Fiona Magowan - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Fiona Magowan

Faith and Fear in Aboriginal Christianity

Aboriginal Religions in Australia, 2017

17 Faith and Fear in Aboriginal Christianity Fiona Magowan The connection between Christianity an... more 17 Faith and Fear in Aboriginal Christianity Fiona Magowan The connection between Christianity and the ancestral law of Aboriginal culture has generated considerable debate within Australian Christianity. I explore the intersubjective flow between faith and fear emergent within ...

BBC Radio Ulster 'Australian Aboriginal Music' on Your Place and Mine

A Sung Heritage: an ecological approach to rights and authority in intangible cultural heritage in Northern Australia

Cultural survival quarterly, 2002

Background-Approximately one-third of women diagnosed with breast cancer undergo mastectomy with ... more Background-Approximately one-third of women diagnosed with breast cancer undergo mastectomy with subsequent implant-based or autogenous tissue-based reconstruction. Potential complications include infection, capsular contracture, and leak or rupture of implants with necessity for explantation. Skin rashes are infrequently described complications of patients who undergo mastectomy with or without reconstruction. Methods-A retrospective analysis of breast cancer patients referred to the Dermatology Service for diagnosis and management of a rash post-mastectomy and expander or implant placement or transverse rectus abdominis myocutaneous (TRAM) flap reconstruction was performed. Parameters studied included reconstruction types, time to onset, clinical presentation, associated symptoms, results of microbiologic studies, management, and outcome. Results-We describe 21 patients who developed a rash on the skin overlying a breast reconstruction. Average time to onset was 25.7 months after expander placement or TRAM flap reconstruction. Clinical presentations included macules and papules or scaly, erythematous patches and plaques. Five patients had cultures of the rash, which were all negative. Skin biopsy was relatively contraindicated in areas of skin tension, and was reserved for non-responding eruptions.

Out of Time, Out of Place: A Comparison of the Didjeridu in Australia Great Britain and Ireland

Performing Emotion, Embodying Country in Australian Aboriginal Ritual

The analysis of resistance and resilience in the articles in this special volume of Music and Art... more The analysis of resistance and resilience in the articles in this special volume of Music and Arts in Action illustrates the complexity of the terms, their definitional ambiguities and situated tensions when they are used in conflict contexts. Rigorous debates have underlined the contested nature of the terms resistance and resilience, whereby resistance is considered a means of destabilising interpersonal and state hegemony and resilience is variously seen as an individual strategy for survival and wellbeing or an intervention impacting upon socio-economic structures. Theoretical discord further highlights the need for careful and detailed ethnographic investigation. Thus, while it might be tempting to avoid the terms altogether as some critics argue, close, critical ethnographic reading of the particularities of sonic atmospheres, as well as their corresponding musical and performative dynamics can render productive the relationship between resistance and resilience as contributor...

Song as Gift and Capital: Intercultural processes of indigenization and spiritual transvaluation in Yolngu Christian music

Art as Empathy: Imaging Transfers of Meaning and Emotion in Urban Aboriginal Australian Contexts

International Review of Qualitative Research, 2021

The “emotion curve” is a creative methodology that asks research participants to express in graph... more The “emotion curve” is a creative methodology that asks research participants to express in graphic form changes in their emotional responses over time, reflecting on a given time period or on a particular activity or event (in our case, music-based activities). This methodology was developed as part of our research with community music-making NGO Musicians Without Borders at their “Music Bridge” participatory music and movement training program in Derry/Londonderry, Northern Ireland. This article discusses how the “post-conflict” context of our research, and our engagement with the principles of prefiguration and participatory action research, shaped the development of this innovative methodology, paying particular attention to achieving methodological “fit” (or commensurability) with the practices, objectives, and ethos of our research partners. This creative and “fitting” (or commensurate) methodology has been the basis of a “mutually transformative dialog” with our research part...

The Quest for the Good Life in Precarious Times: Ethnographic Perspectives on the Domestic Moral Economy, Mar 29, 2018

Choice Reviews Online, 2011

Cultural Heritages as Reflexive Traditions, 2007

Shadows of Song: Exploring Research and Performance Strategies in Yolngu Women's Crying-songs

Oceania, 2001

The A. arguments that research on women's crying-songs in north east Arnhem Land can be effe... more The A. arguments that research on women's crying-songs in north east Arnhem Land can be effectively analysed as a series of shadow-dances between the researcher, the singer and the performance context. Within this framework, she explores the processes of transmission ...

Open Arts Journal, 2014

Aboriginal art has been the source of much contention between art curators, gallery owners, art c... more Aboriginal art has been the source of much contention between art curators, gallery owners, art critics and Aboriginal artists themselves. Early aesthetic debates about whether so-called traditional works should be considered ethnographic or artistic have led, at times, to conflicts over the rights of Aboriginal people to have their works exhibited according to the criteria applied to other kinds of Western artworks. This article explores how the dilemmas of troubled ethno-histories are critically embodied and reconfigured in texture and colour. It considers the problems that silenced histories pose for those responsible for their display to the public. As Aboriginal images often conceal troubled intercultural encounters it asks how artworks can be used to provide a counter-polemic to national rhetoric as artists seek to reshape and improve intergenerational futures. This text is published as a counterpart to the contribution to Disturbing Pasts from the artist Heather Kamarra Shearer.

The Australian Journal of Anthropology, 2000

This paper argues that indigenous dance is a poetic politics of cross-cultural encounter that eng... more This paper argues that indigenous dance is a poetic politics of cross-cultural encounter that engages Aboriginal identities with those of the Australian nation. I question the nature of this encounter in terms of a performative dialogue that is both musically and kinesically presented by indigenous communities and 'translated' into political discourse by the government. The sentiments of 'translation' raise questions as to how local ritual expressions of Aboriginal dance can mediate dialogue when presented a s national spectacle. What is being meditated? What is happening in the process of evocation? In this performativc nexus, I focus specifically on the poetic politics of Yolngu ritual as spectacle; the nature of performative dialogue in terms of shared dance forms between indigenous communities: the problem of the authentication of dance identities: and how corporeal dispositions of indigenous dance genres influence national sentiment by their symbolic power. I pursue these issues through an analysis of how ancestral dances have been repositioned in national performance venues. such as concerts. cultural centres and ritual arenas, as a means of asserting performative statements about indigenous positioning within the nation-state. The nature of this dialogue raises questions of authenticity and processes of authentication. It highlights indigenous concerns to control representations of indigeneity as national event, as well z s a desire to convey something of the sentiment and sentience embodied in the poetics of their ancestral performances.

The Australian Journal of Anthropology, 2001

For Christian Yolngu in Arnhem Land visions shape the imagined, embodied and affective experience... more For Christian Yolngu in Arnhem Land visions shape the imagined, embodied and affective experiences of places of danger, illness, healing and general wellbeing. In this paper, I argue that Yolngu have consistently constructed their Christian faith through visions stemming from an ancestral aesthetic embodied in the environment. As a result, religious ideology and social action have sometimes been seen as syncretic, raising questions about how Yolngu understand and experience Christian conversion, encounter and revelation. I argue that Yolngu spiritual experiences emerge from the sentiments associated with ancestral places that act as emotive sites for remapping an ancestral aesthetic as Christian experience. The resultant emotional and spiritual synchronicity underlies a Yolngu Christianity that is corporeal and abstracted, negotiated and strategic, practical and experiential.

The aesthetics of breeding: A response to Rebecca Cassidy

Anthropology Today, 2003

It is also possible that your web browser is not configured or not able to display style sheets. ... more It is also possible that your web browser is not configured or not able to display style sheets. In this case, although the visual presentation will be degraded, the site should continue to be functional. We recommend using the latest version of Microsoft or Mozilla web browser to ...

Drums of Suffering In Belfast's European Capital of Culture Bid: John Blacking on Music, Conflict and Healing

Waves of Knowing: Polymorphism and Co-Substantive Essences In Yolngu Sea Cosmology

The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education, 2001

The nature of the relationship between people, land and ancestors in Australian Aboriginal societ... more The nature of the relationship between people, land and ancestors in Australian Aboriginal societies has generated ongoing anthropological debate. Since the inception of anthropological studies of Aboriginal religion, the idea of totemism has been used to elucidate the spiritual and ...