GazMac

This represents my website as it was in 1995, at the address humpc43.murdoch.edu.au. I have tried to leave it as it was back then, tho some changes were made in the 1990s. The index page below is mostly the 1997 version. It's embarrassingly egotistical, but back then I was enjoying creating a career. Some older links have been removed because they don't work, and some have been changed to currently working URLs (2014).

to Garry Gillard's homepage!

Infra:

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Mine was one of the first homepages to be put up at Murdoch University, Perth, Western Australia, in August 1995.

writing

I've recently completed a book with the draft title Empowering Readers: Ten Approaches to Narrative. This is a link to the book proposal. Publishers and other potential readers are requested (strongly encouraged!) to download and consider it. Let me know how you like it.

My PhD dissertation, Supertext & the Mind-Culture System, on Freud, Lévi-Strauss & Bateson, has been here since 9 August 1996. I'd love to hear from you if it's of any interest. My first dissertation, on African Narrative is an oldy, but a goldy. I had to scan it: it was written in 1975-6, before we got out of the cave and invented the word processor. The narrative theory was relevant for the time; but Africanists and literary postcolonialists might still find something of interest in it. I put it up 7 August 1996. I'd love to know if it's still useful. Here is a short list of stuff I've written which is available on this Web server.

teaching

I mounted the first Murdoch unit to be offered on the World Wide Web: H237 Narrative Fiction 2. It was the first in the sense that it was used by students in second semester 1995 and was available in its entirety—parts of other units were available before that. Here are some sample documents.

In second semester 1997 I am teaching H235 Culture and Everyday Life and H102 Introduction to Cultural Studies at the Rockingham campus.

learning

I am proud to be the first graduate of Murdoch University, according to the Alumni Office, as the person with the lowest enrolment number to receive an award at the first graduation ceremony, in 1977. I entered MU in 1974—the year before undergraduate teaching commenced at the new University—in a cohort of 19 or 20 graduate students. I graduated as MPhil in 1977, and then later PhD in 1994.

community

I am the first Webmaster of a huge and inexorably growing Murdoch University website known as the Culture and Communication Reading Room.

I also provide some service pages, including The Humanities Manual which I first created in 1991; it's now in its fourth edition (1997). It's also available on the official School server. Then there's my Australian universities directory: like a lot of people, I wanted a direct way to get to colleagues' addresses at other universities. As I couldn't find a complete directory back on 31 October 1995, I created my own. This is also linked from the School homepage. If you find it's useful, or if you'd like a particular update, please mail me. I'm interested in virtual teaching/learning on the web, and this short list of links represents my t/l interests. I also maintain a little net page, with links to things like this great guide to web page design by Joe Gillespie.

personal

There's also my personal interests page Virtual Gaz which has a pic of me (bleagh!). It's doesn't mention (because I'm so modest) my Murdoch firsts: among the first students to enrol in 1974 (student number ends ...003: the other two didn't finish their degrees); one of the first student reps on a University committee (Board of Part I Studies 1974); first graduate (see above) 1977; first Alumni Visa card; among the first to be awarded two Murdoch research degrees 1994 (I haven't checked this: but it must be unusual); one of the first individual Web homepages August 1995—and perhaps the first to be served from the user's own PC; first whole unit on the Net 1995; first teaching staff member appointed fulltime to the Rockingham campus 1997. (I haven't checked this either, but I think it's a novel idea; I might actually be the first: after all, they haven't finished the building yet! Only part of it was open for business in July 1997.)

history (of GazMac)

I began a number of important initiatives on the old GazMac server. Tom O'Regan and I began discussing a possible electronic future for the journal Continuum: The Australian Journal of Media & Culture in early 1995, and, as we couldn't find anyone else silly enough to consider putting up a whole journal, I did it myself. It's published under the auspices of the Centre for Research in Culture & Communication. As well as Continuum I've put up a heap of other stuff, starting with our Oz Film material, and including several numbers of the CRCC sponsored journal Span, Journal of the South Pacific Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies. I'm about to put up the complete Australian Journal of Cultural Studies. To hold all this disparate material we thought of something called the Culture and Communication Reading Room. And all of this is now available on the Humanities server Kali.

I've been involved in distance education since 1978 (and radio production before that) and have always been fascinated by electronic communication. My pages were first served from a Powermac in my office (at the address humpc43.murdoch.edu.au) but you are now getting them from the Humanities server called Kali after the Hindu goddess ('All creation is the sport of my mad mother Kali').

This site was set up 18 November 1997. There have been

calls since then.