Panel #11 Session 2
Friday 1 December - 13:00
Building 25, Room 2
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Chair: Amelia Walker
Sexologist Norman Haire and the need to talk about sex
- Rebecca Johinke
University of Sydney
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This paper examines Dr Norman Haire’s (1892-1952) contribution to Australian life and culture through his work as a medical doctor and public health advocate. He studied medicine at the University of Sydney and then practised as a gynaecologist, birth control specialist and sexologist in both Sydney and Harley Street, London. Haire was a talented public speaker and was devoted to public health communication via public lectures, magazine columns, his own journal, books, and radio. When based in London, he was a central figure in the international sexology movement where he worked closely with his hero Havelock Ellis and with other sexologists and high-profile birth control advocates like Marie Stopes, Margaret Sanger, Dora Russell, Stella Browne and Magnus Hirschfield.
As a (closeted) gay man, he was motivated to provide positive messages about sex and sexuality. He wrote over 400 sex advice columns for Woman magazine from 1941-1952. Haire wrote columns on topics ranging from birth control, sexually transmitted diseases, masturbation, sexual rejuvenation, eugenics, euthanasia, diet, sexual ‘perversions’, gender dysmorphia, the National Health Service, and a wide-ranging number of other ‘everyday sex problems’.
Haire’s professional life was devoted to talking and writing about sex and so my paper addresses many of the themes of the conference, in particular: audio and transdisciplinary storytelling modes, and transdisciplinary approaches to the promotion of health and wellbeing. My paper will provide an overview of his work and ask questions about his rhetorical techniques he employed to get people talking about sex.
Rebecca Johinke is Chair of the Discipline of English at the University of Sydney. Her work is wide ranging and interdisciplinary, but with a strong focus on gender and popular culture. She has published many articles and chapters on Ozploitation films and on magazines. Her interests also include life writing (memoir and autofiction) and creative nonfiction. Another major interest is street narratives (from masculine car cultures to street cultures, psychogeography, and the flaneur). She is currently working on two projects: an edited collection about televisual representations of magazine workplaces and a project examining the career of sexologist Norman Haire and his magazine columns.
An Exploration of (A)Sexual Attraction in the Contemporary Adult Romance Novel
- Rachelle Raco
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In her book Happy Ever After: The Romance Story in Popular Culture, Catherine Roach opens her first chapter stating, ‘the romance narrative is a central storyline of human culture’ (2016, p. 5). This narrative permeates modern Western culture, to the point that the romance genre is one of the best-selling genres. However, since the 1970s, this has come with an increase in the sexualisation of the content (Kamble, Selinger & Teo 2020). While the increase of such content is not a problem itself, the prevalence of sexual content – whether implicit or explicit – can lead to the exclusion of those that are disinterested or uncomfortable with it, such as those that identify as asexual. Defined as ‘a person that does not experience sexual attraction’ (The Asexuality Visibility and Education Network 2022), asexuality presents an alternative viewpoint on the relationship between sex and romance, and how romantic relationships may develop without sexual attraction. Through the use of thematic analysis, this presentation will explore how romantic relationships are developed between both allosexual and asexual contemporary adult romances and consider how the alternative views that the formation of an asexual romance may offer.
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References
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Kamble, J, Selinger, EM & Teo, H-M (eds) 2020, The Routledge research companion to popular romance fiction, Routledge.
Roach, CM 2016, Happily ever after: the romance story in popular culture, Indiana University Press.
The Asexuality Visibility and Education Network 2022, General faq, viewed 22 October 2022, <https://www.asexuality.org/?q=general.html>.
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Rachelle Raco is a PhD candidate at the University of the Sunshine Coast, with her research focusing on asexuality in contemporary adult romance novels. Other areas of interest include LGBTQIA+ literature as a whole, as well as metafiction and fanfiction.
Storytelling as Decolonial Method in the Essay Writing Classroom
- Benjamin Miller & Charlotte Okkes-Sane
University of Sydney
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Despite changing student demographics in Australian universities, much teaching continues to focus on the attainment of traditional skills and knowledge. Scholars have noted that “widening participation” policies in Australia have meant that “higher education demographics have changed” and a culturally diverse, Indigenous, differently abled, low socio-economic status cohort “is no longer a minority but is becoming the ‘traditional student’” (McCall et al. “Opportunities for Change” Australian Journal of Adult Learning 60.1, 2020: 91). The paternalism behind widening participation programs – that, for instance, students will have improved employment opportunities if they learn traditional ways of thinking and communicating – overlooks the opportunity universities have now to develop new scholarly practices that extend ways of knowing and sharing valued by previously excluded communities. Given the historical alignment of higher education with colonialism, for example, teaching methods that draw on the experiences of the “new traditional” student represent a pedagogical shift that is capable of supporting academic decolonisation.
This paper reflects on teaching strategies derived from decolonial and cultural rhetorics research that use conversation and storytelling to detach writing studies from higher education’s colonial legacy. Specifically, this paper reviews scholarly literature about storytelling as a teaching method and reflects on the use of storytelling by two teachers in an essay writing unit at the University of Sydney. We argue that storytelling is a transformational writing pedagogy that potentially resets how knowledge is tested and communicated at the same time as supporting the decolonisation of the academic essay.
Dr Benjamin Miller is a lecturer in English and in Educational Innovation at the University of Sydney. He publishes on colonial representations of Indigeneity and blackness in Australia and the US. His teaching in writing, rhetoric and education emphasises the complicity of universities with colonialism to improve student participation in learning.
Charlotte Okkes-Sane is a PhD candidate in English at the University of Sydney. Charlotte’s research examines postcolonial resistance in Senegal and Australia. Her teaching in writing and rhetoric highlights linguistic and cultural diversity so that students from diverse backgrounds develop confidence to transform academic conversations.