Sara James
Biographic Data
| ID | 3761787 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Sara James |
| GIVEN NAMES | Sara |
| FAMILY NAME | James |
| SIGNATURE | JAMES S |
| AFFILIATIONS | La Trobe University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9507-0172 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 15 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 10 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 14 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1999 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Auto-fictional instructive fantasy
Equal footing, equal voice
Over the last two decades evidence has been mounting for the effectiveness of arts interventions as public health measures. With mental health services under-resourced and overwhelmed by need, support is growing for a diversity of non-clinical approaches to support individuals in community settings. In their declaration of the organisation's collective vision, the Victorian Mental Illness Awareness Council (VMIAC) emphasises the need for diverse …
Restorative Play
This article outlines the findings from research project into community reading groups (Shared Reading) at La Trobe University, Melbourne. Evaluating the potential of Shared Reading to aid in the societal recovery from extensive lockdowns during the pandemic, three themes have emerged: participants found the groups broadened their minds after the diminished intellectual stimulation during social isolation; brought them a sense of calm and focus; …
How to navigate a pandemic
As the Covid-19 pandemic caused schools, workplaces, and childcare centres to close, pressures in the home increased. Much of the additional unpaid work required under these conditions was done by women. Most women's magazines at this time urged women to stay positive and develop wellbeing routines to help them flourish. This approach reinforces normative neoliberal subjectivity with its roots in therapeutic culture and the happiness industry. Wh…
Wellbeing and Aging in The Australian Women’s Weekly magazine
This study investigates how the wellbeing trend in popular media regulates women’s bodies and their selves through establishing norms around successful aging. We report on an exploratory qualitative content analysis of representations of wellbeing and aging from The Australian Women’s Weekly (AWW) magazine. While some articles emphasized self-care and self-responsibility, many articulated relational and social/structural understandings of wellbei…
Upheaval and reinvention in celebrity interviews
The disruptions of life in late modernity render self-identity fragile. Consequently, individuals must reflexively manage their emotions and periodically reinvent themselves to maintain a coherent narrative of the self. The rise of psychology as a discursive regime across the 20th century, and its intersections with a plethora of wellness industries, has furnished a new language of selfhood and greater public attention to emotions and personal na…
Existential advertising in late modernity
The ongoing massification of higher education has entailed a changing relationship between higher education providers and students. While scholars have been quick to identify the political implications of the quasi-market model for the student-customer, there has been significantly less focus on the role that advertising plays in facilitating a student-consumer culture. This article uses an analysis of advertisements directed towards potential do…
University students, career uncertainty, and the culture of authenticity
Young people entering tertiary education in postindustrial societies choose their courses in the context of widespread uncertainty about future career prospects. At the same time, choice of degree takes place against a dominant cultural backdrop that stresses the necessity of identity work and self-authenticity in the pursuit of 'the good life'. In response to concerns about employment outcomes, universities increasingly promote generalist Humani…
Meaningful work in late modernity
Key concepts in humanities and social sciences
Metaphysical Sociology
This quote from the French philosopher Françoise Dastur speaks to a style of thinking about mortality encountered in John Carroll’s “metaphysical sociology”. Indeed, the tragic-comedy of modern life is a theme in much of Carroll’s work (2001, 2008). Carroll reminds us that death is at the heart of modern tragedy as the perennial search for meaning in myths, religion and art. These forms of storytelling and aesthetics both represent and expose our…
Are baby boomer women redefining retirement
As the baby boomers enter later life, unprecedented numbers of women are retiring. The first generation of women to encounter retirement since its institutionalisation as an expected male life course transition in the mid‐20th century, these women are leaving the labour force at a time when the meanings associated with “retirement” are changing. Longer life expectancy, improved health outcomes, and transformations in work driven by globalisation …
Consuming Visions
By Suzanne K. Kaufman. Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 2005. viii+255 pp. Hb £20.50; $34.95. Consuming Visions offers a lucid and persuasive challenge to the Durkheimian view that the sacred and profane cannot successfully interact. It does so by demonstrating how Lourdes evolved as a modern capitalist shrine, from Bernadette's visions in 1858, through the establishment of the town as a thriving centre of religious tourism, to the controversies…
Detecting Paris
Paris has been described as the central character of Eugène Sue's best-seller, Les Mystères de Paris. However, the opening image of la Cité, which evoked the slums as a dark continent for the intrepid bourgeois explorer to discover, has perpetuated the idea that Sue's Paris is limited to a stylised gothic underworld. This article investigates both these perceptions by examining the nature and contrasts of the capital as Sue presents it, and by su…
Le détective français
University students, career uncertainty, and the culture of authenticity
Young people entering tertiary education in postindustrial societies choose their courses in the context of widespread uncertainty about future career prospects. At the same time, choice of degree takes place against a dominant cultural backdrop that stresses the necessity of identity work and self-authenticity in the pursuit of 'the good life'. In response to concerns about employment outcomes, universities increasingly promote generalist Humani…
Are baby boomer women redefining retirement
As the baby boomers enter later life, unprecedented numbers of women are retiring. The first generation of women to encounter retirement since its institutionalisation as an expected male life course transition in the mid‐20th century, these women are leaving the labour force at a time when the meanings associated with “retirement” are changing. Longer life expectancy, improved health outcomes, and transformations in work driven by globalisation …
Upheaval and reinvention in celebrity interviews
The disruptions of life in late modernity render self-identity fragile. Consequently, individuals must reflexively manage their emotions and periodically reinvent themselves to maintain a coherent narrative of the self. The rise of psychology as a discursive regime across the 20th century, and its intersections with a plethora of wellness industries, has furnished a new language of selfhood and greater public attention to emotions and personal na…
Meaningful work in late modernity
Consuming Visions
By Suzanne K. Kaufman. Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 2005. viii+255 pp. Hb £20.50; $34.95. Consuming Visions offers a lucid and persuasive challenge to the Durkheimian view that the sacred and profane cannot successfully interact. It does so by demonstrating how Lourdes evolved as a modern capitalist shrine, from Bernadette's visions in 1858, through the establishment of the town as a thriving centre of religious tourism, to the controversies…
Le détective français
Detecting Paris
Paris has been described as the central character of Eugène Sue's best-seller, Les Mystères de Paris. However, the opening image of la Cité, which evoked the slums as a dark continent for the intrepid bourgeois explorer to discover, has perpetuated the idea that Sue's Paris is limited to a stylised gothic underworld. This article investigates both these perceptions by examining the nature and contrasts of the capital as Sue presents it, and by su…
Consuming Visions
By Suzanne K. Kaufman. Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 2005. viii+255 pp. Hb £20.50; $34.95. Consuming Visions offers a lucid and persuasive challenge to the Durkheimian view that the sacred and profane cannot successfully interact. It does so by demonstrating how Lourdes evolved as a modern capitalist shrine, from Bernadette's visions in 1858, through the establishment of the town as a thriving centre of religious tourism, to the controversies…
Key concepts in humanities and social sciences
Metaphysical Sociology
This quote from the French philosopher Françoise Dastur speaks to a style of thinking about mortality encountered in John Carroll’s “metaphysical sociology”. Indeed, the tragic-comedy of modern life is a theme in much of Carroll’s work (2001, 2008). Carroll reminds us that death is at the heart of modern tragedy as the perennial search for meaning in myths, religion and art. These forms of storytelling and aesthetics both represent and expose our…
Are baby boomer women redefining retirement
As the baby boomers enter later life, unprecedented numbers of women are retiring. The first generation of women to encounter retirement since its institutionalisation as an expected male life course transition in the mid‐20th century, these women are leaving the labour force at a time when the meanings associated with “retirement” are changing. Longer life expectancy, improved health outcomes, and transformations in work driven by globalisation …
Existential advertising in late modernity
The ongoing massification of higher education has entailed a changing relationship between higher education providers and students. While scholars have been quick to identify the political implications of the quasi-market model for the student-customer, there has been significantly less focus on the role that advertising plays in facilitating a student-consumer culture. This article uses an analysis of advertisements directed towards potential do…
University students, career uncertainty, and the culture of authenticity
Young people entering tertiary education in postindustrial societies choose their courses in the context of widespread uncertainty about future career prospects. At the same time, choice of degree takes place against a dominant cultural backdrop that stresses the necessity of identity work and self-authenticity in the pursuit of 'the good life'. In response to concerns about employment outcomes, universities increasingly promote generalist Humani…
Meaningful work in late modernity
Wellbeing and Aging in The Australian Women’s Weekly magazine
This study investigates how the wellbeing trend in popular media regulates women’s bodies and their selves through establishing norms around successful aging. We report on an exploratory qualitative content analysis of representations of wellbeing and aging from The Australian Women’s Weekly (AWW) magazine. While some articles emphasized self-care and self-responsibility, many articulated relational and social/structural understandings of wellbei…
Upheaval and reinvention in celebrity interviews
The disruptions of life in late modernity render self-identity fragile. Consequently, individuals must reflexively manage their emotions and periodically reinvent themselves to maintain a coherent narrative of the self. The rise of psychology as a discursive regime across the 20th century, and its intersections with a plethora of wellness industries, has furnished a new language of selfhood and greater public attention to emotions and personal na…
How to navigate a pandemic
As the Covid-19 pandemic caused schools, workplaces, and childcare centres to close, pressures in the home increased. Much of the additional unpaid work required under these conditions was done by women. Most women's magazines at this time urged women to stay positive and develop wellbeing routines to help them flourish. This approach reinforces normative neoliberal subjectivity with its roots in therapeutic culture and the happiness industry. Wh…
Restorative Play
This article outlines the findings from research project into community reading groups (Shared Reading) at La Trobe University, Melbourne. Evaluating the potential of Shared Reading to aid in the societal recovery from extensive lockdowns during the pandemic, three themes have emerged: participants found the groups broadened their minds after the diminished intellectual stimulation during social isolation; brought them a sense of calm and focus; …
Equal footing, equal voice
Over the last two decades evidence has been mounting for the effectiveness of arts interventions as public health measures. With mental health services under-resourced and overwhelmed by need, support is growing for a diversity of non-clinical approaches to support individuals in community settings. In their declaration of the organisation's collective vision, the Victorian Mental Illness Awareness Council (VMIAC) emphasises the need for diverse …
Auto-fictional instructive fantasy
Sociology (12 works) · Political science (8 works) · Art (7 works) · Aesthetics (5 works) · Gender Studies (5 works) · Social science (5 works) · Modernity (4 works) · Psychology (4 works) · Youth Education and Societal Dynamics (4 works) · Late modernity (3 works)