1st Global Conference
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Monday 12th February - Wednesday 14th February
2007
Sydney, Australia
Conference Programme, Abstract and Papers
Session 2B: Panel: New Media Technologies
and Pedagogy
Chair: Heather McKenzie
“Most Intellectuals Will Only Half Listen”:
Knowledge, Higher Education and Hip-Hop Studies
Graham
A. C.-H. Preston
Department of English with Cultural
Studies,
University of Melbourne, Australia
That’s The Joint!: The Hip-Hop Studies Reader (2004) defines the canon of vital scholarship on hip-hop culture and it also functions as a key and easily available textbook for the teaching of the subject in higher education. Importantly, the text signifies a clear point where hip-hop studies consciously separates itself from larger disciplines and fields such as African American studies, musicology, or cultural studies. In sum, That’s the Joint! collates the useful knowledge in the area into a seemingly static, straightforward and commodified form. This paper argues that the book’s primary problematic is its complete lack of content on the influence of the internet on hip-hop culture. In combination with the methods detailed in That’s the Joint!, hip-hop should be understood, discussed and taught as a subculture that is now heavily reliant upon and influenced by the new literacies associated with the internet. Employing theory from new media studies and techniques from cultural and literary studies such as textual analysis, this paper will examine That’s the Joint! in concert with brief close readings from hip-hop culture itselfbefore turning to a theoretical articulation of the pedagogical needs and futures of hip-hop studies in higher education.
Old Discourse, New Object: Wikipedia
Nathaniel
Tkacz
Department of English with Cultural Studies, University of Melbourne,
Australia
Wikipedia is an ideal entry-point from which to approach
the shifting character of knowledge in contemporary society. Scholarship
on Wikipedia from computer science, history, philosophy, pedagogy and
media studies has moved beyond speculation regarding its considerable
potential, to the task of interpreting - and potentially intervening
in - the significance of Wikipedia’s impact.
In this paper, I wish to mark a divergence from prior research on Wikipedia
that approaches it with a pre-established conception about the role
and nature of encyclopaedic knowledge. In short, whilst Wikipedia’s
mode of production and distribution are being covered sufficiently,
this paper will argue that the ‘shifting character of encyclopaedic
knowledge’ exemplified in Wikipedia is yet to be sufficiently
theorised. Earlier considerations of Wikipedia have too often uncritically
adopted what I will call Enlightenment-derived assumptions about the
role and character of encyclopaedic knowledge. The aim of this paper
is to highlight the need for a more sophisticated understanding of
Wikipedia. In order to achieve this goal, the paper suggests temporarily
suspending existing interpretive modes, beginning instead with describing
the object itself rather than the discourse surrounding it.
The paper will demonstrate the value of this approach by highlighting
the significance of Wikipedia’s ‘article discussion’ feature.
This feature is one of many unique to Wikipedia’s architecture,
which distinguishes it from earlier paradigms. By placing the community
of authors and the structural principles of the project in relief,
I will provide both the historical context of these transformations
and an increased understanding of Wikipedia's potential role in the
transformation of pedagogy.