| ePress home | Browse | Search | Submissions and refereeing | About ePress | Contact ePress | Help |
| Staff directory | A-Z index | Site map |
| ePress home | Browse | Search | Submissions and refereeing | About ePress | Contact ePress | Help |
| Staff directory | A-Z index | Site map |
|
Forthcoming publicationsForthcoming journal issues
Complicated Currents: Media Flows and Soft Power in East AsiaEdited by Daniel Black, Stephen Epstein and Alison Tokita East Asia is a powerhouse of economic and social development, with cultural industries that have burgeoned as countries in the region have generated consumer economies and a middle class. Despite ongoing security tensions, growing evidence suggests that a vigorous cultural trade in such commodities as comics, cinema and TV drama is creating a shared regional popular culture. The widespread diffusion of the Internet, and the concomitant rise of non-professional online publishing and social networking, is creating new communities among the consumers of these cultural commodities. Rivalry for leadership in the sphere of the culture industries provides a fertile field for the study of soft market power versus hard political power. The competing national discourses of the 'Korean Wave' (hallyu) and Japan's 'Gross National Cool' indicate a struggle for new forms of influence in the East Asian region, a struggle that is becoming more intense as China, too, starts to exert soft power influence on a global scale in the form of cultural industries and foreign aid. The volume addresses transnational production and consumption of media products such as cinema, television dramas, popular music, comics and animation in Japan, South Korea and China. Its multidisciplinary approaches include cultural studies, gender studies, media studies, and a content analysis of popular discourses of otherness in the East Asian context. While suggesting the emergence of a shared East Asian popular consumer culture, it critically examines the proposition that such a shared popular culture can resolve tensions between nation-states, and highlights the the appropriation of popular culture by nation-states in an attempt to exercise soft power. This volume will be of interest to researchers and students in Asian studies, cultural studies and media studies, and will be particularly useful to researchers in the emerging area of Inter-Asian cultural studies. Publication: November 2009 ISBN (paperback): 978-0-9804648-8-7 About the editorsDaniel Black is a lecturer in Communications and Media Studies at Monash University. His area of expertise is Japanese popular culture. His work has appeared in journals such as Continuum, Journal of Popular Culture, and Metro. Stephen Epstein is Director of the Asian Studies Institute and the Asian Studies Program at the University of Wellington. His research interests are contemporary Korean popular culture and literature, as well as translation of Korean and Indonesian fiction. He co-translated (with Kim Mi Young), and wrote a critical introduction to, Contradictions, by Yang Gui-ja (Cornell East Asia Series: 2000), and has published widely in books and journals, including in the edited collection Korean Pop Music: Riding the Wave and the Journal of Korean Cultural Studies. Alison Tokita is Associate Professor of Japanese Studies in the School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics at Monash University and has been Director of the Japanese Studies Centre at Monash University. She has published widely in Japanese studies, including as editor-in-chief of six refereed volumes of papers under the general title Japanese Studies: Communities, Cultures, Critiques. Her areas of expertise include Japanese performing arts, international marriage, Japanese popular culture, and Japanese diaspora. Her co-edited The Ashgate Research Companion to Japanese Music has just been released from Ashgate. Contributors
New journal issuesAustralian Review of Applied LinguisticsVolume 31, Number 3 This issue is now live. Volume 32, Number 2 This issue of ARAL once again showcases the breadth of research done in Applied Linguistics in Australia and the Asia-Pacific region. Masanori Matsumoto investigates the factors that lead tertiary students to persist in their study of Japanese, and finds differences in motivational patterns between students of East Asian and Western background. Research in this area has important implications as it goes to the heart of the debate on 'Asia literacy' in Australia. In a sociolinguistically oriented study, Su-Hie Ting and Mahanita Mahadir look at the use of ethnic vs. standard languages in families of different ethnic backgrounds in Malaysia, and show a shift away from the ethnic languages to English, Bahasa Malaysia, and Mandarin Chinese. This shift, however, is more pronounced for some ethnic backgrounds than others. Staying with the topic of multilingualism, but in a different domain, Daphne Huang describes the use of Mandarin, Taiwanese, and English in asynchronous computer-mediated communication within a social network in Taiwan. She focuses specifically on code-switching between languages and writing systems, and finds a complex relationship between different languages and writing system. Finally, David Caldwell analyzes post-match interviews between football players and journalists from a systemic-functional perspective, and describes a neutral stance on both sides. He explains the footballers' lack of evaluation in terms of audience perceptions and the cultural norms inherent in Australian team sports and the wider cultural context. The issue is rounded off with five book reviews, covering a range of recent publications in the field. I would like to express my gratitude to our reviewers, who volunteer their time and expertise to ensure the quality of our papers. As always, we welcome submissions on any aspect of Applied Linguistics, and particularly encourage empirical studies. Manuscripts should be submitted through our web-based system at http://ojs.lib.monash.edu.au/ojs/index.php/aral/index and follow APA style guidelines. The final issue of 2009 will be guest edited by Ute Knoch and John Read and feature papers from the rapidly growing area of aviation English and its assessment.
The Bible and Critical TheoryVolume 6, Number 1 In the next issue of The Bible and Critical Theory, we have the following articles: Em McAvan, “Economies of Sacrifice in The Merchant of Venice:God, the Gift and Shakespeare”. Here McAvan reads Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice in relation to the Kiekegaardian influenced thoughts Derrida developed in the The Gift of Death. She traces the religiously mediated economies of debt and sacrifice through the play. Who sacrifices, and to what end, she argues, is a highly contentious and pressing question for both critical theory of religion and the study of Shakespeare James G. Crossley, “N.T. Wrong and the Bibliobloggers”. Crossley’s article builds upon an earlier political analysis of the phenomenon of biblical scholars blogging (‘bibliobloggers’) by incorporating the pseudonymous biblioblogger, ‘N.T. Wrong’. Developing Herman and Chomsky’s Propaganda Model and various ideas concerning surveillance, Crossley claims that it is clear Wrong was (and is) a stark opposite to the consistent trend among bibliobloggers that buys into the language and ideas of US-led power, most notably concerning the ‘war on terror’ and Orientalism. Through the pseudonymous persona, Wrong’s blog also ran counter to a culture of surveillance, of which blogging and related internet phenomena are now an integral part. While running counter to these trends in biblioblogging, Wrong became the exception proving the ‘rule’ of the Propaganda Model. Through bibliobloggers ignoring Wrong’s politics on issues relating to US foreign policy so central to the Propaganda Model (and while freely discussing equally ‘non-biblical’ topics), the analysis of biblioblogging as a reflection of the concerns of the Propaganda Model is reinforced. This is shown through discussion of a number of Wrong’s blog entries and further suggestions are then made concerning the function of liberal and former leftist supporters of imperialism in relation to biblioblogging and the Propaganda Model. David Fiorovanti, “Language, exception, messianism: The thematics of Agamben on Derrida”. Fiorovanti’s paper revisits Giorgio Agamben’s text, The Time That Remains, and through a comparative analysis, contrasts the author’s reading of St Paul’s Romans to relevant Derridean thematics prevalent in the text. Specific themes include language, the law, and the subject. Fiorovanti illustrates how Agamben attempts to revitalise the idea of philosophical anthropology by breaking away from the deconstructive approach. Agamben argues that language is an experience but is currently in a state of nihilism. Consequently, the subject has become lost; or, more specifically, the subject and its object have not disappeared in language but through language. The resuscitation of experience is thus required to defeat this condition: only in language does the subject have its site and origin. Unlike deconstruction, which highlights an inherent paradox within a situation unearthing a questionable foundation, Agamben argues that, by investigating the ’exception,’ one finds neither a norm nor an inherent truth of the situation, but the confusion which surrounds them both. E. Alfred Knight, “Habermas’ Formal Pragmatics and the Speech Act of Stephen”. The concept of formal pragmatics exhibits the potential for rationality that is supposed to be implicit in the everyday language practices of societies. It is located in certain idealisations that guide communicative action to the extent that communication is linked to validity. While this reconstructive theory seeks to identify universal presuppositions of everyday communication in modern societies, this paper will show that it can be transposed onto an ancient communication (Stephen’s speech) as an example of communicative action. Interpreting Stephen’s speech according to Habermas’ formal pragmatics in the communicative framework, infers a conception of purpose and potential to build on this example for other speech acts and communicative processes in the Bible. The problem with communicative rationality is that it cannot be reduced to any local context without the risk of it becoming useless for universal application and falling into moral relativism. However, the Bible is full of idealised normative suppositions that can provide standards for justifiable purposive and illocutionary activity. Even though Habermas hopes to provide a post-metaphysical alternative to pre-modern ideals of normativity, it will be shown that the pre-modern biblical text can still be an inspiration for the communicative rationality he sought after. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to analyse the speech act of Stephen in Acts 6:8-7:60 in relation to his formal pragmatics within the context of communicative action, as an example of critical biblical interpretation. Ghil‘ad Zuckermann, “Do Israelis Understand the Hebrew Bible?” The Hebrew Bible should be taught like a foreign language, argues Ghil‘ad Zuckermann, endorsing Avraham Ahuvia’s recently-launched translation of the Old Testament into what Zuckermann calls high-register “Israeli”. Tanakh RAM fulfills the mission of “red ’el ha‘am” not only in its Hebrew meaning (Go down to the people) but also – more importantly – in its Yiddish meaning (“red” meaning “speak!”, as opposed to its colorful communist sense). Ahuvia’s translation is most useful and dignified. Given its high register, however, Zuckermann predicts that the future promises consequent translations into more colloquial forms of Israeli, a beautifully multi-layered and intricately multi-sourced language, of which to be proud. As usual, there will also be twelve book reviews.
History AustraliaVolume 7, Number 1 Details of the forthcoming issue will be announce here soon.
Monash Bioethics ReviewVolume 28, Number 3, 2009 Details of this forthcoming issue will be available here soon.
Telecommunications Journal of AustraliaVolume 60 Number 1 TJA's November issue (Volume 60 number 1)The theme of this issue is 'Broadband initiatives', and it features an in-depth interview with Mike Quigley, Executive Chairman of NBN Co, the company charged with rolling out Australia's new National Broadband Network. In related articles, Peter Darling's 'All change for Broadband' ponders the NBN's strategy for supporting Australia's universal telephone service carrier obligations, and Ben Freyens analyses the effectiveness of radio spectrum auctions, the infrastructure enabler for supporting future mobile broadband and IPTV initiatives. Chris Goodman's paper 'Bunjil - A Social Network for Proactive Monitoring of Tropical Rainforests', which won a Merit Award in the 2009 Alcatel-Lucent Eckermann-TJA Prize competition, appears in this issue, together with Jeff Biggar and Catherine Middleton's paper on Canadian experience with broadband network environmentalism. Robert Morsillo analyses two commercially successful projects in Australia that are examples of innovation driven by focussing on the user environment: one for fixed line telephony, the other for mobile telephony. And Carlos Uxó in his paper on 'Internet Politics in Cuba' demonstrates the difficulties of achieving Open Access in a country subject to severe internal and external restrictions and embargoes... TSA members can access all articles in this and other online issues of TJA free by providing their ACS-TSA membership number and password on the ACS-TSA web site. Peter Gerrand, Editor-in-Chief, TJA
Applied GISFrom 2007 (Volume 3), Applied GIS is being published independently as an open access journal by its editors, Jim Peterson and Ray Wyatt. For all articles in volume 3 and onward, please see the new Applied GIS website.
Monash Business ReviewAs of the end of 2008, Monash University ePress ceased publication of Monash Business Review (MBR). The impetus for this decision was that MBR would be published as an open access journal directly by the Faculty of Business and Economics through their Industry Engagement Portal. However the Executive Editorial Team have since decided to discontinue publication of the journal entirely. Queries about the journal should be directed to the Faculty of Business and Economics. The full length versions of articles published in 2008 can be found at http://www.buseco.monash.edu.au/research/mbr/2008//index.html.
|