30 November 2007

CFP - 'Postcolonial' Futures in a Not-yet Postcolonial World (5-7 March 2008; UC, San Diego, USA) Deadline: 7 Jan 2008

"POSTCOLONIAL" FUTURES IN A NOT-YET POSTCOLONIAL WORLD:
Locating the Intersections of Ethnic, Indigenous, and Postcolonial Studies

March 5-7, 2008
Ethnic Studies Department
University of California, San Diego

In September 2007, after twenty years of debate, the United Nations finally passed the Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples - a huge symbolic victory for indigenous peoples around the world who struggle under predatory and exploitative relationships with(in) existing nation-states. At the same moment, the UN was lumbering along in the 18th year of its impossible attempts to eradicate colonialism, with groups from around the world flocking to it to petition for the decolonization of their territories or to demand that their situations at least be recognized as "colonial."

Across all continents, indigenous and stateless peoples are struggling for and demanding various forms of sovereignty, as the recently decolonized world is sobering up from the learning of its limits and pratfalls. Postcolonial societies that were born of sometimes radical anti-colonial spirits, now appear to be taking on the role of the colonizer, often against the indigenous peoples that reside within their borders. In places such as Central and Latin America, a resurgence of Third World Leftist politics is being accompanied by a resurgence of indigenous populism. Meanwhile the recent arrests of sovereignty/environmental activists in New Zealand represents another instance where those from the 3rd and 4th worlds who dare to challenge the current make up of today's "postcolonial world" are branded as terrorists.

As scholars involved in critical ethnic studies engage with these ever more complex worlds, they are increasingly resorting to the lenses provided by postcolonial and indigenous studies. This engagement however is not without its limits or problems. As ethnic studies scholars seek to make their vision and scholarship more transnational and global, this push is nonetheless accompanied by gestures that, at the expense of indigenous and postcolonial frameworks, re-center the United States and reaffirm the solvency of its nation-state. In addition, despite their various commonalities, indigenous and postcolonial studies represent intellectual bodies of knowledge that are fundamentally divided over issues such as hybridity, sovereignty, nation, citizenship and subjectivity.

The purpose of this conference, then, is to create a space where scholars and activists engaged in these various projects, in various forms, can congregate to share ideas, hash out differences and move beyond caricatured understandings of each of these intellectual projects. It seeks to ask how, by putting ethnic, indigenous and postcolonial studies in conversation with each other, we may theorize new epistemologies that may better address the violences and injustices of the contemporary world.

To this end we solicit papers that address questions including, but in no way limited to, the following:

• What are the epistemological frameworks that inform postcolonial, ethnic and indigenous studies? What is their relationship to modernity and how do they challenge and/or complement each other?

• What constitutes the subject of postcolonial and ethnic studies? How does the construction of these subjectivities limit possible conversations with indigenous studies?

• What are the limitations and pitfalls of sovereignty as popularly envisioned? How do postcolonial and indigenous communities reaffirm or rearticulate sovereignty within their respective contexts?

• What are the different theories and strategies of decolonization as laid out by postcolonial and indigenous studies, and how do they inform each other?

• How does the political status of indigenous peoples complicate dominant discourses on immigration and citizenship? Moreover, with regards to settler nation-states such as the U.S., how does the "nations-within-nations" status of indigenous communities complicate the project of ethnic and transnational studies?

Requirements:
250-word abstract, specifying if the proposal is for individual or roundtable presentations.

Information including name, institutional affiliation, mailing address, telephone number, e-mail address

Deadline for Submission: January 7th, 2008

Abstracts must be submitted to: futures0308@gmail.com

For more information please contact: Michael Lujan Bevacqua at mlbasquiat@hotmail.com or Rashné Limki at rashne.limki@gmail.com

CFP - 3rd Annual Scholars in Critical Race Conference - "Global Civil Rights" (27-28 March 2008; U of Memphis, TN) Deadline: 20 Dec 2007

The Scholars in Critical Race Studies (SCRS) at University of Memphis seek submissions for their third annual colloquium. In commemoration of the fortieth anniversary of Martin Luther King’s murder in Memphis, the topic this year is on “Global Civil Rights.”

The keynote speaker this year is internationally renowned critical race theorist David Theo Goldberg.

The deadline for 250-500 word abstracts of 30-minute papers is December 20, 2007.

Selected papers will be published in the journal Patterns of Prejudice.

Scholars affiliated with the SCRS examine the historical evolution and contemporary expression of race as a social category for discriminating, organizing, regulating and maintaining social differences. By revealing that racial categories emerge in specific contexts that are connected to power, politics, economics and culture, these scholars destabilize those categories as natural or transhistorical. The point is to disclose how race operates in differing situations and texts, in order to undermine the force of racism. The SCRS is an interdisciplinary forum that seeks to facilitate a conversation by scholars across the humanities and social sciences, including Philosophy, Literature, History, Foreign Languages, Political Science, Sociology, Anthropology, and Jewish Studies.

This colloquium was made possible by the generosity of the Marcus Orr Center for the Humanities, the Benjamin L. Hooks Institute for Social Change, Bornblum Judaic Studies, and the College of Arts and Sciences at The University of Memphis.

Submissions are welcome in the following categories, however the suggested topics below are by no means exclusive. We particularly welcome contributors from the Mid-South region (Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, Missouri, Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Arkansas).

• The global community and the beloved community
• Jewish responses to apartheid and to civil rights
• Expressions of and responses to racism within material and intangible heritage
• Politics and ideation of a post-racial state
• What are the influences of national struggles for civil rights on global claims to civil rights?
• The influence southern U.S. Civil Rights Movement on activist groups in other locales
• The influence of other activist movements on the southern U.S. Civil Rights Movement, the role of race in contemporary civil rights struggles globally
• Defining or narrating "civil rights" in other national contexts
• Transnational dialogue or collaboration among activist movements

Please send all inquiries or proposals to Joshua Gorman: jgorman@memphis.edu

CFP - Changing Australia (BASA 2008 - 2-5 Sept; Royal Holloway, London) Deadline: 31 March 2008

Changing Australia: Biennial conference of the British Australian Studies Association

2-5 September 2008, Royal Holloway, University of London

Australia is ever changing - culturally, politically, economically, artistically, historically, and geographically - and this conference seeks to investigate, and interrogate, some of those changes. How and why has Australia, and Australian culture, changed? What changes are in process now? And what changes are anticipated in the future? How has the international image of Australia changed, as well as the clichés and stereotypes? How have the lives of Australians changed, and how do they continue to change. How is the definition of what it is to be 'an Australian' changing?

This call for papers invites responses to the broad conference theme in relation to a wide range of disciplines subject areas across the humanities and social sciences. These might include: history, fine arts, ecology, politics, mythology, literature, film, media and performance studies, music, geography, anthropology, architecture, law, popular culture, political science, sociology, archaeology, biography, cultural studies, migration and settlement studies, gender and women's studies, war studies, sports studies, religion, education.

All abstracts must be submitted by 31 March 2008.

It is expected that a selection of the papers will be published in a conference issue of the BASA journal, Australian Studies. The conference website is at:

http://www.kcl.ac.uk/schools/humanities/menzies/basa/conf2008.html


Apologies for cross posting

Please send abstracts and expressions of interest to

E.Schafer@rhul.ac.uk


Liz Schafer
Professor of Drama and Theatre Studies
Drama Department
Royal Holloway
University of London
Egham
Surrey TW20 OEX
England

CFP - Culture and Citizenship (3-5 Sept 2008; Oxford, UK) Deadline: End of Feb 2008

CRESC Annual Conference
3 - 5 September, 2008
St Hugh’s College, Oxford

Call for Papers Culture and Citizenship

Citizenship and Culture represent two of the most central concepts in contemporary social thought and, over the last decade, the relationships between them have been highly contested. Debates on citizenship have shifted from a focus on democracy, political rights and responsibilities and questions of belonging to a concern with culture, both formally and informally inscribed. The focus of citizenship historically tended more toward universalistic issues, with the realm of culture assigned to the particular, and to questions of difference and meaning. The interconnections between these approaches have become of growing academic interest on the one hand, as well as being of crucial significance in the political realm on the other. Thus claims for citizenship rights are increasingly required to consider the more culturally defined questions of identity, gender, sexuality, race, that are typically the concern of the new social and political movements. At the same time the issues of emancipation, responsibility and freedom remain key questions for debates concerning citizenship and culture.

This conference seeks to explore the inter-relationships between citizenship and culture and their contemporary social, cultural and political significance in a number of different contexts. The themes proposed for the conference are as follows:

*Cultural Diversity/After Multiculturalism
*Cities and Citizenship
*The Politics of Citizenship
*Liberal government and the citizen: histories and trajectories
*Arts and cultural policies and citizenship
*Cultures of collecting and citizenship
*Science, technology and citizenship
*Europe and the citizen
*The relationships between religious and secular conceptions of citizenship
*Culture, citizenship and transnationalism
*The media and citizenship
*Post-colonialism and Citizenship
*Sexual Citizenship


Keynote speakers to date include:
Mieke Bal (University of Amsterdam), Engin Isin (Open University), Nina Glick Schiller (University of Manchester, Ghassan Hage (University of Melbourne), Mary Poovey (New York University), Nick Stevenson (University of Nottingham)

Conference organising committee:
Tony Bennett (Open University), Francis Dodsworth (Open University), Patrick Joyce (University of Manchester), Helen Rees Leahy (University of Manchester), Sophie Watson (Open University)

Please submit either:
(a) 300 word abstracts for individual papers, or
(b) proposals for panels including 3 papers
by the end of February 2008.

Proposal Forms will be available online soon and should be sent to:

CRESC Conference Administration
178 Waterloo Place,
Oxford Road,
University of Manchester,
Manchester M13 9PL

Tel: +44(0)161 275 8985 / Fax: +44(0)161 275 8985/ cresc@manchester.ac.uk/ http://www.cresc.ac.uk

NEW ISSUE - Peril - "The Meaning of Life"

Edition Four of Peril - titled, The Meaning of Life - has been released.

Go to www.asianaustralian.org

This edition features an interview with Alice Pung exploring her meaning of life. It includes a poem inspired by Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Zen Master, a commentary by Rosey Chang on the Dalai Lama and poetry by Hoa Pham, Rosey and George Mouradatis.

We also have a sound piece by Josh Goldman, for seven voices without words and a review of a workshop Hoa attended at the University of Wollongong on Asian/Australian Values: New Directions in Australian Literature.

>> The next issue will be themed "Drama" with the closing date for submissions April 30 2008 and the proposed launch date of 30 June 2008.

CALL FOR WRITING and ART - Auto/Biography (Deadline: 31 March 2008)

Call for Writing & Art. Theme: Auto/Biography
apwn announces a Call for Writing & Art on the theme of Auto/Biography.

You are invited to send writing or art appropriate to this theme for possible inclusion in the 2008 Auto/Biography edition for the Asia and Pacific Writers Network.

Visit the 2007 edition to sample a selection of writing and artwork on this theme:


Deadline 31 March 2008.

16 November 2007

ONLINE PUBLICATION - Special Auto/Biography edition for APWN, guest edited by Ivy Alvarez

A special Auto/Biography Edition for apwn [Asia and Pacific Writers Network], Part 1 is now live:
http://www.apwn.net/index.php?/writing/auto_biography/

Writers for Part 1 and 2 include Arlene Ang, Barbara Jane Reyes, Joseph O. Legaspi, Rochita Loenen-Ruiz, Joel Toledo, Jill Chan, Linh Dinh, Eileen R. Tabios, Lino Dizon, Rebecca Mabanglo-Mayor and Grace Monte de Ramos.

Guest editor Ivy Alvarez's editorial appears on the apwn home page: http://www.apwn.net/

NEW ISSUE - HEAT 14



HEAT 14 - "Cartoon Ducks" - features writing by AASRN member Tom Cho, and Beth Yahp, an essay on Patrick White by Brian Castro, and poetry by Jaya Savige.


CFP - Poetry and the Trace: An International Conference (Monash University, Vic; 12-14 July 2008) Deadline: 1 Feb 2008

Poetry and the Trace: An International Conference
Monash University, July 12-14 2008
To be held at the State Library of Victoria

Confirmed Keynote speakers:
Susan Stewart, Joan Retallack, Rachel Blau Duplessis, Lionel Fogarty.

Convenors:
Ann Vickery, Rose Lucas, John Hawke

Poetic language speaks of the elusivity, the impossible seductions of the trace – trace of memory, desire, the dreams of an impossible language which encompasses, of a presence which underpins The language of poetry, with its rhythms of pulse and silence, the reflective pause of metaphor and the capacity for representation, is inextricably related to the language of memory and desire – both subjective and social. This conference broadly investigates the relationship between poetry, trace and memory and whether collective and private pasts and subjectivities can find articulation through the flexible forms of poetic language. Is poetry a mode which at least partially restores the fragments of the past or transforms them to new political and ethical ends? How does poetry negotiate bad histories and bad timing? Whose memory is being voiced or heard? What is the relationship between memory and feeling? How might new technologies impact on structures of memory? Is poetry possible today and if so, what is its future? Can poetry evidence a archaeology of desire while engaging in a politics of ethical relationship? Papers are invited which consider the theme of the trace in relation to poetry of any kind from classical antiquity to the contemporary.

The following list suggests some possible areas for development, but proposals in any area relating to the conference theme of poetry and the concept of trace will be welcome:
Trace; aura; fragment
Mourning and melancholia
Is Postmodern Poetry Beyond Mourning?
Canon, Reputation, and Institutionalisation
Is poetry possible in the new millennium?
The Unrecoverable: Gaps, Absence, Silence
The making of history
Memory, repetition, and seriality
Electronic Dreams: Digital memories
Whose memory?: Historicising poetic movements and coteries
Memory, nation, identity
Memory of sensation/the sensation of memory: Rethinking the Relationship between Word and Affect
Memory and the Body
Memory and Desire
Belatedness
Bad history; bad timing
Poetic compost: recycling the past for present and future uses
Collective memory; cultural memory
Disputed memory; false memories; error and memory
Fugitive memory and the fugacious

Conference papers are 20 minutes in length. To submit a proposal for the conference, please forward a 200-300 word abstract and brief biographical note as an email attachment to either:
Ann Vickery: Ann.Vickery@arts.monash.edu.au
John Hawke: John.Hawke@arts.monash.edu.au
Rose Lucas: Rose.Lucas@arts.monash.edu.au

Deadline for submission of proposals: 1 February 2008
Notification of acceptance: 1 March 2008

This conference is being held jointly by Monash University’s School of English, Communications and Performance Studies, and the Centre for Women’s Studies and Gender Research.

NEW RESOURCE - New Ethnographies

Announcing New Ethnographies, a UTSePress collection for studies, essays and monographs:

http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/dspace/handle/2100/502

This collection contains material that is scholarly in nature but unrefereed. All material is moderated in an editorial process within the Transforming Cultures Research Centre.

SHORT FILM - Rememberance (Hoang Nguyen and Hoa Pham) - Big West Short Film Festival


Big West Festival Short Film Program: Once Upon A Time In The West

The program launches on Tuesday 27 November 5.30pm at the Footscray Community Arts Centre, basement theatre. The program includes a short film by AASRN member Hoa Pham and Hoang Nguyen.
FREE ENTRY!
DATES:
Tues 27 Nov - 5.30pm
Wed 28 to Fri 30 Nov - 6 and 7pm
Sat 1 Dec - 1-7pm hourly

VENUE: Basement Theatre, Footscray Community Arts Centre
45 Moreland Street, Footscray

EXHIBITION - Owen Leong in Zendai MoMA

Owen Leong's video works Milk Ring and White Noise have been selected for the exhibition Soft Power at Shanghai Zendai Museum of Modern Art (Zendai MoMA).
This exhibition investigates how 'soft power' uniquely reveals and expresses itself in contemporary Asian art and culture. Curated by Shen Qibin, Binghui Huangfu and Biljana Ciric, Soft Power will exhibit work by 30 major contemporary artists including Lida Abdul, Heri Dono, Shilpa Gupta and Song Dong.

EXPRESSIONS OF INTEREST - RA for "The ABC in Asia and its role in cultural exchange" project (Deadline for EOI: 21 Jan 2008)

EXPRESSIONS OF INTERESTS are sought for a Research Assistant on an ARC Discovery Project, "The ABC in Asia and its role in cultural exchange(1956-2006)".

THE POSITION requires someone with experience in archival document researchand data entry skills who can work independently. The duration is for three months with the potential for extension over 6 or 12 months. A full-time researcher is preferred but a fractional appointment may be possible. It is desirable that you will have completed a PhD. The position is based in Sydney with occasional work in Canberra. The Chief Investigator will be based in Melbourne at La Trobe University's Media Studies Program. Remuneration is at Level B1: $67,876 pro rata, (for fractional orpart-time)

The Research Assistant will:
- review ABC archival documents held at the National Archive of Australia related to the organisation's operations in Asia
- produce reports with annotations on the documents including identifying program material mentioned, key personnel and agreed descriptors
- liaise with ABC staff as necessary
- assist in preparing background material for oral history interviews
- a secondary task will be to review and report on documents held in other archives, libraries and personal holdings

To express your interest in the position send a brief CV (no more than 5 pages) and a statement outlining your skills experience and motivation relevant to the position to Dr. John Tebbutt: john.tebbutt@latrobe.edu.au.

EOI DEADLINE: Monday, January 21 to start early February.

>> For more information about the project, download the EOI document (PDF, 106K).

7 November 2007

NEW BOOK - Contemporary Australian Poetry in Chinese Translation (Shanghai: Shanghai Arts and Lit. Publishing House, 2007)

Contemporary Australian Poetry in Chinese Translation (Shanghai: Shanghai Arts and Literature Publishing House, 2007) co-edited by John Kinsella and Ouyang Yu, and sole-translated by Ouyang Yu, has just been published in China and is now available in Australia.

It contains 100 poems by 100 contemporary Australian poets, is 213 pages and the first one of this kind in twenty years.

Price (individual): $12.00 (GST/postage included) or (institutional): $22.00 (GST/postage included)

To order a copy, please make your cheque payable to "North-South Connections" at the following address:

P. O. Box 200
Kingsbury 3083
VIC, Australia

DISCUSSION - "Poets on the brink of Asia" by Jaya Savige

A review of several poetry anthologies by Jaya Savige:

"Poets on the brink of Asia" (in The Australian, 3 Oct 2007)


EXCERPT from the article:

Paralleling economic developments, many Australian poets are connecting with Asia's diverse cultures and adding a new dimension to a national poetic tradition steeped in European and North American influences.

Anthologies can provide a good indication of such shifts in the poetic landscape. Last year's publication of Windchimes: Asia in Australian Poetry (Pandanus Books), edited by Noel Rowe (who died in July) and Vivian Smith, is in this sense a watershed. Ordered chronologically, Windchimes begins with The Bulletin verse of the early 20th century -- shrouded in fear and anxiety, particularly towards China -- and brings us up to speed with such recent works as Judith Beveridge's Between the Palace and the Bodhi Tree, Emma Lew's adaptations of the Malaysian pantoum form and works by Chinese-Australian poet Ouyang Yu. As Canberra's Geoff Page noted in a review, the anthology is nothing less than "an index to our changing attitudes towards Asia and its peoples".

>> DISCUSSION about this article and issues surrounding it appear in Adam Aitken's blog HERE (12 Oct) and HERE (4 Oct).

CFP - "Other Worlds in Children's Literature: Fantasy, Reality and Imagination" (Wellington, NZ; 27-29 June 2008) Deadline: 31 Jan 2008

“Other Worlds in Children’s Literature: Fantasy, Reality and Imagination”

8th International Conference of the Australasian Children’s Literature Association for Research (ACLAR).

Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand
27-29 June 2008.

“We’re not in Kansas any more, Toto!” Only in Oz can Dorothy have the fantastical journey that includes witches and wizards, talking animals, a living scarecrow and magic slippers. And yet at the end of her adventure she concludes that “there’s no place like home”. What role then do reality and fantasy play in children’s literature? Does fantasy rush in where the real-world fears to tread? Is there any reason to believe that fantasy feeds the child’s imagination better than an imagined story written within realistic conventions? Or is it pure escapism that needs to be grounded in reality to be relevant to the young reader?

And how far removed is fantasy from reality? Harry Potter lives in the real world but with added magic; Pullman’s His Dark Materials crosses between our real world and alternative realistic (non-magical) worlds; Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events is set in an absurdly unrealistic real world. Once back in Kansas Dorothy is astonished to find that in Oz “you – and you – and you – and you were there!” So with the many combinations, crossovers and overlappings between reality and fantasy, is there even a clear separation between the two?

Confirmed as plenary speakers for the conference are Professor Rod McGillis, of Calgary University (books include The Nimble Reader: Literary Theory and Children’s Literature and Voices of the Other: Literature, Colonialism, Postcolonialism and Neo-colonialism) and Bernard Beckett, one of New Zealand’s leading writers for young adults (books include Jolt, Home Boys and New Zealand Post Book Award winner Genesis).

We are inviting papers on children’s literature and the following areas of interest:

• fantasy/alternate worlds
• reality vs. fantasy
• imagination/escapism/realism
• perceptions of reality
• representations of children’s imagination
• alienation
• the politics of fantasy
• fantasy as parody/criticism/subversion
• ideological implications of fantasy
• psychology of fantasy
• fantasy as allegory
• the make-believe of realism
• relevant sub-genres (fairy-tale, sci-fi, alternative history, absurdist fiction, biopunk etc.)

Please send abstracts (300 words max) to Anna Jackson (anna.jackson@vuw.ac.nz) by 31 January 2008. Papers should be no longer than 20 minutes. Offers of panels welcome.

5 November 2007

CONFERENCE UPDATE - Rediscovered Past: Chinese Heritage in Northern Australia (16-17 Feb 2008; Cairns, Qld)

The date, venue and fees for the upcoming 'Rediscovered Past: Chinese Heritage in Northern Australia' have now been finalised. The conference is to be held at the Cairns Public Library on 16-17 February 2008. This is also a gentle reminder to all who are interested in attending or presenting a paper to let the organisers know by December 2007 if possible so program and numbers can be finalised. Please feel free to send this message on to anyone else who you think might be interested.

Regarding the papers and presentations, we welcome people from a wide range of backgrounds, not just the academic, to get involved. Those of you who don't feel up to writing a formal paper but feel that you have something interesting and stimulating to add to the research on Chinese heritage in northern Australia can still consider giving a talk. China Inc can provide feedback and guidance to assist in developing your talk if required. Formal papers will only be sought from those who wish to have their presentations published in the Conference Proceedings volume that will be produced afterwards.

Hope to see you all there

regards
Kevin Rains
Secretary, CHINA Inc.

>> Download 2008 conference information (MS-Word) and abstract submission form (MS-Word).

RESIDENCY PROGRAM - Performance Space / Arts House (Melbourne)

Performance Space is collaborating with Arts House in Melbourne to host a residency program that will provide critical and supportive environments for artists from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds to undertake:
* research and development;
* experimentation with new processes for making artistic work; and
* creative development of new intercultural performance projects.

Supported by the Theatre Board of the Australia Council, TransLab offers space, fees, technical and dramaturgical support and travel costs to collaborative teams of artists engaging in inter-cultural or cross-cultural performance work.

Deadline for applications is 15 NOVEMBER 2007.

>> FOR TRANSLAB GUIDELINES, CLICK HERE (PDF).

CFP - The Art of the Real: Creative Non-Fiction (16-18 May 2008; U of Newcastle, NSW)

THE ART OF THE REAL: CREATIVE NON-FICTION

MAY 16-18, 2008
UNIVERSITY OF NEWCASTLE

Interested scholars and practitioners are invited to submit abstracts for 20-minute papers, panels, writing workshops and roundtable discussions.

Topics might include: genres and forms; tensions between the ‘real’ and the ‘fictional’; the profusion of genres and sub-genres in contemporary life writing; true crime; travel writing; nature writing; poetry/poetics of the self; reportage; biography, memoir and autobiography; ficto-criticism; DIY media; the pedagogy of creative non-fiction.

Postgraduate researchers are warmly invited to participate.

Abstracts and expressions of interest should be forwarded to the conference co-convenor Dr Ros Smith (Ros.Smith@newcastle.edu.au) no later than January 18, 2008.

‘The Art of the Real’ is presented by the Literature, Cinema, Culture Research Group, School of Humanities and Social Science, University of Newcastle, Australia.

NEW ISSUE - Griffith Review - "In the Neighbourhood"


"In the Neighbourhood" is ripe with fresh essays, reportage, memoir, fiction, poetry and photography exploring the complexities of engagement with our regional neighbours. On the eve of the Federal election, this edition puts flesh on the bones of a crucial issue, one which demands informed public discussion.

Writers include Brian Castro, Jane Camens, Ouyang Yu, Bei Ling, Hoa Pham, Nicholas Jose, Geremie R. Barme, Adam Aitken and others.

For ordering information, click HERE.

BURSARIES - Ocean of Stories: Intercolonial Networks and Cultural Exchanges around the Indian Ocean (5-7 Feb 2008; U of Western Australia, WA)

POSTGRADUATE & EARLY CAREER RESEARCHERS MASTERCLASS

OCEAN OF STORIES: INTERCOLONIAL NETWORKS AND CULTURAL EXCHANGES AROUND THE INDIAN OCEAN
5-7 February 2008
University of Western Australia, PERTH

UTS | CURTIN U | U OF WESTERN AUSTRALIA | MURDOCH U

In association with the Ocean of Stories conference there will be a Postgraduate and Early Career Researchers Masterclass held on the afternoon of Wednesday 6th February 2008. A subsidy of $250 per person towards travel and accommodation costs is available. Please email expressions of interest to Dr Lola Sharon Davidson at Indian.Ocean@uts.edu.au.

This conference follows on from a conference entitled “Culture and Commerce in the Indian Ocean” which was held in Leiden, The Netherlands, 25th – 27th September 2006.

That conference was about cultural and commercial relationships and patterns in the Indian Ocean from pre- to post-colonial times. It had as its aim to bring the interdisciplinary paradigm of Cultural Studies to the Indian Ocean, building on the already substantial work done in Anthropology, History, Geography, International Studies and other social and political disciplines.

These studies have already been connected in significant ways to elaborate the description of Indian Ocean culture. Cultural Studies suggests further avenues for thought and analysis which this workshop will develop and discuss. In particular it will focus on:

* the social circulation of objects, cultural values, stories and languages
* contemporary popular cultures: music, film and other arts
* inter-colonial labour networks
* old and new cosmopolitan subjectivities
* political ecology of the Indian Ocean
* narrative, poetics and cultural value
* environments, ecologies, naturecultures