The second Research Bites (RB) organized by the Victoria delegation of the Spanish Researchers in Australia-Pacific association (SRAP-IEAP) was held on October 20th 2016 in Melbourne, at the School of Languages and Linguistics (University of Melbourne). The event was organised by our member Alfredo Martínez Expósito (University of Melbourne).
The 2nd RB in Melbourne was opened by the Spanish General Consul in Melbourne, D. Juan Carlos Gafo Acevedo, followed by a presentation about the SRAP by Alfredo Martínez (story, aims, web page, activities in 2015/2016 and plans for 2017).
After this, six Spanish researchers (John Postill, Ramón López Castellano, Abraham Hernández Cubo, Ana Puchau de Lecea, Eduardo Crisol-Martínez and Laura Moreno) gave a presentation of their work. Three of these short talks were about Humanities and one about Social Sciences. The details of four of these short talks are included below.
The event finished in a nearby pub. We thank School of Languages and Linguistics (U Melbourne) for paying the first round of beers!
Details about the short presentations (some in English, one in Spanish):
1. From indigenous media to nerd politics: a brief research autobiography
Dr John Postill, Vice-Chancellor’s Senior Research Fellow, RMIT University
In this talk I retrace my steps as a media anthropologist from my doctoral research at UCL (1995-2000) on indigenous media and nation-building in Sarawak, Borneo, to more recent work on internet activism and political change in Malaysia, Indonesia and Spain (2002-2016). This latter work will inform my forthcoming book The Rise of Nerd Politics (Pluto).
2. Mis proyectos de investigación en Lingüística Aplicada y Estudios de Cine
Abraham Hernández Cubo, Lector MAEC-AECID, Universidad de La Trobe
Actualmente estoy escribiendo una tesis de máster en Lingüística Aplicada en la que analizo el nivel de reconocimiento de las variedades dialectales del español en libros de texto para la enseñanza y aprendizaje del español como lengua extranjera, así como las posibles ideologías de estandarización lingüística asociadas a ellos. Asimismo estoy haciendo una investigación pre-doctoral en estudios de cine español a fin de poder diseñar una propuesta doctoral sobre la representación de la infancia y la adolescencia en el cine español.
3. El dandi pop
Ramón López Castellano, Teaching Scholar, Spanish Program, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Faculty of Arts & Education, Deakin University
“El dandi pop” is the working title of a book/project that analyses the agency and role of certain pop/rock music personalities in the social changes in post-francoist Spain up to present. The study develops the trope of the “dandi” as a tool for sociological comment and identifies a few musicians who can be regarded as the Spanish pop dandies. In a second step the book unfolds and explains the agency of these individuals in the changes and their decisive contribution to the creation of new identity visibilities and new possibilities of understanding Spanishness.
4. Rebel to Weird Girls in the Twentieth-Century Spanish Literature Canon. From Elena Fortún to Carmen Laforet
Ana Puchau de Lecea, PhD Candidate at the School of Languages and Linguistics, The University of Melbourne.
This thesis examines Spanish writer Elena Fortún (1886-1952), a precursor of 1940s and 1950s Spanish women writers, and how she contributed to shaping twentieth-century Spanish narrative, influencing post-war authors such as Carmen Laforet (1921-2004). Spanish women writers in the 1940s and 1950s use related literary strategies, such as the female child and teenage characters such as Fortún’s Celia, to disguise their ideological positions in the context of Franco’s Spain censorship period. By exploring the ways Elena Fortún presents herself as a female author through the character and literary context of her corpus, this thesis proposes a new interpretation of the relevance of her in twentieth-century Spanish narrative canon formation, by exploring her influence on women writers in early Francoist regime and beyond. The scientific methods, associated to the evolution of Psychology as a social discipline in early and mid-twentieth century. Particular attention will be given to new pedagogical trends of the period, which consider children as individuals with their own agency (i.e. Maria Montessori and the Free Educational Institution, among others), in their focus on how to improve the education and psychological development of the female subject.