Joseph - honours

My name is: Joseph Carl Linden Brennan

I am studying: Bachelor of Arts (Media and Communications) (Honours)

My specialisation is: Slash fiction.

I chose honours/my specialisation because:

Honours is the best pathway to a PhD, its research project offering interesting challenges for my new and shiny, young scholar training wheels. If undergrad is about familiarising yourself with ideas on a subject, honours, for me, is about building on those ideas with some of your own: it’s a contribution to the field.

Slash fiction is a sub-genre of fan fiction written by women, for women, in the interests of women. Concerned with the sexualisation of otherwise non-sexual male bonding, very little has been written on how mainstream texts make slash readings possible, therefore providing an opportunity to generate theory (must be the budding academic within me).

The one thing I couldn’t live without is: Larger-than-life fantasies of romantic love.

My favourite colour is: Persimmon.

My favourite quote is: Far from being writers … readers are travellers; they move across lands belonging to someone else, like nomads poaching their way across fields they did not write, despoiling the wealth of Egypt to enjoy it themselves. –Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life

The last book I read/movie I saw was:

Book: Stiffed by Susan Faludi (1999): "To me it [Stiffed] has three meanings: working stiff; the way guys have been cheated by this society; and the fact that men are supposed to be stiff – that they have to show their armoured self to the world all the time. Having to do that hurts them as much as it hurts everybody else."

Film: Lilies (1996), John Greyson’s adaptation of Quebec playwright Michel Marc Bouchard’s Les feluettes (1987): “You are my first love and you shall always remain so. Ever since our bitter separation, relentlessly, I re-create you, I compose you, I bring you to life, I kill you and resuscitate you. I miss you, your eyes of onyx, your skin of ivory, your body of marble. My breath comes too fast, for I have forgotten the rhythm of yours. My lips stumble on your name, for they have lost the habit of calling it. My hands reach out in the hope of your return, and are filled with nothing but my tears. Oh, beloved, if indeed you do love me, let your love be shown onto me. I love you and I shall wait for you forever.”

I grew up: With cartoons and toasted cheese breakfasts on weekends and cello practising fingers through the week.

When I was a kid I always wanted to be: A James Dean-suave-d, debonair-ed movie star.

My career goal/s is/are: A completed PhD, a novel published, myself relocated to the UK and work in academia and/or publishing (not necessarily in that order).

Why choose Sydney? For its academic excellence, recognised locally and abroad; for my research supervisor and her expert counsel; and for the grandeur of its grounds.

More about me: With a Diploma in Book Editing and Publishing from Macleay College and a Bachelor of Media (Writing) from Macquarie University, I suppose I would describe myself most succinctly as a writer, of the fictocritical kind. Writing has always been a part of my life, from the books I grew up with to the bookstore I worked in for four years; from the national quarterly magazine I was editorial assistant with (Australia Art Review) and that I continue to write for today (check out the current May–July 2009 issue for my article on the marketing of Indigenous Australian art) to the novel – and the characters within it – that has been consuming idle thoughts since I began work on it in 2005.

Second to writing, music is also an important part of who I am, so much so that in place of a 21st birthday, I had a solo cello recital (my first to boot), that later became the DVD Sunrise Sunset. Having done some recording (with the likes of Mushroom Records and an album with experimental band, dOm), composition, competition and the odd solo (in the likes of the Sydney Opera House’s Concert Hall and the City Recital Hall’s Angel Place), my formidable schooling years were spent as a scholarship holder at The McDonald College of the Performing Arts. School Vice Captain and Events Manager, I was Secretary General in the 2004 Global Young Leaders’ Conference mock United Nations Summit, held in Washington DC and New York City, at a time when a future as a diplomat seemed to be something I wanted. Times change I guess, and yet, brewing in the back of my mind is my next “Joseph Brennan presents” musical project.

Today, in addition to Honours and a neglected book-in-progress, I work as a journalist/consultant/PA in a boutique public relations firm, servicing clients in the food, publishing and entertainment industries.