CRITICS-L: Introduction

[Sheila McCreanor]

I am working in country Australia at a place called Port Augusta.  As
Principal of a school of 600 students, I do not have a great deal of time
to but I do it when I can as a hobby.  I am a Sister of St Joseph and am
also involved in some administrative work with my congregation.
This is the fourth year that I have worked part time on a PhD through the
University of South Australia.  Ideally I hope to have some time off from
work in 1999 so that I can work full time on the study and finish my thesis.
My field is sociology of religion and my topic is "Sainthood in Australia -
Mary MacKillop and the Print Media".  Using critical discourse ideas added
to a framework from sociology of knowledge I am trying to examine the way
that the print media constructed a version of what constitutes a saint,
using the example of Mary MacKillop whom the Pope beatified on a trip to
Australia in 1995.
A recent paper I presented at a conference used political cartoons to focus
on these ideas and I received some good responses and ideas for further work.
I have found the ideas of Norman Fairclough and Teun A van Dijk to be very
helpful and would be interested in hearing from anyone else who may have
ideas in this area.  I would be particularly interested in political
cartoons about saints.
I can be contacted by email on smccrean at dove.net.au - which is probably the
easiest.  Postal address is Box 254 Port Augusta  SA  5700,  home fax is 61
8 8642 3777.
I look forward to hearing from others.
Sheila
Sheila