Melbourne, 3-5 Dec 2008
In association with the Australian Critical Race and Whiteness Studies Association.
Supported by the School of Historical Studies, Monash University and the School of Historical Studies, University of Melbourne.
Following the success of the Historicising Whiteness conference of 2006, Re-Orienting Whiteness continues the critical engagement with whiteness studies. In conjunction with the Australian Critical Race and Whiteness Studies Association, Re-Orienting Whiteness 2008 invites scholars to explore the potential, or otherwise, of 'whiteness' to analyse the operations of ‘race’, past and present.
Our central aim is to bring whiteness studies into a closer conversation with other approaches to 'race', particularly those which have emerged from studies of colonialism and postcolonial theory. There has been remarkably little cross fertilisation between these areas of scholarship, despite the many obvious synergies between them. We seek to foreground this tension as a fundamental challenge for the field. We envision the conference traversing a variety of countries, periods, methodologies and theoretical concepts, bringing together scholars of diverse backgrounds and interests. Broadening out from the (settler colonial) context of the United States, we wish to explore how whiteness operated in colonial and non-colonial contexts across the globe.
Possible themes include:- Indigenous perspectives on whiteness
- The politics of apology/assimilation/sovereignty/restitution/power
- Whiteness in the colonial/settler colonial encounter
- Whiteness in non-colonial contexts
- The gendered privileges of whiteness
- The chronology of whiteness: visibility/invisibility
- Cultures, representations, borderlands, bodies, transformations
- How important were global imperial processes to the operation of white power?
- Does whiteness even matter?
Please send 200 word abstracts, along with a brief half-page CV to reorientingwhiteness@gmail.com
Proposals for panels of up to three speakers are most welcome.
Closing date is Friday 29 August 2008
Keynote Speakers
Ann Laura Stoler, New School for Social Research
Aileen Moreton-Robinson, Queensland University of Technology
Lynette Russell, Monash University
Patrick Wolfe, La Trobe University
Matt Wray, Harvard University
Leigh Boucher (Monash University), Jane Carey (University of Melbourne) and Kat Ellinghaus (Monash University).
