Cristyn Davies

Having, and Being Had By, Experience : Or, Experience in the Social Sciences After the Discursive/ Poststructuralist Turn

Following the discursive or poststructuralist turn, accounts of “experience” can no longer be read by those social scientists who have taken that turn, as straightforward descriptions of “an individuals being or consciousness.” Nor can readings of accounts of experience produce any final analysis of the meaning of the “real person” who made the account or of “real worlds” that might be acted on as a result of that meaning making. To recuperate “experience” within a poststructuralist framework, the authors analyze multiple accounts of one particular experience produced at different points of time and in different contexts.

Producing Cosmopolitan Sexual Citizens on The L Word

Using Showtimes The L Word as a case study, we argue that lesbian sexuality and lesbian lifestyles are produced alongside broader discourses of cosmopolitan consumer citizenship. The lesbian characters in this program are first and foremost constructed through their investments in certain neo-liberal consumer and lifestyle practices that limit the possibility of what lesbian subjectivities and/or lesbian politics can or cannot become. We offer an alternative strategy of reading lesbians in image-based media and popular culture that attends to the ways in which lesbian subjectivities are produced in a climate of neo-liberal consumer and lifestyle practices that have shifted the ways in which sexual citizens are produced. Our aim is to provide a critical framework that can be applied to other lesbian-themed television texts and to a range of other image-based visual media including film, commercial advertising, and new media.

‘It’s not at all chic to be denied your civil rights’ : performing sexual citizenship in Holly Hughes’s Preaching to the Perverted

The following discussion examines processes of governmentality and regulation in the arts during the culture wars in the USA. Using performance artist, Holly Hughes’s, Preaching to the Perverted, as a case study, I examine this performance as resistant to cultural policy that attempts to constitute heteronormative citizens. I engage with the question of how a queer critique can rethink the possibilities of citizenship by arguing that performance art is a queer time and space in which American citizenship is contested and reconceptualized. The moral panic that ensues from cases such as this solicits the participation of the general public, wherein some citizens demand regulation often bringing closure to any serious debate about alternative responses to controversial issues. Debates about the politics of representation in the arts, and of government-subsidized production of particular kinds of citizen subjects are critical because they significantly impact on the formation of cultural policy.

For Love of the Word: English Teaching, Affect and Writing1

Research in the UK, USA and Australia confirms that secondary English practising and pre‐service teachers are typically characterised as great readers. Indeed the subject position of English teacher entails a ‘love’ of reading (Peel, R., Patterson, A. & Gerlach (Eds), 2000). However there is no corollary with writing. Few English teachers are simultaneously ‘writers’ in any sustained, pleasurable or publicly successful ways. This paper examines data gathered from pre‐service secondary English teachers and from experienced teachers who are also writers about their own writing practices and experiences and looks at the relationship between these issues of affect and pedagogy. Embodied and positive affects—characterised as ‘love’, ‘passion’ and ‘immersion’ in writing—are prominent features of the stories told by accomplished writers. Love of ‘the word’, including a love of reading, and a productive tension between form and freedom, are further threads in the discursive textures of their stories of coming to writing.

Mediating Healthy Female Citizenship in the HPV Vaccination Campaigns

Analyzing the HPV awareness and Gardasil® vaccine campaigns for the United States (US), we argue that the campaigns reflect “the new public health” model that positions individuals as neoliberal citizens responsible for managing their health and maximizing public health opportunities. The campaigns, directed primarily at girls and young women and their mothers, also mobilized neoliberal discourses of risk, choice, and self-management alongside postfeminist political rhetoric that values empowerment, freedom, choice, and rights. Postfeminist tropes were co-opted by Mercks marketing imperatives in order to produce girls and young women as an agentic, niche market of health consumers. We then foreground a low-budget counter-narrative alternative media campaign produced by young women and disseminated through YouTube. This campaign demonstrates the role of new media in producing alternative perspectives on agentic female citizenship and disrupts Mercks campaign imperatives.

Speaking Violence: Homophobia and the Production of Injurious Speech in Schooling Cultures

In this chapter, we explore the ways in which homophobic violence is understood and recognised both in society more broadly and particularly within schooling cultures. We also examine the discourses through which same-sex attraction is constructed, and the impact of these discourses in addressing the ongoing problem of homophobic violence in schools. While physical forms of violence are most salient and most visible — that is most visibly injurious — forms of linguistic violence (direct or indirect name calling and verbal abuse) and emotional and psychological violence also have severe detrimental effects (Davies, 2008; Hillier et al., 1998, 2005; Mason, 2002; Mason & Tomsen, 1997; McInnes, 2008; McInnes & Davies, 2008; Rasmussen, 2006; Robinson & Ferfolja, 2008). All too frequently within school environments, this kind of violence either goes unrecognised (or in some cases is ignored) by educators or is shut down with little room for the perpetrators of such harassment and violence to reflect on their own subject position within relations of power. In our earlier work that examined homophobic and gendered violence within schooling cultures (Davies, 2008; McInnes, 2008; McInnes & Davies, 2008) we outlined an approach to educational ethics that resists the reproduction of normative ideas of the coherent subject.

Doing Sexuality Research with Children: Ethics, Theory, Methods and Practice:

This article is a critical reflection on undertaking qualitative research with children and young people about sexuality issues. Framed within a feminist post-structuralist and queer theoretical perspective, the authors understand sexuality as a historically and culturally contingent category of subjectivity, and a complex signifying system founded on individual and institutional relations of power. Based on Australian research that has spanned the past decade, the authors reflect on their experiences of research with children and young people around sexuality, and the issues encountered in gaining approval to undertake this research from institutional human ethics committees. The authors also discuss the use of images from popular culture and media representations as a methodology to engage children, young people and adults in discussions on relationships and sexuality issues within the context of interviews and focus groups. In conclusion, the authors reflect on what it means to be a researcher in this field and offer some thoughts on how best to support researchers to continue engaging in this research.

CONSTRUCTING ‘DECENCY’: Government subsidized cultural production during the culture wars

This article examines the production of normative subjectivity and the construction of ‘appropriate’ and exportable knowledge through cultural policy during the culture wars of the 1980s–1990s in the USA. During this time, the performing and visual arts, and mass media were increasingly seen as the cause, rather than the reflection, of social instability, and quickly became subject to governmental regulation. Focusing on a 1998 US Supreme Court case, National Endowment for the Arts v. Finley, I examine the construction and application of decency offered in the oral transcripts, and attend more broadly to the relationship between cultural policy and law. Cultural policy is a technique of governmentality, and a means through which citizenship and national identity is constituted and regulated, and self-governance inculcated. Similarly, law is a key technology through which governance, and subjectivity is produced, constituted and regulated. Policies such as the ‘decency’ clause depend on a series of coercive technologies and practices, which ensure that only particular kinds of individuals are understood as embodying norms that are constitutive of citizen-subjects that the State desires. The introduction of the ‘decency’ clause may be understood, in part, as a response to a perceived failure in the arts community of individuals to effectively self-regulate and embody standard sociocultural norms.

Development of a human papillomavirus vaccination intervention for Australian adolescents

Objective: Australia has implemented a nation-wide programme providing a human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine to girls and boys through school-based programmes. Previous research has identified three distinct areas for attention: (1) lack of understanding about HPV and HPV vaccination, (2) young people’s desire for involvement in decision-making about HPV vaccination and (3) fear of HPV vaccination. We aimed to develop an intervention to address young people’s low levels of understanding, to promote their involvement in consent and reduce vaccination-related fear and anxiety. Design, Setting, Methods: Formative qualitative research was conducted in six public, private and Catholic schools in the Sydney metropolitan area. Girls who were offered the vaccine in a school programme and aged 12–13 years were interviewed in focus groups. Piloting of materials was conducted in three private schools across Sydney with both girls and boys, and changes and additions were made to the materials in accordance with feedback. Results: We developed an educational intervention aimed at addressing gaps in young people’s knowledge and understanding, and offering strategies to improve confidence with vaccination and reduce needle-related anxiety. Components of the final intervention include film chapters, a magazine, a website, an app and teacher support materials. The intervention is designed for teachers and/or nurses to deliver and is linked to the school-based HPV vaccination programme. Conclusions: This is the first educational intervention designed for young people in HPV school-based vaccination, to be developed from empirical data with the involvement of young people themselves.

HPV.edu study protocol: a cluster randomised controlled evaluation of education, decisional support and logistical strategies in school-based human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination of adolescents.

BackgroundThe National Human Papillomavirus (HPV) Vaccination Program in Australia commenced in 2007 for females and in 2013 for males, using the quadrivalent HPV vaccine (HPV 6,11,16,18). Thus far, we have demonstrated very substantial reductions in genital warts and in the prevalence of HPV among young Australian women, providing early evidence for the success of this public health initiative. Australia has a long history of school-based vaccination programs for adolescents, with comparatively high coverage. However, it is not clear what factors promote success in a school vaccination program. The HPV.edu study aims to examine: 1) student knowledge about HPV vaccination; 2) psycho-social outcomes and 3) vaccination uptake.Methods/DesignHPV.edu is a cluster randomised trial of a complex intervention in schools aiming to recruit 40 schools with year-8 enrolments above 100 students (approximately 4400 students). The schools will be stratified by Government, Catholic, and Independent sectors and geographical location, with up to 20 schools recruited in each of two states, Western Australia (WA) and South Australia (SA), and randomly allocated to intervention or control (usual practice). Intervention schools will receive the complex intervention which includes an adolescent intervention (education and distraction); a decisional support tool for parents and adolescents and logistical strategies (consent form returns strategies, in-school mop-up vaccination and vaccination-day guidelines). Careful process evaluation including an embedded qualitative evaluation will be undertaken to explore in depth possible mechanisms for any observed effect of the intervention on primary and secondary outcomes.DiscussionThis study is the first to evaluate the relative effectiveness of various strategies to promote best practice in school-based vaccination against HPV. The study aims to improve vaccination-related psychosocial outcomes, including adolescent knowledge and attitudes, decision-making involvement, self-efficacy, and to reduce fear and anxiety. The study also aims to improve school vaccination program logistics including reduction in time spent vaccinating adolescents and increased number of consent forms returned (regardless of decision). Less anxiety in adolescents will likely promote more efficient vaccination, which will be more acceptable to teachers, nurses and parents. Through these interventions, it is hoped that vaccination uptake will be increased.Trial registrationAustralian and New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry, ACTRN12614000404628, 14.04.2014.