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scholarly
qualifications
Being openly-gay and of mixed racial ancestry (including a Chinese-Australian
grandmother, Jewish maternal grandmother, and an English grandfather who was raised on a Pacific island), I've dedicated
much of my time between jobs to academic research in the field of Cultural Studies, particularly in areas of interest that
stem from my (Austral-Asian) ethnicity and (homo) sexuality.
I hold a B.A. (in Modern Asian Studies, 1994, with a double Major
in Chinese Studies & Anthropology), plus Honours (in Lesbian & Gay/Gender Studies, 1997) from Griffith University. My thesis examines imagery of the body in modern visual art.
In 1995 I was the first male to enrol in a subject within the Master of Arts in Women's Studies programme (at Griffith University), probably becoming one of the first men to complete a subject in feminist
studies at this level in Australia. At present, I am writing up a research Master of Philosophy dissertation through
the School of English, Media Studies &
Art History at the University of Queensland. My dissertation explores the currency and significance of visual representations
of masculinities -- particularly of 'heterosexual male homosexuality' -- in fin-de-millénaire Australian political
cartoons.
Queer
Gravity
During the early 1990s I was elected by my queer student peers to the voluntary position of co-convenor of
the LGBT student group at Griffith University. In 1993, I joined with the leaders of other local LGBT student groups to take
a bid to the annual conference of the national students group, Queer Collaborations, requesting that we host the event the
following year in Brisbane. This occurred in 1994, with the conference moving away from its Sydney base for the first time.
For the conference I compiled and edited Queer Gravity (under the pseudonym, 'Simon-Alice'). To my knowledge this was the first Australian magazine produced for and
by LGBT students to be distributed across the country. The magazine included the first reproduction in print of the lesbian
safe sex poster, Dam Dykes, which would later be banned from the Brisbane City Council Art Gallery.
More recently, some of my scholarly writing (including Queer Studies articles & reviews of film and visual
art works) has been published in M/C (an on-line media-culture journal). For a sample of my work, please see my curriculum vitae.
gay astrologer
When first surfing the WWW in 1996, I found little information on the subject of Astrology for GLBT folk, and subsequently
set up my Astroqueer website at Geocities at the end of that year. However, GeoCities was rather American-centric so
I began Astroqueer's Stars in late 1997 at the Tripod domain. This website remains a global portal for all things of astrological interest to GLBT folk, including my GLBT Stars collection, a growing compilation of astro~charts and astro-biographies (for noted queer people and events). The largest
collection of its type, the Charts are freely available for astrological research or for the general interest of the public.
I became a 'professional astrologer' in November of 2000. From then until September 2001, I wrote the "Star-Lust"
column in the weekly Sydney Star Observer (Australia's leading gay & lesbian periodical). One of the first Astrology columns by an openly gay astrologer
to appear regularly in a major gay publication, "Star Lust" broke new ground with its insightful astrological
assessments and special features such as planetary digests & celebrity profiles that went way beyond the usual Sun Sign
format (see the archive).
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