Public Talk by Prof. Graeme Turner,
a Leading Figure in Cultural and Media Studies

Prof. Graeme Turner, a prominent scholar in cultural and media studies, was invited by the School to deliver a public talk titled “Television after TV: old media, new media and national communities” on 7 February, 2012.

Prof. Turner is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities (FAHA) and the past president of the Academy, a Federation Fellow of the Australian Research Council (ARC) and the convenor of the ARC-funded Cultural Research Network (2006-2010), and Director of the Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies of the University of Queensland. He is the second humanities scholar to serve on the Prime Minister’s Science, Engineering and Innovation Council. His research covers a wide range of forms and media – literature, film, television, radio, new media, journalism, and popular culture. He has published 22 books, with the most recent one being Ordinary People and the Media: The Demotic Turn (Sage, 2010) and What’s Become of Cultural Studies? (forthcoming, Sage). His ARC Federation Fellow project is an international comparative study of the role television plays in the post-broadcast, digital environment.

In the public talk, Prof. Turner introduced the results of his current research project, including the transformation of “television” as a mode of production and consumption of audio-visual texts, the changing role of “television” in constructing the national imagined community, and the role of “television” in the construction of unique modernities in different nations. Prof. Turner has also answered many inspiring questions in the question and answer section, such as the potential of the concept of television “zones of consumption” he proposed and its relationship with the existing concept of “geolinguistic regions”, and the definition of “television”: “television” no longer refers only to the content communicated through a single broadcast platform, i.e., TV. Prof. Turner prefers to adopt a broader operational definition: “television” refers to the products of the television industry.

Prof. Anthony Fung, Director of the School, introduced
Prof. Turner and his books.

Prof. Turner explicated the transformation of “television”.

Teachers and students of the School participated
actively in the public talk.

Prof. Jack Qiu of the School raised questions about
the concept of television “zones of consumption”.

Prof. Turner replied to questions from teachers and
students enthusiastically.

Prof. Anthony Fung presented a souvenir to Prof. Turner.