Intersections: Gender, History and Culture in the Asian Context
Issue 6, August 2001

Contributors to Intersections
Issue 6

Special Issue on AsiaPacifiQueer

Dr. Sharon Chalmers holds a postdoctoral research fellowship at the Institute for Cultural Research at the University of Western Sydney. Her research is interdisciplinary and until recently has mainly focused on Japanese gender and sexuality. She has taught Japanese history and anthropology at Griffith University and the University of NSW. In 2001, she shifted her focus to research and to co-curate an exhibition Edges: Lesbian, Gay and Queer Lives in Western Sydney, an official component of the 2001 Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Cultural Festival. She is presently working on a project which examines a cultural interpretation of lesbian health and safety in western Sydney. Chalmers has a number of publications forthcoming including her book, Emerging Lesbian Voices from Japan, Surrey, Curzon Press.


Romit Dasgupta lectures in Japanese language and Japanese Studies in the Department of Asian Studies at the University of Western Australia, and is also working towards completing a PhD, on the construction of masculinities in the corporate sector in Japan, from Curtin University in Western Australia. He has lived and worked in Hokkaido, Japan's northern-most island, off-and-on for over six years, and has worked in private industry in Japan, as well as teaching and undertaking research at universities in both Australia and Japan. Research interests include, popular culture and youth culture in Japan and Asia; construction and representation of genders and sexualities (particularly masculinities) in Japan and Asia; minority identities and movements in Japan; Japanese work culture. His most recent publications appear in Japanese Studies, the Proceedings of the DVC's Inaugural Humanities Postgraduate Conference, No. 1 and the Bulletin of the Japanese Studies Association of Australia.


Sharyn Graham is a doctoral candidate at the University of Western Australia. She undertook field work in South Sulawesi during 1999-2000 and is currently working on her thesis. Sharyn's academic interests centre around notions of gender and sexuality in Indonesia. She is currently tutoring Engendering Culture in Southeast Asia and Anthropology at UWA. Earlier this year, Sharyn's research was the topic of a National Geographic documentary series on PhD students conducting research (screened on Foxtel in July). Later this year she will take up a Hygen's scholarship to study at Leiden University in the Netherlands for six months.


Christine Helliwell is Senior Lecturer in Anthropology in the Australian National University's Faculty of Arts. She has carried out ethnographic research in both New Zealand, among middle-class Pakeha, and Kalimantan Barat (Indonesian West Borneo), among Dayak people. She has strong interests in social and cultural theory, and has published on a wide range of issues, from ethnicity to gender. Her most recent publication is the book 'Never Stand Alone': A Study of Borneo Sociality (2001). She is currently completing a book on the concept of culture.


Peter A. Jackson is Research Fellow in Thai History in the Australian National University's Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies. He was formerly head of the Thai National Curriculum Project in Canberra and Executive Officer of the ANU's National Thai Studies Centre. His research focuses on modern Thai cultural history, with emphases on religion and sexuality. Current projects include a history of gay Bangkok and a study of the impact of Thailand's economic boom and bust on Buddhism and other aspects of Thai religion. Peter Jackson's books include Buddhadasa: A Buddhist Thinker for the Modern World (1988), Buddhism, Legitimation and Conflict: The Political Functions of Urban Thai Buddhism (1989) and Dear Uncle Go: Male Homosexuality in Thailand (1995).


Andrew Matzner is an independent researcher and freelance writer. His area of interest is gender and sexuality in Asia and the Pacific, with a focus on Thailand. Andrew is a contributing editor of Transgender Tapestry magazine, and has written articles for publications such as the Bangkok Post, Harvard Gay and Lesbian Review, Off Our Backs, and the International Journal of Comic Art. He is also the author of 'O Au No Keia: Voices from Hawai'i's mahu and transgender communities (Xlibris, 2001).


Mark McLelland is a post-doctoral fellow in the Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies at the University of Queensland. Mark wrote his Ph.D. thesis on representations of male homosexuality in the Japanese media which was later published as Male Homosexuality in Modern Japan: Cultural Myths and Social Realities, Curzon Press (2000). His papers on homosexuality in Japan have appeared in The New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies, The U.S.-Japan Women's Journal, The Journal of Gender Studies, Intersections and Culture, Health and Sexuality. His current research focuses on the interface between homosexuality, gender and new technologies in Japan and he has published on this topic in The Journal of Communication Inquiry, Convergence and Continuum. He also has a chapter on Japanese queer uses of the Internet in the forthcoming book Mobile Cultures: New Media in Queer Asia edited by Chris Berry, Fran Martin and Audrey Yue (Duke University Press) and is co-editor (with Nanette Gottlieb) of Japanese Cybercultures, forthcoming Routledge 2002. Mark's most recent publication is in The Journal of Cult Media.


Jo Schmidt is a 34-year old palagi woman with no children. She has lived in Auckland most of her life, and is currently enrolled in a Ph.D. exploring the impact of transnationalism on transgendered Samoan fa'afafine. She has been a student, tutor, and lecturer in the Sociology Department at Auckland University, mostly teaching in the area of popular culture, while maintaining a focus on gender in her research work. She anticipates that this current project will be the genesis of on-going explorations in this field, and welcomes exchanges with anyone else working in similar areas.


Heather Worth is Deputy Director and Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Research on Gender at the University of Auckland. She is a sociologist and her doctoral thesis was a Derridean examination of the erotic in the work of Michel Foucault. She has been researching AIDS and sexuality for seven years. She is co-editor of Derrida Downunder (Dunmore 2001) and The Life of Brian: Masculinity, Sexuality and Health in New Zealand, Otago University Press (in press).


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This paper was originally published in Intersections: Gender, History and Culture in the Asian Context, with the assistance of Murdoch University.

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