approaches to examine how heteronormativity shapes domains of life that at first sight might appear distant from the domains of gender and sexuality, e.g. nationalism, economics, race, cinema, literature, and art.
In 2000, Peter Jackson cofounded the AsiaPacifiQueer (APQ) Network in collaboration with Mark McLelland (Wollongong University), Fran Martin (Melbourne University), and Audrey Yue (Melbourne University) to respond to a sense of disciplinary exclusion and professional alienation within the Australian academy by scholars researching Asian and Pacific same-sex and transgender cultures and histories. Established area studies departments have at times been unsympathetic, if not hostile, towards critical theory and research on homosexuality and transgenderism. And until comparatively recently otherwise queer-friendly and theoretically engaged cultural studies departments in Australia have focused on the study of Western societies, with the issues of linguistic, discursive, and theoretical translation at the heart of the practice of Asian and Pacific cultural studies and non-Western queer studies tending to be overlooked. These issues are more than matters of intellectual debate. The multiple exclusions suffered by Asian and Pacific queer studies often impact deleteriously on the academic careers of those who conduct this research. Difficulties in finding sympathetic MA and PhD supervisors, the failure of academic libraries to acquire holdings in Asian-language queer materials, limited access to research funds, and restricted job opportunities together reflect the imbricated networks of professional homophobia and Eurocentrism that students of Asian queer studies confront. Under the former Howard Government, Asian and Pacific queer studies research in Australia suffered an effective political veto. Several Australian Research Council large grants in this field that were approved for funding by academic peer review processes were blocked by then education minister, now leader of the Federal Opposition, Dr Brendan Nelson.
Since it was established in 2000, the aim of APQ has been to intervene strategically to confront these multiple exclusions, bringing together academics, research students, and activists in collective attempts to inscribe queer studies within Asian and Pacific studies and to locate Asia, the Pacific, and the non-West, within cultural studies. Members of the APQ network have used a variety of approaches. To build networks amongst often-isolated Asian and Pacific queer studies researchers APQ has organised dedicated conferences and convened streams of panels within Asian studies, cultural studies, and Western queer studies conferences. APQ’s largest and most successful activity to date was the co-convening the conference: "Sexualities, Genders and Rights in Asia: The 1st International Conference of Asian Queer Studies" in Bangkok in July 2005, at which over 160 papers were presented and 500 participants attended. One direct outcome of this conference has been the establishment of a "Queer Asia" monograph series by Hong Kong University Press. The general editors of this monograph series are Peter Jackson, Prof. Chris Berry (Goldsmiths, London), Prof. John Erni (Lingnan, Hong Kong), and Dr. Helen Leung (Simon Fraser University, Vancouver). In collaboration with Fran Martin, Mark McLelland and Audrey Yue, Peter Jackson is also co-editor of the forthcoming collection, AsiaPacifiQueer: Rethinking Gender and Sexuality in the Asia-Pacific (University of Illinois Press, 2008).
For more information see: http://apq.anu.edu.au/about.php
Intersections: Gender and Sexuality in Asia and the Pacific
Dr Carolyn Brewer, Gender Relations Centre, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, CAP
For more information see: http://intersections.anu.edu.au/intersections
Learning Oceania
Dr. Katerina Teaiwa, Faculty of Asian Studies, CAP
Katerina is Pacific Studies Convener in the College of Asia and the Pacific. She has developed a new program of transdisciplinary Pacific Studies teaching at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels. This program is the first of its kind in Australia. Faculty participating in the program are drawn from the Learning Oceania network which Katerina developed with Pacific colleagues. It is based in the Pacific Centre in CAP and is focused on integrating Pacific Studies research, teaching, publishing and outreach at the ANU and internationally.
Katerina's research areas include dance studies, diaspora studies, visual ethnography, multi-sited ethnography, histories of Pacific phosphate mining and superphosphate consumption, popular culture and especially cultural industries, and women's studies. She organized and convened Culture Moves! Dance in Oceania from Hiva to Hip Hop in 2005 in Wellington, and in 2008 is organizing Oceanic Connections: the 2nd conference of the Australian Association for the Advancement of Pacific Studies with Stewart Firth and Margaret Jolly, and Gender, Youth and Economic Empowerment in the Pacific with Satish Chand, Margaret Jolly & AusAID. She is also working on developing the first Pacific Studies Reader Series with colleagues at the University of Auckland, Victoria University of Wellington, the University of the South Pacific, the University of Hawai'i and the University of California at Los Angeles.
Katerina is co-editor with Monisha Das Gupta and Charu Gupta of a special issue of Cultural Dynamics, "Margins and Migrations: South Asian Diasporas Across the World" (2007) & editor of a special issue of the Centre for Pacific Islands Studies Occasional Paper Series, Indigenous Encounters: reflections on relations between people in the Pacific (2007)
Southeast Asian Cinema Studies
Dr Gaik Khoo, School of Humanities, Faculty of Arts, CASS
In the field of Film Studies, Southeast Asian cinema and filmmaking practices are a little known and relatively minor area. However, it is a growing one, due in part to advances in digital video technology that have democratised and revolutionised filmmaking in countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Thailand since 2000. The digital revolution has created its own alternative parallel stream of independent filmmaking, and independent filmmakers are winning awards in well-known international festivals.
In 2004, while a postdoctoral fellow at the Asia Research Institute (NUS) in Singapore, Gaik Khoo convened the first Annual Southeast Asian Cinemas conference, with the expressed intention of giving academic legitimacy to filmmaking practices and focusing cinema studies on the region. The conference has since become an annual one rotating within the region, moving from Bangkok (2005) to Kuala Lumpur (2006) and (2007) Jakarta. The organising committee consists of young scholars working on Southeast Asian cinema who are based in Australia, London, Manila, Kuala Lumpur, the USA, and The Netherlands. Each year, the conference gains more attention and participation from scholars in various fields, including anthropology, literary and film studies, history and gender. These conferences foster clear linkages between film scholarship and film practice, with filmmakers, critics, festival programmers, and film activists having a presence. They also generate publications, with Gaik editing and co-editing special issues of journals such as Asian Cinema, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies and contributing an essay to a new book forthcoming on independent filmmaking in the region.
