M/C Journal 'home' Issue Launched

I'm very pleased to announce the launch of issue 10.4 of M/C Journal. Interestingly, one of our articles has already been noted in the mainstream press (even though they got the name of the journal somewhat wrong...). Speaking as a migrant to Australia, I'm not sure I agree with Gerard Henderson's views about the proposed citizenship test - that is to say, I'm pretty sure I don't -, but good to see that M/C Journal has been able to make a contribution to this debate.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - 27 Aug. 2007

M/C - Media and Culture
is proud to present issue four in volume ten of

M/C Journal
http://journal.media-culture.org.au/

'home' - Edited by Andrew Gorman-Murray and Robyn Dowling

Home is emotive and powerful. A basic desire for many, home is saturated with the meanings, memories, emotions, experiences and relationships of everyday life. Long neglected as a focus of academic scrutiny, interest in home and domesticity is now growing apace across the humanities and social sciences. In this issue of M/C Journal we contribute to these critical voices, further untangling the intricate and multi-layered connections between home and everyday life in the contemporary world.

Home is ambiguous and multi-faceted. For many, home is a place of belonging, intimacy, security, relationship and selfhood. Many draw their sense of self, their identity, through an investment in their home, whether as house, hometown or homeland. But simultaneously, home is not always a well-spring of succour and goodness, and others experience alienation, rejection, hostility, danger and fear 'at home'. Home can be a site of domestic violence or 'house arrest'; young gay men and lesbians may feel alienated in the family home; asylum seekers are banished from their homelands; indigenous peoples are often dispossessed of their homelands.

Home is complex and multi-scalar. For many, house and home are conflated, so that a sense of home is coterminous with a physical dwelling structure. For others, home is signified by intimate familial or community relationships which extend beyond the residence and stretch across a neighbourhood. Without contradiction, we can speak of hometowns and homelands, so that home can be felt at the scale of the town, city, region or nation. For others - international migrants and refugees, global workers, communities of mixed descent - home can be stretched into transnational belongings.

Home is thus a spatial imaginary: a set of intersecting and variable ideas and feelings, which are related to context, and which construct places, extend across spaces and scales, and connects places. We are delighted to invite you to our home, in M/C Journal 10.4.

Feature Article
"Normal Homes"
- Melissa Gregg

The dominant ideology of home in the Anglophonic West revolves around the imaginary 'ideal' of white, middle-class, heterosexual nuclear family households in suburban dwellings. Melissa Gregg explores how the ongoing normalisation of this particular conception of home in Australian politico-cultural discourse affects two marginalised social groups - sexual minorities and indigenous Australians. Her analysis is timely, responding to recent political attention to the domestic lives of both groups.

Articles

"The Extreme Connection Between Bodies and Houses"
- Lisa Roney

"And Then We Moved In: Post Factum Documentation of the House"
- Marian Macken

"The Architectural Nervous System: Home, Fear, Insecurity"
- Gilbert Caluya

"Domesticating the Lesbian?: Queer Strategies and Technologies of Home-Making"
- Irmi Karl

"Home and Loss: Renegotiating Meanings of Home in the Wake of Relationship Breakdown"
- Susan Thompson

"What Happens When Your Home Is on Television?"
- Brett Mills

"At Home in Singaporean Sitcoms: Under One Roof, Living with Lydia and Phua Chu Kang"
- Peter Pugsley

"Hearth and Hotmail: The Domestic Sphere as Commodity and Community in Cyberspace"
- Donna Lee Brien, Leonie Rutherford and Rosemary Williamson

"Holding Environment as Home: Maintaining a Seamless Blend across the Virtual/Physical Divide"
- Jennifer M. Gamble

"Home Meets Heimat"
- Alexandra Ludewig

"No Place like Home: Staying Well in a Too Sovereign Country"
- Lisa Slater

"The Long Road Home: Journeys in Rabbit-Proof Fence"
- Suneeti Rekhari

"Why I Call Australia 'Home'? A Transmigrant's Perspective"
- Nahid Kabir

"Homeward Bound or Housebound? Themes of Home in Popular Music"
- Wendy Varney

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Further M/C Journal issues scheduled for 2007:

'error': article deadline 24 August 2007, release date 17 October 2007
'vote': article deadline 19 October 2007, release date 12 December 2007

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M/C Journal 10.4 is now online: <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/>.
Previous issues of M/C Journal on various topics are also still available.

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Visit all four M/C publications at <http://www.media-culture.org.au/>.

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All contributors are available for media contacts: mc@media-culture.org.au.

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