Cultural Studies

I’ve been teaching Cultural Studies at Southern Cross University since 1999. I’m a member of the Association of Cultural Studies (International) and the Cultural Studies Association of Australia. In a nutshell, I regard Cultural Studies within the Academy as a crucial space – intellectual, spiritual, emotional – to enquire deeply into the human condition. As an intellectual project it often gets lost in culs de sac of its own making, but of all the areas of intellectual endeavour it has the most potential to better the human condition. My use of Cultural Studies is focused on the theory and practice of human rights and the question of what it means to be fully human. Toni Morrison, the Nobel Laureate black America author, sums up my appreciation of Cultural Studies like this: “I stood at the border: I stood at the edge and claimed it as central and let the rest of the world move over to where I was.”

 

Writing by Baden Offord

The Review of Education, Pedagogy and Cultural Studies

The Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies is the only journal that publishes critical essays relating pedagogy to a wide variety of political, social, cultural, and economic issues.We are particularly concerned with issues regarding how pedagogy works within and across a variety of sites,how pedagogical practices emerge out of specific historical struggles,concrete projects,and particular relations of power.

Myth, History and Memory Conference 2008

Mapping the Rainbow Region

Set in the rainbow region of northern NSW, this essay explores feelings of belonging considered in a self-reflexive journey through two landscapes - one theoretical, one physical/metaphysical. It argues that through the quilting of memories, critical reflections, anecdote, fictional readings, interviews and thick description, belonging becomes articulated through a spatial prism and imvrication of cultural fields and flows.

It's never too late to change the world

Article in Byron Shire Echo by Baden on the relevance of cultural studies.

Inaugural Cultural Studies Prize

Media Release for the inaugural cultural studies prize.

Homosexual Rights as Human Rights: Activism in Indonesia, Singapore and Australia

The Australian Public Intellectual site hosting a review and details of Baden's 2003 book.

The Apartheid of Homosexuality

Media article about issues discussed in Baden Offord's meeting with Desmond Tutu.

Teaching Highlights

Australian Learning and Teaching Council Citation 2009

Carrick Citation 2006


Cultural Studies - a new field of inquiry

Cultural Studies is a relatively new and increasingly influential field of scholarly inquiry, emerging in the second half of the twentieth century. Broadly speaking, it takes as its purview the production and circulation of meanings. Its objects of study include cultural practices of all kinds—mass media representations, consumer culture, literary texts, objects of industrial production, practices of performance and display, oppositional subcultures, and aspects of everyday life in both the present and the past.

Cultural Studies provides a space for scholarly dialogues that draw on theory and methods from several disciplines—anthropology, history, literary studies, philosophy, political economy, and sociology. But whereas the traditional disciplines tend to produce stable objects of study, research in cultural studies attempts to account for cultural objects under conditions constrained by power and defined by contestation, conflict, and change. That is, cultural studies grapples with the volatility of cultural happenings. Cultural studies also emphasizes self-reflexivity: an awareness that scholars and their scholarship are themselves caught up in the social currents and in the global circulation of meanings being studied. In taking up questions from this perspective, cultural studies both draws on and develops key strands of contemporary cultural theory: semiotics, deconstruction and poststructuralism, dialogics, subaltern and postcolonial studies . . . . The field also draws on and develops a number of innovative methodologies: autoethnography, blurred genres of writing, and other new forms of critical research.

From Cultural Studies at George Mason University


Cultural Studies Resources Online

Centre for Peace and Social Justice

Baden is the Co-Director of this research centre at Southern Cross University.

Journalism and Media Research Centr

This research centre at the University of NSW has scholars such as Gerard Goggin, Catherine Lumby, Kate Crawford and Clifton Evers.

Coolabah: Journal of Australian Studies at the University of Barcelona

COOLABAH is the official journal of the Observatori: Centre d' Estudis Australians - The Australian Studies Centre at the Universitat de Barcelona.

Cultural Studies Association of Australasia

The Cultural Studies Association of Australasia represents cultural studies practioners in Australia, New Zealand and the region. It publishes this extensive website, organises an annual conference, and advocates for the field of cultural Studies nationally and internationally. The Resources section of the site offers a rich array of links to e-journals, websites and other research resources.

Cultural Studies Central

Cultural Studies today is a simmering stew of the ideas, voices, and lives of people all over the world. It's the things we use and the people we talk about. It's life and life only. Cultural Studies Central is a gathering spot and central clearinghouse where those of us who live and breathe Cultural Studies can go to learn more and do more.

Lots of links to excellent cultural studies resources and discussion groups online.

ctheory.net

CTHEORY is a US based, international peer-reviewed journal of theory, technology, and culture, publishing articles, interviews, event-scenes and reviews of key books. Editors: Arthur and Marilouise Kroker

www.theory.org.uk

UK journal of theory for fans of popular culture and popular culture for fans of social theory.

Voice of the Shuttle

Comprehensive index of humanities research online, including a cultural studies section. Started in 1994 as a suite of static Web pages, VoS has now been rebuilt as a database that serves content dynamically on the Web. By this means, users gain greater flexibility in viewing and searching, while editors are able to work more efficiently and flexibly.

M/C - Media and Culture

M/C - Media and Culture was founded in 1998 as a place of public intellectualism, analysing and critiquing the meeting of media and culture. Its publications and other activities serve as a point of crossover between the popular and the academic and its editors aim "to move ideas outward, so that our debates may have some resonance with wider political and cultural interests."

Its first publication was M/C Journal, which was initiated and developed (as "M/C — A Journal of Media and Culture") at the Media and Cultural Studies Centre at the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia in 1998. It was closely followed by M/C Reviews. Since mid-2004, M/C is published with the support of the Creative Industries Faculty at Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia. In November 2004, it launched its third publication, the M/Cyclopedia of New Media.

PMC

A US based site, founded in 1990 as an experiment in scholarly publishing on the Internet, Postmodern Culture has become a leading electronic journal of interdisciplinary thought on contemporary cultures. It aims to combine high scholarly standards with broad appeal for non-academic readers. As an entirely web-based journal, PMC can publish still images, sound, animation, and full-motion video as well as text.

Counterblast: the e-journal of culture and communication

This is a new enterprise from the graduate students, faculty, and friends of the Department of Culture and Communication at New York University. Some issues brings together articles and reviews exploring a variety of cultural disciplines, including media analysis, history, art, architecture, music, and other significant channels of communication. Others will feature topic-specific themes as well as current events, and will include web art projects.

Border Crossings

This site, developed by the University of Iowa, explores the crossing of various kinds of cultural borders.

The Resource Center for Cyberculture Studies

The Resource Center for Cyberculture Studies is an online, not-for-profit organization whose purpose is to research, teach, support, and create diverse and dynamic elements of cyberculture.

Public Culture

A global interdisciplinary cultural studies journal.

POV Borders: a showcase for interactive storytelling

An ongoing series of interactive scenarios that explores the various kinds of borders in our lives.

The Culture and Ecology Page

This site provides links to scholarly and informational resources in
environmental/ecological thought & politics, cultural studies, science & technology studies, cultural geography, and related areas, focusing on the interaction between human cultural activities and the natural world.

Australiana blog on culture and literature

Centre for Australian Studies, University of Barcelona

Cultural Research Network
An Australian Research Council funded network

Kurungabaa:
a journal of literature,history and ideas from the sea

THINKERS:

Gerard Goggin


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