I like writing, and below is a list of things I have written academically (mostly as an undergraduate). I would like to write more outside academia, and for some of my less verbose musings, please visit posts. If you’re continuing onto this sentence then you have chosen to read dense (but fun) essays on a variety of media-related topics. Do browse and enjoy:
- Gender Play: Gazes and Games – 2010
A cross-disciplinary look at the depictions of women and the stereotyping, hypersexualising and mythologising of the female form in video gaming. Focuses on Debord’s ‘spectacle’, and the notion of the male gaze in gaming.
- Photo Booth Logic: Screen cultures, performance and personhood – 2010
Looks at photo booths as social technologies in both Western and Eastern contexts, and by drawing on Bauman’s ‘liquid modernity’, examines more closely at how screen cultures in photography have integrated individualism and mobility into the contemporary self.
- Crittercam and Pegman: The role of optical haptics – 2010
Examines Haraway’s dissection of the term “infolding of fleshes” and develops this further in relation to optical haptics and their role in shaping human interaction with technologies.
- Reading Chinatown: Politics of place and home – 2009
Two essays which use Chinatown to examine how a “homeplace” is made by Chinese diaspora, and features debates around cultural authenticity, as how a sense of ‘Chinaness’ is constructed within a Western cityscape. The first essay focuses more on the semiotics of Chinatown, and how identity is reflected in place. The second essay looks more at the effects of globalisation and the redefinitions of ‘home’ and ‘locality’, as well as the ethics of authenticity within cosmopolitanism.
- Ideology & Imperialism: the British Empire vs Americanisation – 2009
A brief discussion in response to Straubhaar’s paper “Beyond Media Imperialism”, explores the idea that media imperialism is undermined by audience heterogeneity, and that ideology is heavily dependant upon cultural context to extrapolate its meaning. - Roles of sound in film: Semiotics and sonics – 2009
Explores the various semiotic, rhythmic and temporal abilities of film sound, with close relay of theories proposed by Christian Metz, Sergei Eisenstein and Michel Chion. Works toward an argument that sound acts as a narrative conduit to the ‘third eye’. - Multicultural education in Australia: Confucianism, Islam and the SBS – 2009
Essay which looks briefly at difficulties for multicultural education in Australia, specifically focusing on Muslim communities, the Special Broadcasting Service and Eastern sentiments in schooling as case studies.
- Sex scandal!: Perversions and privacy, the sexualisation of the datasphere v1.0 - 2009
A look into the unique architecture of the complex social phenomena which are sex scandals. Examines particularly the occurences of sex scandals with close reference to Edison Chen, as evidence of sexualisation both within Western and Eastern cultures, and proposes an argument for the convergence of these binaries. - Stress exhibited in night-shift workers and possible interventions [external link] – 2009
Paper exploring physiological, psychological and social effects of stress in workers who partake in shift work. Greatest cause of stress is due to the disruption of the body’s circadian rhythms, and the body’s subsequent actions to correct this misbalance. Interventions proposed include improvements to nutrition, exercise, lifestyle and other possibilities.
- Brief writings on duration and spectatorship – 2009
Short overview of cinematic narration and spectatorship debates with dissection of the films “pièce touchée” (1989), “Blow Job” (1964) and “Family Viewing” (1987).
- HSC practice essays – 2007
A sample of earlier writing, written in preparation for the 2007 HSC English advanced course.
All works by Mark Starmach
