Dissemination and commentary on research

January 22, 2009 by Tara Brabazon

Tara's research has been used by a wide variety of organizations and individuals around the world, particularly in the fields of librarianship, information management, education and popular cultural studies.

Please view a short film on her research interests.

Thinking Pop

Thinking Pop was listed as a Times Higher Education book of the week in December 2008.

Professor Fred Inglis stated in his review that, "There is no one else with Brabazon's combination of raucousness and subtlety, offensive pugnacity and dazzling charm, terrific garrulity and razor incisiveness...Indeed, this packed and fizzing book is in many of its sections a celebration sung over the great achievements and works of art wrung from this epoch by both television and the great frescoes of popular culture, especially rock music, which provides its staple.'

'Tara Brabazon has ushered cultural studies out of the drawing room and prodded it back onto the streets, where it matters more than ever.'
Justin O'Connor, Queensland University of Technology, Australia

'Brabazon is a "war writer", grappling not with the culture wars but with war itself, including the wars within. She offers a cultural studies appropriate to the period between 9/11 and the present. Her elegiac essays range widely. Brilliant Brabazon is an antidote to the Bush "war presidency" and its dispiriting denouement. She makes cultural studies matter again.'
Ben Agger, University of Texas at Arlington, USA

'Tara Brabazon has written a beautiful, passionate, and political book about popular culture in which the learning of pleasure is matched by the pleasure of learning, critique, and civic engagement. One cannot think about politics without engaging popular culture as a powerful educational force, and Thinking Popular Culture is one of the best books available to confront this crucial question with great insight, enormous courage, and sense of social responsibility.'
Henry Giroux, McMaster University, Canada

The University of Google

Frank Webster stated that this book “will have a huge impact on everyone in higher education, helping those suspicious of new media to formulate their criticisms and those eager to adopt it better placed to introduce it appropriately.” Alan Jenkins confirmed that it is “a passionate, scholarly, deeply considered and, at the same time, ‘practical’ critique of how universities internationally confuse access to digital information with devleopign educated and critical citizens. The book will be of value in postiivelyshaping both pedagogic practice and institutional policies.”

From Revolution to Revelation

Susan Hopkins, in her review of the book, stated that, “speaking of generationalism, I should also admit part of the personal pleasure of this book was watching one of 'us' boldly rewrite the rules of academic cultural studies. Tara Brabazon may be a disaffected Generation Xer at heart but she is also now an influential senior academic, award-winning teacher and finalist for Australian of the Year. The real issue, only touched on in conclusion, might be how does Generation X learn to grow old? Until then, 'my generation' may well pass the hair gel, the Haircut 100 vinyl and keep on reading/dancing with the indefatigable Tara Brabazon--it's 'our' turn now.”

Digital Hemlock

“Tara Brabazon’s Digital Hemlock (UNSW Press, 2002) is one of the best portrayals I’ve read of academic life … This is a book that tells it like it is. It’s a tough, funny and deeply compassionate account of the everyday lives of academics and students. As such, it is essential reading for anyone and everyone concerned about everyday life in the naked academic city.”
Professor Elspeth Probyn

“Whilst Digital Hemlock is aimed at a university audience, it is just as relevant for corporate and vocational training. Brabazon maintains that web-based education is being promoted as a panacea for the constraints that are facing education today. More people are participating in tertiary education than ever before, but resources are being tightened. The same is true in all areas of training … The book does not take the Luddite position (destroy the machines). Rather, it invites people to follow Socrates and face the difficult questions about online learning. Brabazon maintains that the educational administrators who champion online learning tend to gloss over the issues of drop-out rates and the quality of learning. Her objection to this managerial perspective is its naïve, utopian faith in technology.”
Glen Martin

“I have on my shelves a number of ‘must read’ books. These are treasures of which I often own multiple copies and which I recommend and loan to others. Such books must be engaging and absorbing, offer me something new or challenging to think about and above all must be the kind of book I just cannot put down until I’ve finished reading it. Tara Brabazon’s book sits in this category on my shelf … The question is will we end up simply reading this dynamic book for enjoyment – to be entertained, or will we allow the ideas to permeate our assumptions and let ourselves be challenged by Brabazon’s excursion into the world of higher education and its potential for change?”
Erich von Dietze

“She voices the unspoken and unheard questions of those involved in the shift to digital teaching. While Socrates asked the difficult questions of this time, and was sentenced to death and drank hemlock for scorning the gods, so too does Brabazon stare down the new god of technology. Her aim is to end the mute acceptance of this god, to open universities to debate and discussion, and to reclaim the essence of teaching, primarily as a transformative exchange between teachers and students, and the potential for education as a life-changing encounter.”
John Hannon

"This is a work of energy and conviction that raises critical questions about the condition and direction of Australian universities currently in the thrall of online teaching as an apparent panacea to the structural and pedagogoical problems caused by a decade of cutbacks and under-funding. Tara Brabazon’s vigorous and compelling arguments, based on experience and dedication to teaching, demand attention from anyone who is interested in higher education and its future. Written with passion, and always grounded in a clearly declared authorial position, this book is simultaneously a work of critical cultural studies and critical pedagogy. Brabazon has achieved something rather unusual: an academic book that reads like an urgent narrative about the consequences of a too facile adoption of digital culture. This is a book that anyone interested in online teaching and the future of education ought to read."
Commendation for Digital Hemlock at the WA Premer's Book Awards, (http://www.liswa.wa.gov.au/pbk02rep.html)

Ladies who Lunge

“At the risk of sounding trite, Tara Brabazon’s Ladies who Lunge needed to be written … Brabazon aims to offer a critique of modern feminism and its lack of ‘real’ contemporary icons. In so doing, she invites the reader to question patriarchal structures and sites of female oppression in their multifarious forms. Furthermore, she raises the unwelcome spectre of a future where women cease to be ‘difficult’; where their preparedness to lunge forward in their challenges against the power of patriarchal structures is lost to the past … For this reason alone, Ladies who Lunge should be compulsory reading for all women over fifteen years of age, and for those who think that feminism has lost its relevance in modern society."
Dr Julie Ustinoff, http://www.api-network.com/cgi-bin…s/jrbview.Cgi?=0868404217&issue=8

“Vibrant, witty and fearless, Tara Brabazon has collated a book truly pulsing with individuality and energy. She offers a sparkling analysis of popular culture, through a feminist lens, and importantly presents it in a form that is as entertaining as it is informing. Not only does Brabazon write with flare and panache, but what she writes about and how she weaves her insights through a disparate range of unconventional women throughout history, is equally iconoclastic … As entertaining and piquant as it is, Ladies who Lunge is an academically strong work – tightly edited, well referenced, and very convincing. It’s ‘girl power’’ in the credible and capable hands of a bright young academic.
Louise North

Tracking the Jack

“One of the book’s virtues is that it is a pathbreaker: there has been, to my knowledge, no study of Australian-New Zealand relations from a cultural studies perspective, and, amazingly, very little work on local affiliations with Britain more generally.”
Professor Simon During

“Brabazon is most passionate about is the emergence of a common Antipodean perspective … The case is well made, in a sharp and lively style which – in its portrayal of the new social and cultural dynamics at work in New Zealand and Australia – gives readers on this side of the world emphatic notice that they, too will have to revise their ideas of the Antipodes.”
Professor Tony Bennett

“Tracking the Jack is a good read. Moreover, Brabazon recognizes, as too few commentators have done, that New Zealand and Australia, though possessing certain similarities, are very distinctive societies.”
Dr John Salmond

“I welcome this important and original contribution to a rather impoverished debate and look forward to more academic noise crossing the Tasman, in appreciation that we are the same, but different.”
Professor Geoff Lealand

Examples of the dissemination of her research through the media

"Interview: Tara Brabazon," The Guardian, January 22, 2008, http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2008/jan/22/academicexperts.highered...

"White bread for young minds says University Professor," The Times, January 14, 2008

"Wicked-pedia!," Daily Mail, February 15, 2009, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1146029/Wicked-Pedia-Millions-tr...

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