Gender Research Group: Conference Papers 2001: Preface

The Gendered Beginnings One Day conference was held at the Central Queensland University on March 1st 2001. It was the first conference of the newly formed Gender Research Group, and was a resounding success, both in the wide variety of papers given and secondly in the strong interest that was shown with Central Queensland University community and the Community of Rockhampton.

With this inaugural conference, the group announced its position as a collegial and active force, which is actively producing research outcomes so important to both communities. The group was established to help address what it saw as a lack of “space” for gender research to take place. So with the help of the School of Humanities and the Vice Chancellor, Professor Glenice Hancock the group was able organise the conference and to help publish research arising from all these interdisciplinary projects in both collections of academic papers or research in progress.

The group operates a subscriber list, which comprises of members of our local communities as well as overseas members and it also connected to the Journal Transformations, through the Gender Research home page. All these papers will be published on this site.

Each of these essays in this volume addresses a specific point of view with regards to the question of gender and its positioning within both social and cultural formations. Helen Miller’s paper addresses questions concerning the visuality of the female image in silent melodramatic film, a point that also concerns Wendy Davis. Wendy’s paper discusses the televisual and the gendered aspects of television. Warwick Mules' paper, formulates a position about the “pornographic” painting of Stewart MacFarlane and its relationship with film noir.