Dr Mark Gibson
BA (Hons) (Syd), MA (U Tech Syd), PhD (Edith Cowan)
Contact details | Research interests | Research supervision | Publications
Latest Work
Culture and Power – A History of Cultural Studies
Power has long been a central preoccupation of social and cultural analysis. Culture and Power focuses on power to shape a history of Cultural Studies. A critical analysis of the nature and purpose of Cultural Studies, the book assesses the development of the discipline from the work of Michel Foucault in post-war France and the Birmingham Centre for Cultural Studies in the 1970s to the expansion of the field in the United States and present day concerns with culture, politics and ethics. As Cultural Studies has shifted, the concept of power has changed and become more problematic. Moving on from the celebrated "culture wars" - and battles over language, objective knowledge and disciplinary values and meanings - Culture and Power unravels the social, ideological and political knots bound up in the concept of power. In doing so, the book charts not only the history but also the possible future of Cultural Studies. View details and purchase on Amazon.
Mark joined the National Centre for Australian Studies in 2007 as coordinator of the Graduate Program in Communications and Media Studies. He is a graduate of the University of Sydney, the University of Technology, Sydney and Edith Cowan University. He has wide experience in research and teaching in communications, media and cultural studies in Australia, having worked previously at Murdoch University, Curtin University, Central Queensland University, the University of Canberra and the University of Technology, Sydney.
Mark is General Editor of the international refereed journal Continuum – Journal of Media and Cultural Studies. Continuum, has a long Australian history, having begun in Perth in 1987, but now receives submissions from Australasia, Asia, Europe and North America. A number of recent special issues have featured leading international scholars and been converted to book publications by Routledge. Mark has also been an officeholder in various roles with the Cultural Studies Association of Australasia and has organised national conferences of the CSAA and the Australian and New Zealand Communications Association.
Mark believes that coursework postgraduate work should combine strong scholarship and vocational relevance, while also having an element of fun. Since taking on coordination of the Communications and Media Studies program, he has taken a number of initiatives to improve this mix. For example, he has initiated an International Field Trip subject within the Masters, drawing on experience developed in this area in the undergraduate journalism program by Andrea Baker. In 2008, students on the field trip visited leading media organizations in London and New York, including the BBC, The Times, Reuters, Bloomberg, the United Nations media unit, Time Out and Rolling Stone.
Research interests
Mark is currently a Chief Investigator, with researchers at Queensland University of Technology, on the project ‘Creative Suburbia – A Critical Evaluation of the Scope for Creative Cultural Development in Australia’s Suburban and Peri-Urban Communities’. The project, funded through an Australian Research Council Discovery grant, involves research into creative networks in outer suburban growth areas of Melbourne and South East Queensland. He is a member of the Australian Research Council’s Cultural Research Network, with a particular involvement as Convenor of the ‘Cultural Literacies’ program. He has also been involved in research in the past with the Australasian Cooperative Research Centre for Interaction Design, in a project on technology use in new suburban developments and in an ARC Linkage project on the potential for interactive television in children’s programming.
He has also made numerous appearances as a media commentator, contributing expertise on ABC national and metropolitan radio, Today Tonight, The West Australian and The Australian.
Research supervision
Mark has research interests in:
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suburbia,
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everyday life,
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theories of power in communications and cultural studies,
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television,
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corporate culture and
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Australian public life.
He has supervised a number of PhD theses on topics including:
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graffiti and skate cultures,
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film sound,
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the principles of judgement involved in film and television classification and
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cosmopolitan themes in Malaysian cinema.
Publications
Books
Culture and Power – A History of Cultural Studies, Oxford: Berg, 2007
Edited Collections:
Digital Literacy, Special Issue of Media International Australia 128, August 2008, (with Kelly McWilliam and John Hartley)
Everyday Transformations – The Twenty-First Century Quotidian, Special Issue of Continuum – Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 19(4), 2005 (with Debbie Rodan)
The New Humanism, Special Issue of Continuum – Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 18(2), 2004 (with Terry Flew)
Articles in refereed journals:
“Beyond Literacy Panics”, Media International Australia 128, August 2008
“Everyday Transformations – the Twenty-First Century Quotidian” (with Debbie Rodan), Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 19(4), 2005
“Desert Wanderings: The Search for Hope in ‘Post-Tampa’ Australia”, Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 17(2), 2003, 215-222
“The Geography of Theory – Channel Crossings, Continental Invasions and the Anglo-American ‘Natives’”, Symploke 11(1-2), 2003, 16-29
“The Powers of the Pokémon: Histories of Television, Histories of the Concept of Power”, Media International Australia 104, August 2002, 107-115
“Myths of Oz Cultural Studies: The Australian Beach and ‘English’ Ordinariness”, Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 15/3, 2001, 275-288
“The Temporality of Democracy: The Long Revolution and Diana, Princess of Wales”, New Formations 36, 1999, 59-76
“Richard Hoggart’s Grandmother’s Ironing: Some Questions about ‘Power’ in International Cultural Studies”, International Journal of Cultural Studies 1(1), April 1998, 25-44
“Forty Years of Cultural Studies: An Interview with Richard Hoggart” (with John Hartley), International Journal of Cultural Studies 1(1), April 1998, 11-23
“Blood in the Water: Violence and the Deterritorialised Public”, The UTS Review 4(1), 1998, 155-168
“Henry Reynolds and Aboriginal History: (Post)colonialism and the Claiming of the Past”, European Journal of Cultural Studies 1(1), January 1998, 145-158
“Swimming with the Corporate: Cultural Studies on the Pacific Rim”, CQU Journal of Communication and Cultural Studies 4, School of Contemporary Communication, Central Queensland University, 1998, 25-41
“‘Being Political’ in Communication and Media Studies: Theorising the Pacific Rim”, Australian Journal of Communication 22(2), 1995, 95-107
“A Centre of Flux: Japan in the Australian Business Press”, Continuum, 7(3), 1994, 83-102
“Eastern Contexts/Western Theory: Cultural Studies and Japan”, South East Asian Journal of Social Science 22, 1994, 14-20
“Men’s views of women in The Odd Women”, Gissing Newsletter 26(2), April 1990, 2-20
Book Chapters:
“How Smart is ‘Smart’ – Smart Homes and Sustainability” (with Mike Berry, Anitra Nelson and Ingrid Richardson) in Anitra Nelson (ed.) Steering Sustainability in an Urbanizing World – Policy, Practice and Performance, Ashgate, Aldershot, Hampshire, 2007, 239-252
“Monoculture versus Multiculinarism: Trouble in the Aussie Kitchen” (with Felicity Newman) in Joanne Hollows and David Bell (eds.), Ordinary Lifestyles: Popular Media, Consumption and Taste, Open University Press, Milton Keynes, 2005, 82-98
“Mourning, Monomyth and Memorabilia: Consumer Logics of Collecting September 11” (with Mick Broderick) in Dana Heller (ed.) Commodity Terrorism: The Selling of 9/11, Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, 200-220
“Monday Morning and the Millennium: Transmodern Politics at the End of the Twentieth Century” in David Buchbinder (ed.) Start Trek and End Game: Millennial Politics/Narratives/Images, Perth: Black Swan Press, 2002, 59-68
“Interdisciplinarity” (with Alec McHoul) in Toby Miller (ed.) Blackwell Companion to Cultural Studies, New York: Blackwell, 2001, 23-35
“What’s your beef? On cultural criticism and regionality”, in Denis Cryle, Dani Stehlik and Grahame Griffin (eds.) Futures for Central Queensland, Rockhampton: Central Queensland University Press, 1996, 93-98
“Wrong Channel: Disadvantage and Vectoral Regimes of Power”, in Leonie Rowan and Jan McNamee (eds.) Voices of a Margin - Speaking for Yourself, Rockhampton: Central Queensland University Press, 1995, 228-233
Encyclopedia Entries:
“Four Corners”, in Horace Newcomb (ed.) Encyclopedia of Television, Second Edition, 4 vols., New York: Routledge, 2004 (First Edition, Museum of Broadcast Communications, Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 1997)
“Heartbreak High”, in Horace Newcomb (ed.) Encyclopedia of Television, Second Edition, 4 vols., New York: Routledge, 2004 (First Edition, Museum of Broadcast Communications, Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 1997)
“Ernie Dingo”, in Horace Newcomb (ed.) Encyclopedia of Television, Second Edition, 4 vols., New York: Routledge, 2004 (First Edition, Museum of Broadcast Communications, Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 1997)
“A Country Practice”, in Horace Newcomb (ed.) Encyclopedia of Television, Second Edition, 4 vols., New York: Routledge, 2004 (First Edition, Museum of Broadcast Communications, Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 1997)
