Catherine Driscoll
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Catherine Driscoll is an
Australian Australian(s) may refer to: Australia * Australia, a country * Australians, citizens of the Commonwealth of Australia ** European Australians ** Anglo-Celtic Australians, Australians descended principally from British colonists ** Aboriginal Au ...
professor of Gender and Cultural Studies at the
University of Sydney The University of Sydney (USYD), also known as Sydney University, or informally Sydney Uni, is a public research university located in Sydney, Australia. Founded in 1850, it is the oldest university in Australia and is one of the country's si ...
. She grew up in
Wauchope, New South Wales Wauchope () is a town in the Mid North Coast region of New South Wales, Australia. It is within the boundaries of the Port Macquarie-Hastings Council area. Wauchope is inland on the Hastings River and the Oxley Highway west of Port Macquar ...
and was educated at Wauchope High School, the
University of Newcastle (Australia) The University of Newcastle (UON), informally known as Newcastle University, is a public university in Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia. Established in 1965, it has a primary campus in the Newcastle suburb of Callaghan. The university als ...
, and the
University of Melbourne The University of Melbourne is a public research university located in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1853, it is Australia's second oldest university and the oldest in Victoria. Its main campus is located in Parkville, an inner suburb nor ...
. She has worked at the
University of Melbourne The University of Melbourne is a public research university located in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1853, it is Australia's second oldest university and the oldest in Victoria. Its main campus is located in Parkville, an inner suburb nor ...
, the
University of Adelaide The University of Adelaide (informally Adelaide University) is a public research university located in Adelaide, South Australia. Established in 1874, it is the third-oldest university in Australia. The university's main campus is located on N ...
, and joined the School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry at the
University of Sydney The University of Sydney (USYD), also known as Sydney University, or informally Sydney Uni, is a public research university located in Sydney, Australia. Founded in 1850, it is the oldest university in Australia and is one of the country's si ...
in 2003. She has held visiting fellow positions at
Duke University Duke University is a private research university in Durham, North Carolina. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco and electric power industrialist James ...
,
Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...
,
Cardiff University , latin_name = , image_name = Shield of the University of Cardiff.svg , image_size = 150px , caption = Coat of arms of Cardiff University , motto = cy, Gwirionedd, Undod a Chytgord , mottoeng = Truth, Unity and Concord , established = 1 ...
, and the
Australian National University The Australian National University (ANU) is a public research university located in Canberra, the capital of Australia. Its main campus in Acton encompasses seven teaching and research colleges, in addition to several national academies and ...
. Driscoll served as Vice-Chair and then Chair of the international Association for Cultural Studies (2016-2022), and helped found the International Girls Studies Association in 2011.


Research

Driscoll's most influential work focuses on ideas about girls and their experiences and identities. This work helped define the field of girls studies, particularly through the influence of her book ''Girls'' (2002), which "analyses a vast range of sites, texts, case studies, and discourses from the nineteenth century to the end of the twentieth century" while addressing "debates about post-feminism, girl culture, and feminist generations". Scholarship in girls studies has expanded considerably since Driscoll's work leading up to ''Girls'', but at the time this book was described by Angela McRobbie as "the first sustained account of how young women come to understand themselves through the world of images, texts and representations". It "sought to correct the "invisibility of girls in cultural studies as the discourse most likely to consider their involvement in the production of the world that defines them", offering "a history of 'feminine adolescence' as the category through which we understand girls today, and by extension, through which girls understand themselves and their lives". As well as many essays on girlhood and girls' media culture, and related work on rural girls, Driscoll teaches and researches more broadly in
cultural theory Cultural studies is an interdisciplinary field that examines the political dynamics of contemporary culture (including popular culture) and its historical foundations. Cultural studies researchers generally investigate how cultural practices re ...
,
cultural studies Cultural studies is an interdisciplinary field that examines the political dynamics of contemporary culture (including popular culture) and its historical foundations. Cultural studies researchers generally investigate how cultural practices re ...
, and
youth studies Youth studies is an interdisciplinary academic field devoted to the study of the Youth development, development, :History of youth, history, Youth culture, culture, psychology, and Youth politics, politics of youth. The field studies not only specif ...
, with specific attention to
popular culture Popular culture (also called mass culture or pop culture) is generally recognized by members of a society as a set of practices, beliefs, artistic output (also known as, popular art or mass art) and objects that are dominant or prevalent in a ...
, modernist studies, rural studies, and
cultural policy Cultural policy is the government actions, laws and programs that regulate, protect, encourage and financially (or otherwise) support activities related to the arts and creative sectors, such as painting, sculpture, music, dance, literature, and ...
. Her work is also interesting for its innovative interdisciplinary method and a "relational" or "conjunctural" approach that Margaret Henderson compares to
Michel Foucault Paul-Michel Foucault (, ; ; 15 October 192625 June 1984) was a French philosopher, historian of ideas, writer, political activist, and literary critic. Foucault's theories primarily address the relationship between power and knowledge, and how ...
's ''
The Order of Things ''The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences'' (Les mots et les choses: Une archéologie des sciences humaines, 1966) by French philosopher Michel Foucault proposes that every historical period has underlying epistemic assumption ...
'' and Ben Highmore compares to
Walter Benjamin Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin (; ; 15 July 1892 – 26 September 1940) was a German Jewish philosopher, cultural critic and essayist. An eclectic thinker, combining elements of German idealism, Romanticism, Western Marxism, and Jewish mys ...
's '' The Arcades Project''. Driscoll herself stresses a debt to Foucault and Benjamin but also to feminist scholars like Angela McRobbie and to cultural studies scholars like
Raymond Williams Raymond Henry Williams (31 August 1921 – 26 January 1988) was a Welsh socialist writer, academic, novelist and critic influential within the New Left and in wider culture. His writings on politics, culture, the media and literature contribu ...
and Meaghan Morris. This interdisciplinary relational model for feminist cultural studies stretches across Driscoll's books on seemingly very different topics. Highmore argues that in her work on
modernism Modernism is both a philosophy, philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western world, Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new fo ...
and
modernity Modernity, a topic in the humanities and social sciences, is both a historical period (the modern era) and the ensemble of particular socio-cultural norm (social), norms, attitudes and practices that arose in the wake of the Renaissancein the " ...
, "the cultural becomes the way of getting a line on the conjunctural" and modernism is understood as "a deep condition of gendering affect" in analysis that "is profoundly, productively and constitutionally feminist in orientation". Regarding Driscoll's work on rural girlhood, Katherine Murphy notes that she "is able to put historians into conversation with cultural studies, girls studies, and rural studies scholars. Bringing these discussions together with her own ethnographic research, Driscoll demonstrates the ongoing resonance of powerful cultural (and gendered) ideas about the rural and the urban". Even Driscoll's less theoretical work, such as the book ''Teen Film'' (2011), features the kind of unexpected directions, for example into media regulation, that Highmore calls her "conjunctural and contextual enquiry". Her nationally funded research includes projects on ideas and images of girlhood, the history and experience of Australian country girlhood, cultural sustainability in rural communities, age-based media classification systems, and ideas about boys and boyhood, especially in Australia. She is currently leading a Sydney-based team of feminist researchers on boys studies.


Books

*
Girls: Feminine Adolescence in Popular Culture and Cultural Theory
', New York: Columbia University Press, 2002. *
Modernist Cultural Studies
'. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2010. *
Teen Film: A Critical Introduction
'. Oxford: Berg, 2011. *
The Australian Country Girl: History, Image, Experience
'. Farnham: Ashgate, 2014. Reprinted Routledge, 2018. *With Alexandra Heatwole,
The Hunger Games: Spectacle, Risk and the Girl Action Hero
'. Oxon: Routledge, 2018.


Edited collections

*
Gender, Media and Modernity in the Asia Pacific
', edited Catherine Driscoll and Meaghan Morris. Oxon: Routledge, 2014. *
Cultural Pedagogies and Human Conduct
', edited Megan Watkins, Greg Noble and Catherine Driscoll. Oxon: Routledge, 2015. *
Cultural Sustainability in Rural Communities: Rethinking Australian Country Towns
', edited Catherine Driscoll,
Kate Darian-Smith Katherine Darian-Smith, (born 25 February 1961) is an Australian social historian and academic. She is executive dean and pro vice-chancellor at the University of Tasmania. Early life and education Katherine Darian-Smith was born in Sydney, N ...
and David Nichols. Oxon: Routledge, 2017. *
Youth, Technology, Governance, Experience: Adults Understanding Young Lives
', edited Liam Grealy, Catherine Driscoll and
Anna Hickey-Moody Anna Hickey-Moody is a professor of media and communication at RMIT University. Hickey-Moody holds an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship (2017-2021). Biography Hickey-Moody completed a Bachelor of Arts (Social Anthropology, Theatre Stu ...
. Oxon: Routledge, 2018.


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Driscoll, Catherine Year of birth missing (living people) University of Sydney faculty University of Newcastle (Australia) alumni University of Melbourne alumni Living people University of Melbourne women