1999 Arts Handbook - Gippsland campus

Gippsland campus

General information
Introduction
Members of staff and their fields of special interest

The School of Humanities and Social Sciences is a school of the Faculty of Arts. The school reports to faculty board, but maintains substantial autonomy over courses and student matters.
The school offers postgraduate programs in a variety of disciplinary areas: Australian studies, communications, community studies, Asian studies, gender studies, history, politics, journalism and sociology and social research.
The term 'School of Humanities and Social Sciences,' like 'Faculty of Arts,' is used most frequently to include all students enrolled in its courses and all staff, both academic and general, employed to assist in the delivery of these academic programs. The school is located on the Gippsland campus, which is in the township of Churchill, approximately 168 kilometres east of the Clayton campus.
The school is located in two wings of the campus: the 2W and 1E buildings. The school office is room 2W283, and staff there can direct inquiries to the appropriate areas within the school if necessary.
The School of Humanities and Social Sciences employs a staff of approximately fifty, including full-time, part-time and sessional staff. In 1998 approximately 1250 students were enrolled in undergraduate programs taught by the school. Of these students, around 250 are enrolled on-campus, with in excess of 1000 students studying part-time by distance education from a variety of locations within Australia and overseas. Twenty-five students are undertaking study leading to the honours degree of Bachelor of Arts. A further thirty students were enrolled in graduate programs.
Within the school there are seven sections: history-politics, Indonesian, journalism, Koorie studies, mass communications and writing, sociology and social research, and social welfare. Each section has a head of section who is responsible for administrative and academic issues relating to the one or more disciplines they teach.
In addition to the sections, the school also has two centres: the Gippsland Centre for Koorie Studies; and the Centre for Gippsland Studies. The Gippsland Centre for Koorie Studies, headed by a director, offers an undergraduate program in Koorie studies and also has involvement in research in this area. The Centre for Gippsland Studies undertakes research and consultancies relating to Gippsland history, heritage and the environment. The centre has a large archive of information on Gippsland, maintained by the executive officer, which is accessible to anyone researching issues related to Gippsland.
The school board has responsibility for the function of the school. The board meets at least seven times throughout the year and reports to the faculty board where necessary. The school board comprises most academic and general staff within the school, representatives of other schools and three student representatives.
Students wishing to bring matters to the attention of the school board should feel free to discuss them with the student representatives, who may be contacted via the student union.
Responsibility for the organisation of teaching and research in particular disciplines rests with the relevant head of section, while the school board is primarily concerned with issues affecting more than one section, including new developments within the school. The school board has a number of committees which have the power to act on behalf of the school board on particular issues as specified in their terms of reference. These committees include:

the Undergraduate Committee, which advises the school board on all matters relating to undergraduate students as they arise, including questions of student workload and matters concerned with assessment; acts for the board in cases involving use of discretionary powers conferred on the school by the degree regulations and considers proposals for the introduction of new subjects;
the Honours Committee, which advises the school board on all matters relating to the fourth year honours program, including the admission of students, the consideration of proposals for the introduction of new subjects, and the awarding of the honours degree;
the Postgraduate Committee, which advises the school board on all matters relating to the admission of candidates for higher degrees and graduate courses and the awarding of higher degrees and graduate awards;
the Unsatisfactory Progress Committee, which is a subcommittee of the Undergraduate Committee, considering the cases of students who become liable to be excluded for unsatisfactory progress;
the Research Committee, which advises the school board on all matters relating to the conduct of research within the school, including policies and grants.

The requirements for the various courses are set out as simply as possible. If students have further queries, they should contact the school's administrative officers.

Members of staff and their fields of special interest

History-politics

BETH EDMONDSON Environmental politics; international relations; public policy; citizenship and governance; Australian politics
DAVID SCHMITT Medical history; Australian colonial military history; Australian health policy; representations of China in popular literature of the interwar period; war by proxy.
KEITH WILSON American slavery; Civil War; reconstruction; African American culture; US civil rights; industrial revolution: Britain; Australian prisoners of war.

Indonesian

NANI THOMAS LOTE methodology; drama and theatre studies; television in developing nations.
PAUL THOMAS Applied linguistics; listening skills in second language acquisition; immersion programs; and translation.

Journalism

ERROL HODGE International radio; international television; Radio Australia; commemoration of twentieth-century martyrs at Westminster Abbey; Asian media perceptions of Australia; Australian media perceptions of Asia
USHA MANCHANDA Impact of new technologies on journalism practice; journalism practice in Asia; journalism and economics
JOHN TEBBUTT Foreign correspondents; community media; computer assisted reporting; media policy; journalism and cultural practices.

Koorie studies

GREG DOUGLAS Indigenous identity; parallelism; dominant and minority culture; Aboriginal social organisation; Aboriginal leadership
MARLENE DRYSDALE Koorie education.
ISABEL ELLENDER Koorie archaeology.
LYNNE HOLTEN Human Rights; public policy making; women - history and rights; indigenous issues

Mass communications and writing

KATHY BLASHKI Cultural and literary theory particularly the work of Jacques Derrida, Umberto Eco and James Hillman; reader/audience reception theory; the cultural practice of photography; popular music and the representation of the body; radio, specifically talkback
PHILIP DEARMAN Cultural production and pedagogy; organisational communication; telecommunications policy; multimedia
CATHY GREENFIELD Relations between media, culture, power with particular attention to forms of democracy and populism and to intercultural relations.
MIKE GRIFFITHS Creative writing; contemporary writing; travel writing.
O MARY GRIFFITHS Reading cultural practices; 'postcolonial' and feminist theories, cultural production and pedagogy; writing.
NEIL HANLEY Media studies, mass communications; computer-mediated learning.
JENNIFER HURLEY Media; culture; communications; feminist theory and education; qualitative audience-based research methodologies
MARIAN QUIGLEY Creative writing; women's writing; feminist theory; Australian literature; and culture; contemporary literature; media studies; visual arts.
LEANNE WHITE Advertising; Australian popular culture; the social impact of new communications technologies; teleteaching; the Internet; media studies

Social welfare

SUE ARNALL Counselling; groupwork, disability and mental health, feminist approaches to welfare.
KAREN CRINALL Homelessness specifically young women; feminist and post-structural research methodology, photography; postmodern welfare practice.
WILL CRINALL Homelessness; post-structural research methodology; social policy; social service organisations and services.
MARG LYNN Rural social work; rural informal networks; community development; feminist social work practice.
DEBRA MANNING Public welfare; overseas community development; anti-racist practice.

Sociology and social research

PETER HARRY BALLIS Sociology of work, including issues of occupational health and safety, trade unionism, career change and redundancy; Sociology of religion; qualitative research methods.
MARION COLLIS Women's health; mental illness/psychiatric services; women and social control.
DAN LENNON Cross-cultural sociology; quantitative methodology; social psychology; health and legal institutions
LYLE MUNRO Social movements; animal rights; youth employment; social control and deviance; sociology of education, school to work transition.
DARYL NATION Distance education; educational technology; life-long education; open learning.
PAM REYNOLDS Research methodology; acquisition of numeracy; psychological effects of unemployment; gender issues.
MARIANNE ROBINSON Children; gender relations; education.
PARIMAL ROY Race, migration and ethnicity; family and kinship; social and community networks; social change; rural and urban studies; south and south-east Asia.
STEVEN RUSSELL Social and political thought - historical and contemporary - sociology of deviance; sociology of religion, especially new religious movements and traditional religious institutions; race and ethnic relations, especially Jewish issues; gender relations and the reconstruction of masculinity; sociology of identity, the body, emotions.