26 June 2008

CFP - B for BAD Cinema: Aesthetics, Politics and Cultural Value (Monash University, Melbourne; 15-17 April 2009) Deadline: 14 Nov 2008

CALL FOR PAPERS

B for BAD cinema: aesthetics, politics and cultural value

Inaugural Centre for Film and Television Studies Conference, Monash University, Melbourne, April 15–17, 2009


Over the past decade, paracinema – a movement that has grown up around sleazy, excessive, or poorly executed B-movies – has seen a counter-cultural valorisation of all forms of cinematic trash or ‘badfilm.’ In many internet and print sources devoted to the celebration of paracinema, the term B-movie has (in contrast to its earlier studio-era sense) come to mean almost anything: disreputable and unworthy movies, low-budget exploitation movies, straight to TV or video movies, and even big-budget studio movies. B for BAD cinema seeks to negotiate some of the (aesthetic and moral) values and judgments inscribed in a B-movie culture in which films are deemed to be good-because-bad or bad-because-good. B for BAD cinema invites international film scholars, critics and filmmakers to present their thoughts on badfilm, with a particular focus on the following themes:

1. Cultural value and theory
2. Bad feeling and affect
3. Aesthetic value and bad art
4. Cultural morals and politics
5. Bad film theory and criticism


Plenary speakers include:

Elisabeth Bronfen
J. Hoberman
Angela Ndalianis
Adrian Martin
Ernest Mathijs
Murray Pomerance
Jeffrey Sconce

The Conference Conveners will accept proposals for individual papers or three-speaker panel sessions until November 14 2008.

Abstracts of no more than 250-words and a 100-word biography should be sent to Con Verevis: Con.Verevis@arts.monash.edu.au

http://arts.monash.edu.au/film-tv/news-and-events/2009/bad-cinema.php

RESIDENCIES - Breathe Artist Residencies (Manchester, UK) - Deadline: 31 July 2008

Breathe Artist Residencies

Chinese Arts Centre is seeking 3 artists of Chinese descent to take
part in our Breathe Artist Residency Scheme throughout 2008/9. At
least one of the artists selected will be based in the UK.

Breathe seeks to develop creativity by providing specific
opportunities and a physical space for artists to explore ideas and
make work. Breathe is an open submission scheme and residencies are 3
months in length. In a custom-designed live/work Project Space,
artists are provided with unlimited access to a studio, allowing them
to make work at their own pace and access all the facilities at
Chinese Arts Centre. The Breathe residency includes £1000 materials
budget, £300 travel and research and £20 per diem.

Breathe aims to contribute to the development of a confident Chinese
artistic community, providing inspiration for future generations of
artists.

Deadline for applications 31 July 2008

First residency 6 October – 22 December 2008

Application forms can be downloaded from www.chinese-arts-centre.org

Or contact David Hancock, Residency Coordinator, Chinese Arts Centre,
Market Buildings, Thomas Street, Manchester, M4 1EU.

Email: david.hancock@chinese-arts-centre.org
Web: http://www.chinese-arts-centre.org/

25 June 2008

CALL FOR EXPRESSIONS OF INTEREST - Workshop with Prof David Eng - ANU House, Melbourne (11-12 Dec 2008) Deadline: 1 August






WORKSHOP with Prof. DAVID ENG (U of Pennsylvania, USA)
11-12 December 2008; ANU House, 52 Collins St, Melbourne

This event is primarily a workshop for Early Career Researchers (ECRs – postgraduates and postdoctoral) that focuses on intellectual mentoring and affording ECRs international engagement with their work.


INVITED KEYNOTE: Professor David Eng, U of Pennsylvania, USA

David L. Eng is Professor of English and Comparative Literature and also a core faculty member in the Asian American Studies Program. He received his Ph.D. in comparative literature from the University of California at Berkeley and his B.A. in English from Columbia University. His areas of specialization include Asian American studies, Asian diaspora, psychoanalysis, critical race theory, queer studies, and visual culture. He is author of The Feeling of Kinship: Queer Liberalism and the Racialization of Intimacy (Duke, forthcoming) and Racial Castration: Managing Masculinity in Asian America (Duke, 2001). In addition, he is co-editor with David Kazanjian of Loss: The Politics of Mourning (California, 2003), with Alice Y. Hom of Q & A: Queer in Asian America (Temple, 1998), and with Judith Halberstam and Jose Muñoz of a special issue of the journal Social Text (2005), "What's Queer about Queer Studies Now?". He is currently at work on two new projects, a study of neoliberalism and desire in Chinese cinema and an analysis of political and psychic reparation.


WORKSHOP PLACES are necessarily LIMITED and capped at 10-12 participants. Please submit your Expression of Interest (EOI) form by 1 AUGUST 2008. There are a limited number of bursaries to assist ECRs in travelling to the workshop. These bursaries are competitive and cover airfares/accommodation up to the value of $500.

>> For full EOI guidelines and workshop application form, please contact Dr Tseen Khoo, Monash University.


The workshop is convened by the Asian Australian Studies Research Network, and is also supported by:
  • The ARC Cultural Research Network, and
  • The Australian National University

23 June 2008

CFP - 2008 Annual Conference of the Cultural Studies Assoc of Australia

Call for Papers

2008 Annual conference of the Cultural Studies Association of Australasia

Futures

Kalgoorlie, Western Australia, 6-9 December 2008

Cultural studies has historically concerned itself with the cultural practices of the everyday and the now. However, as a politically motivated discipline, cultural studies has an ongoing preoccupation with cultural, economic, and political change, and thus with futures. The 2008 Cultural Studies Association of Australasia National Conference will interrogate possible and impossible local, national, regional, and global futures.

Our imaginings of the future shape the lived experience of the present and our cultural memory of the past. These imaginings are usually polarised towards the deeply nihilistic or the jubilantly utopian. This conference will address the spaces between real and fictional futures, and the hopes and anxieties that emerge from those spaces.

Confirmed speakers

• Professor Mieke Bal, TBC

• Fred Chaney, Order of Australia, Co-chairman of Reconciliation Australia, former Deputy Chairman of the Australian Native Title Tribunal

• Kim Scott, Australian novelist, winner of the Miles Franklin Award, WA Premier’s Literary Award, and RAKA Kate Challis Award.


Themes

Conference themes and topics might include the future of:

• Landscapes: popular cultural responses to global warming; discourses of evolution; the aesthetics of entropy, erosion, ruins, and wastelands; ghost towns;

• Urbanscapes: retro and futuristic 'burbscapes and cityscapes; future advertising and graffiti; new soundscapes; liquid architectures (modular, programmable, and nanotech);

• Movement: the culture of mobile lifestyles (backpackers, tourists, and caravan parks); animal and human migrations;

• Community: the fate(s) of indigenous and regional communities; future ethnicities and subcultures; ageing and overpopulation;

• Politics: future social movements; neo-imperialism; post-civil society; the collective commons; utopian and preventative policies;

• History: (personal and national) collections, museums and archives; the atrophy of language; life stories; the media as a future archive of the present;

• Bodies: sexualities; genders; virtual; post-human; cyborg;

• The Child: children's utopias; future parenting and pedagogy; changing cultural constructions of childhood; future infantalism;

• Technology - new trends in media and entertainment; emerging trends in, and discourses of, game culture; regional engagements with online communities; fringe cyberculture; future ethnographics;

• Economy - blue sky futures; future food systems; popular representations of gold and instant wealth; trends and discourses of exploration, discovery, and exploitation;

• Aesthetics - popular imaginings of messianic, apocalyptic and utopian futures; new forms of art and art funding.

The conference will be held in the unique regional environment of Kalgoorlie at Western Australia's School of Mines. Kalgoorlie is the historic centre of mining in Western Australia. The Perth-Kalgoorlie pipeline, completed in 1903, was a contentious development that opened up the goldfields and signified a commitment to the future of WA. The town's growth gave rise to satellite industries such as tourism, beer brewing, and sex work, and today Kalgoorlie is a thriving regional city. However, like any industry centred around natural resources, the mining industry there has a finite future. The choice of Kalgoorlie as a venue therefore not only puts into practice the Association's policy of addressing the needs of regional communities, it emphasises that the future is a dynamic driven by tensions between development and sustainability.

The call for panels and refereed papers is now open

Panel Proposals due: July 18

Abstracts (250-300 words) due: September 5

A selection of papers from the conference will be published in a special issue of Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies.

A further publication possiblity will be through Black Swan Press, the imprint of The Centre for Advanced Studies in Australia, Asia and the Pacific (CASAAP)

Abstracts should be emailed to Ron Blaber: R.Blaber@curtin.edu.au

For all other conference enquiries please contact either Leigh Brennan (l.brennan@curtin.edu.au) or Amanda Third (a.third@murdoch.edu.au).

Visit the conference website at:

http://www.csaa2008.curtin.edu.au/

NEW BOOK - Chinese in Australian Fiction, 1888-1988 by Ouyang Yu

Title:      Chinese in Australian Fiction, 1888–1988
Author: Ouyang Yu
ISBN13: 9781604975161
Pages 568
List Price $139.95 / £ 82.95


The first Chinese in Australia are said to have arrived as early as 1818, and since then, many more have made Australia their homeland––the current Chinese population is over half a million. It is therefore not surprising that the Chinese are featured in many Australian literary works.

This book examines the representation of the Chinese in Australian fiction from 1888 to 1988, with an Author Commentary at the end that provides a brief update on the subsequent fictional representations of the Chinese. It begins with an overview of the Chinese in Australian and Chinese history, followed by a theoretical examination of how the Chinese are made the “Other” by Orientalism, racism, and ethnocentrism. It discusses literary texts written over a period of one hundred years from 1888 to 1988.

The study is divided into three major periods of 1888–1901, 1902–1949, and 1950–1988. The first period (1888–1901) deals with the initial attempts to represent the Chinese in fiction as the bad Other by the early Bulletin writers, the Australian responses to the rise of the fear of “the Yellow Peril” in “invasion literature,” and the imperialist will to power over the Chinese in writings set in China by Anglo-Australian writers.

Apart from pursuing the issue of the continued fear and stereotyping of the Chinese in popular writing, the second period (1902–1949) introduces a new phenomenon of literary Sinophilism that dichotomizes the representation of the Chinese and examines the image of Chinese women.

The third period (1950–1988) focuses on the problem of politicisation that polarizes literary attitudes towards the Chinese, and discusses Australia's “Asian writing” as an extension of colonial writing that continues to “Other” the Chinese and explores multicultural writing as an alternative means of representation.

This is an important book that illustrates how the “Other” is represented and will be a valuable book for those in Australian studies, Asian studies, and literary studies.

>> To obtain a copy of this book, please contact Ouyang Yu directly.

CFP - Performance Paradigm - Deadline: 30 Sept 2008

Call for Papers

PERFORMANCE PARADIGM (# 5) 2009

After Effects: Performing the Ends of Memory

This issue of Performance Paradigm investigates the role of performance in the lived experiences and discourses of trauma and memory. Alongside trauma studies, Performance studies foregrounds models of witnessing, embodiment and rehearsal to examine why and how trauma is represented and what work these representations do in the world. For some, performance provides a social space in which to act out as well as work through personal trauma. For others, performance facilitates processes of surrogacy and substitution, becoming a place to create prosthetic memories and to produce proxy witnesses.

The editors invite papers that consider the connection between trauma, memory and performance across a range of theatrical, cultural, social and political sites. Some of the questions we are interested in include the following: what can performance studies bring to our understandings of trauma? What can trauma and memory studies bring to the dramaturgies and exigencies of performance? How do particular performances illuminate or complicate the ethics of representing trauma? How can social and political concerns connect with the personal and pathological dimensions of memory and trauma studies?

Topics might include, but are not limited to:
• national apologies;
• ceremonies of reparation and public memorials;
• documentary, verbatim, and testimonial theatres;
• false memory, false witness, perjury and performance;
• witnessing in/as/through performance;
• site-specific performance and ‘traumascapes’;
• mediatised witnessing and global performance;
• acts of surrogacy, substitution and displacement;
• the relation between the archive and repertoire;
• new modes of perception and spectatorship;
• human rights theatre, communities of memory;
• postmemory, prosthetic memory and displaced embodiment;
• the contaminated logics of the postdramatic and posttraumatic;
• the parallel fortunes of performance studies and trauma studies.

Please send proposals by email, including a short abstract or description to:

Dr. Bryoni Trezise
School of English, Media and Performing Arts
University of New South Wales
Sydney, Australia
(b.trezise@unsw.edu.au)

Caroline Wake
School of English, Media and Performing Arts
University of New South Wales
(cwake@hotmail.com)

The due date for proposals is September 30 2008. Final material will be due by 31 January 2009. Performance Paradigm (#5) will be published in May 2009. Please visit our website for further information and instructions for submission at
www.performanceparadigm.net.

Performance Paradigm is a refereed journal published by the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at UNSW and edited by Helena Grehan, Peter Eckersall and Edward Scheer.

19 June 2008

INVITATION - From Mao to Now - Exhibition Opening, Sydney Olympic Park (28 June 2008)


Invitation: From Mao to Now - Exhibition Opening, Sydney Olympic Park 28th June 2008

What: From Mao to Now exhibition opening
Where: Armory Gallery, Building 18, Newington Armory, Jamieson Street, Sydney Olympic Park

You are invited to attend the opening of this important new exhibition of Chinese and Australian art at Sydney Olympic Park.

Curated by Catherine Croll, the exhibition includes work by more than 75 contemporary artists with links to China. Some are Australian artists who have recently spent time living and working there, while others are members of the Chinese diaspora now resident in Australia. Participants include noted Australian Chinese artist William Yang and award-winning painter George Gittoes. Another component of the exhibition is 65 Chinese sport and propaganda posters from the Mao era never before seen in Australia.

The exhibition is vast in scale and will feature more than 80 two dimensional works, 12 installations and 6 film and video pieces.

The opening event will run from 2.00pm to 4.00pm on Saturday 28th June 2008.

For acceptances only, please RSVP to Tony Nesbitt on 9714 7110 or tony.nesbitt@sopa.nsw.gov.au by Tuesday 24th June 2008


17 June 2008

WORKSHOPS - Writing the Future Workshops in India - Registrations now open (Various dates)

Opening Registration to Writing the Future Workshops in India

Registration has opened for emerging writers from Asia and the Pacific to join established Asian and international authors in workshops as part of the inaugural Asia-Pacific festival of writing in India this October.

The festival, ‘Writing the Future’, is the first international festival in the region to offer writing workshops with recognised local and international writers, together with public readings, and an academic conference that examines the state of contemporary literature from and about the region.

The Festival is hosted by the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, together with other universities and literary organisations in India. It was conceived in Bali last year where an international collaboration of scholars and writers met to form the Asia-Pacific Writing Partnership. The Partnership aims to promote and nurture new writing from the region.

A workshop section of the Festival includes:

Fiction Writing Workshops in Shimla (6-17 October)

Fiction writing workshops will be held over two weeks at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, formerly the Vice Regal Lodge in the former summer retreat of the British Raj in Shimla.

New Delhi Poetry Workshop (21-25 October)

Poetry workshops will be held at the Sanskriti Foundation which runs other residency programmes in collaboration with UNESCO, Asia-Link, Association Française d'Action Artistique and the Fulbright Fellowships, helping to foster understanding between different cultures through the sharing of ideas and life experiences. Participation will be open to 15 Indian poets and 10 from abroad, as well as local Indian and five international teachers.

New Delhi/Mysore/Guwahati Translation Workshops (13-16 October)

Workshops will be run by the Sahitya Akademi (the Indian National Academy of Letters) in collaboration with the Jamia Millia Islamia in Delhi and IIT, Delhi. The workshops will focus on translating writing from Indian languages into English.

The Festival seeks collaboration with international centres of literary translation for this initiative. Approximately 30 participants are expected.

New Delhi Script Writing Workshops (To be confirmed)

Participation in the workshops is open to international participants as well as local Indian writers. Participants accepted into the workshops will be accommodated free of charge, but international participants must seek their own funding from arts bodies and other organisations to cover travel costs.

Registration and enquiries must be directed to apwritingthefuture@gmail.com. More information about the Festival is available on the Asia-Pacific Writing Partnership website: www.apwriters.com

SEMINARS - Rachel Pain and Peter Hopkins - Centre for Cultural Research, UWS (26 June 2008)

Centre for Cultural Research, University of Western Sydney invites all to attend the CCR Seminar Series 2008 featuring

Dr Rachel Pain (University of Durham, UK)
and
Dr Peter Hopkins (University of Newcastle, UK)

Date: Thursday, 26 June
Time: 2.00pm – 4.30pm
Venue: Gallery Floor, Female Orphan School (Building EZ), Parramatta Campus

Afternoon tea and cakes provided

RSVP: Jacqui Kingi j.kingi@uws.edu.au or 9685 9600

Apologies: Kay Anderson k.anderson@uws.edu.au

===================

Contact Zones and Transformatory Moments: Young Refugees, Interaction and Participatory Art

Rachel Pain

This paper reflects on a participatory art project with young people of black African and white British heritage in north east England. The project involved young people working with art to explore their emotional landscapes, and to develop and analyse new research themes. As well as providing ground-up knowledge production and policy outcomes, the project began to foster interactions between groups of young people who lived close by but had rarely spoken to each other. The narrative focuses on key moments in the facilitation of these interactions. I discuss the importance of the materiality of art (the tools) within participatory practices (the doing of it) in contributing to a space where interactions might take place, emphasising a complex interplay across/between actors, materials and space that frames encounters as emergent, transitory, fragile and hopeful. As such, I address the knotty potential for the movement of these new interactions to times and spaces beyond the immediate participatory arena. The analysis thus allows us to interrogate more closely how participation may (and may not) occur; casts light on theorising ‘real’ issues regarding ‘community cohesion’ in everyday lives; and in turn can make a contribution to policy in this area.

Dr Rachel Pain is a social geographer with research interests in fear, violence and community safety; social exclusion and health; gender, youth, old age and intergenerational relations; and qualitative and participatory action research approaches. Her current research involves analysing fear as a metanarrative in the war on terror, and she is currently conducting a participatory action research project with Muslim and white young people, the loose aims of which are to connect ideas about fear and global relations with grounded accounts of the insecurities arising from local contexts and identities in everyday life.

------------

Ethical issues in research with asylum-seeking and refugee children and young people

Peter Hopkins

This paper offers reflections on some of the ethical and methodological issues involved in doing research with asylum-seeking and refugee children and young people. Focusing upon issues of ethical approval and research design, access and obtaining informed consent, privacy and confidentiality and finally dissemination, I demonstrate the ways in which conducting ethical research is often context dependant and varies according to the particular situation, needs and experiences of the children and young people involved. As such, although there are issues that are key to the conduct of ethical research (e.g. minimisation of harm), other issues are more malleable and flexible.

Dr Peter Hopkins’ research interests centre upon critical social geographies, although they also connect with debates within urban, cultural and political geographies. More specifically, he is interested in theoretical and empirical work about: social identities; youth cultures; racism and society; immigration and asylum; and the geographies of religion. His current research includes a focus on youth, religion and identity, including projects with young Sikh men in Scotland and exploring contemporary meanings of religion amongst Scottish Christian youth.


Parramatta Campus Map and Directions http://www.uws.edu.au/about/locations/maps/parramattamap

MEETUP - AA Meetup in Melbourne - 5 July (Pelican, St Kilda)

MELBOURNE ASIAN AUSTRALIAN MEETUP - JULY 2008

... Chatting, hatching plans and other non-emailing activities for Asian Australians and their friends...

The next Melbourne Asian Australian Meetup is planned for Saturday 5 July.

The Asian Australian Meetups are a chance to meet and chat with Asian Australians and their collaborators, friends, partners and other associated folks (note: 'non-Asians' are more than welcome!). The meetups have a very casual vibe. So why not come along?

The details are:

DATE: Sat 5 July 2008
TIME: 10.30AM-12.30 (folks can turn up whenever, and stay for as long/short as they like)
VENUE: Pelican Cafe (16 Fitzroy St, St Kilda)
RSVP: By Thursday 3 July - tseen@yahoo.com

To get announcements of future meet-ups e-mailed to you, visit
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/asianaustmeetups/

Please feel free to forward this on to others...

Hope to see you there!

16 June 2008

PUBLIC LECTURE - Prof Mae Ngai (Columbia University, USA) - 12 July 2008

PUBLIC LECTURE

Professor Mae Ngai, Columbia University, USA

“The True Story of Ah Jake: Language, Translation, and Justice in Late-nineteenth-century Sierra County, California”

The paper examines the murder trial of Ah Jake, an unemployed Chinese goldminer in 1887. It considers the use of pidgin in the trial to think about the social world of the California goldfields in the years following passage of the Chinese exclusion act. Ah Jake was convicted of murdering another Chinese miner, but he was later granted a full pardon by the governor. What role did language and translation play in these outcomes?


Professor Mae NGAI is interested in questions of immigration, citizenship, and nationalism in United States history. She received her Ph.D. from Columbia in 1998 and taught at the University of Chicago before returning to Columbia in 2006. She teaches courses on immigration history, Asian American history, and twentieth-century U.S. history. Ngai is author of Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America (2004), which won the Frederick Jackson Turner prize from the Organization of American Historians and the Littleton-Griswold Prize from the American Historical Association, among other awards. She has written on immigration history and policy matters for the Washington Post, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, the Nation, and the Boston Review. She is now working on two projects, a
biography of Chinese American immigrant brokers and interpreters and a comparative study of Chinese gold miners in the nineteenth-century North American West, Australia, and South Africa.

DATE/TIME: Saturday 12 July, 11am
VENUE: Museum of Chinese Australian History, 22 Cohen Place, Melbourne
RSVP by: Wednesday 9 July (tseen.khoo@arts.monash.edu.au / (03) 9662 2888)

FREE entry – refreshments provided.

This event is co-sponsored by the:

>> You can download the PDF flyer of this event HERE.

12 June 2008

NEW BOOK: Overcoming Passion for Race in Malaysia (edited by David C. L. Lim)

NEW BOOK: Overcoming Passion for Race in Malaysia
Edited by David C. L. Lim

OFFICIAL BOOK SITE and ORDERING INFORMATION HERE.


Table of contents


Readership

About the author(s)

BOOK LAUNCH - Kam Louie's "The Cambridge Companion to Modern Chinese Culture" (Melbourne; 3 July 2008)

[Click on image for full size]


Cambridge University Press invites you to the launches of...

The Cambridge Companion to Modern Chinese Culture by Kam Louie and The Idea of Indonesia: A History by Robert Elson

to be launched by

Prof. Stephanie Donald from University of Technology, Sydney and
Prof. Anthony Reid, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore

Sebel Albert Park Hotel - 65 Queens Road, Melbourne in the Grand Waldorf ballroom (Grand Waldorf 5 area) Thursday 3rd July, at 3.30pm

Refreshments will be provided.

CFP - Journal of Intercultural Studies (Taylor & Francis)






Journal of Intercultural Studies
showcases innovative scholarship about emerging cultural formations, intercultural negotiations and contemporary challenges to cultures and identities. JICS is released quarterly and comprises of two general issues and two special issues per volume.









We welcome theoretically informed articles from diverse disciplines that contribute to the following areas:


  • Nationhood, citizenship and racialisation;
  • Theories of diaspora, transnationalism, hybridity and 'border crossing';
  • Ethnicity, postcolonialism and indigeneity;
  • Intercultural knowledge, multiculturalism, race and cultural identity.

Journal of Intercultural Studies is an international, interdisciplinary journal that particularly encourages contributions from scholars in cultural studies, sociology, gender studies, political science, cultural geographers, urban studies, race and ethnic studies. It is a peer-reviewed, critical scholarly publication that features articles, review essays and book reviews.

Regular special issues provide stimulating, focused engagement with topical political, social and theoretical questions. The most recent include: Transnational Families: Emotions and Belonging (29:3 [2008] guest-edited by Maruška Svašek), Indian Diaspora in Transnational Contexts (29:1 [2008]; guest-edited by William Safran, Ajaya Kumar Sahoo and Brij V. Lal) and Negotiating Belonging: Migration and Generations (28.3 [2007]; guest-edited by Zlatko Skrbis, Loretta Baldassar and Scott Poynting).

Submissions are ideally between 5000-7000 words. Contributors should bear in mind the journal aims and address an international and interdisciplinary audience. Electronic submission via email only. The journal also accepts special issue submission proposals. Send all correspondence and submissions to: jics@tandf.com.au

Editors: Tseen Khoo (Monash University, Australia) and Vince Marotta (Deakin University, Australia),

Associate Editor: Paula Muraca (Monash University, Australia)

For further information about the Journal of Intercultural Studies, visit http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/07256868.asp

CFP - "Legacies 09" (Public Memory Research Centre conference) - USQ, Toowoomba, Qld; 13-14 Feb 2009

PUBLIC MEMORY RESEARCH CENTRE CONFERENCE 2009

UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN QUEENSLAND, TOOWOOMBA, QLD
13-14 FEBRUARY 2009

‘LEGACIES 09’

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS:

SYLVIA LAWSON, WRITER, HISTORIAN, CULTURAL CRITIC

PROFESSOR MARILYN LAKE, HISTORIAN, LA TROBE UNIVERSITY

According to John Bodnar, ‘Public Memory is a body of beliefs and ideas about the past that help a public or society understand its past, present, and by implication, its future.’ In distinction from conventional history, Public Memory research fashions a relation between past and present which, whether real or imagined, asserts the important shaping spirit of the past and its persistence in everyday life. Public Memory is also concerned with the past as a potential resource for new social directions: every act of scholarly retrieval might contribute to a project of cultural renewal.

Under the general theme of ‘Legacies’, the conference invites submissions for individual papers and proposals for panel sessions or group presentations in the areas of

    • Culture, retrieval and revival
    • Memory and the practice of everyday life
    • History, ideology and refashioning the past
    • Colonialism and its aftermaths
    • Indigenous, ethnic and multicultural memories
    • Public memory and national identities
    • Memory and myth
    • Public memory as false consciousness

‘LEGACIES 09’ welcomes papers or presentations in disciplinary and inter-disciplinary fields such as Anthropology, History, Literature, Theatre Studies, Visual and Performing Arts, Multicultural Studies, Indigenous Studies, Whiteness Studies, Gender Studies, Queer Theory, Media and Communications, Sociology and Political Theory. ‘LEGACIES 09’ invites submissions from professional academics, postgraduate students and non-academic cultural practitioners.

PLEASE DIRECT ABSTRACTS (300 WORDS) OR CONFERENCE ENQUIRIES TO

Dr Brian Musgrove Dr Lara Lamb

musgrove@usq.edu.au lamb@usq.edu.au

07 46 311043 07 46 311069

SUBMISSIONS CLOSE 30 SEPTEMBER 2008

ACCEPTANCES NOTIFIED BY 31 OCTOBER 2008

WEBSITE WITH FULL CONFERENCE DETAILS ACCESSIBLE 1 JULY 2008

NEW RESOURCE - Asian-Australian Performance Directory

Performance 4a proudly announces The Asian-Australian Performance Directory - a free online directory for performance related artists with skills working with Asian-Australian themes.

Regularly consulted by casting agents and directors, Performance 4a identified a need for a specialised database, to complement existing casting resources. The Asian-Australian Performance Directory is unique in that it will include:

  • professional and non-professional talent
  • a broad range of performance-related artists - actors, singers, dancers, musicians, designers, directors, choreographers, dramaturges, writers and
  • producers – with specialised skills and knowledge of Asia-Australia
  • and it’s completely free

The Asian-Australian Performance Directory can be accessed via the new Performance 4a website.

Performance 4a (formerly Theatre 4a) is a not for profit organisation dedicated to producing inspiring Asian-Australian performance. The new name reflects the company’s support for a broad range of performance, and the multidisciplinary nature of much contemporary theatre.

Led by Artistic Director Rick Lau and a high profile committee headed by writer, broadcaster and actor Annette Shun Wah, the company has staged productions at the Performance Space in Sydney and The Studio at the Sydney Opera House. Its productions have also toured Shanghai, Hong Kong and Singapore.

Performance 4a’s dynamic new website and directory is a valuable knowledge base, with the latest news and information about Asian-Australian performance, and coming soon – an online forum. It’s not only a great way to find talent, but also fosters an exchange of ideas so artists can network, collaborate, promote and support one another’s creative endeavours.

Log on now http://www.performance4a.org.au
For further information: admin@performance4a.org.au

4 June 2008

EXHIBITION - Layli Rakhsha (Melbourne; 6-19 June 2008)


[click on image for full size invitation]

Layli Rakhsha

EACH NOTE UNVEILS A PRICELESS MYSTERY


open 6 June at 6 pm runs to 19 June 2008

322 Brunswick St, Fitroy, Melbourne



CONFERENCES - Upcoming conferences focused on cultural diversity

PODCAST - Anti-Chinese Riots in Brisbane 1888 (SBS)

SBS radio package on the 1888 anti-Chinese riots

Blurb:

Members of Brisbane's Chinese community are trying to erect a memorial to a violent anti-Chinese riot in the city 120 years ago.

Newspaper reports at the time reported 2000 people in four hours destroyed every Chinese business in central Brisbane.

The riot came just weeks before an intercolonial conference in June 1888.

Its purpose was to consider the so-called "Chinese question" and it laid the foundations of the White Australia policy.

Brisbane correspondent Stefan Armbruster with this report.

==> Podcast found HERE.

ART EXHIBITION - Van Rudd's 'banned' painting (Melbourne)

[click on image for full size invitation]

SCHOLARSHIPS - 2009 Fulbright Scholarship applications now open (Deadline: 31 August 2008)

2009 Fulbright Scholarship applications now open

Valued at up to $A40,000, Fulbright scholarships are open to Australian citizens to undertake research or study in the United States for 3–12 months. Scholarships can be started between 1 July 2009 and 30 June 2010.

Applications are open to Postgraduates (to do research related to their Australian PhD or enrol in a US degree), Postdoctoral, Professional and Senior Scholars from any field of study.

For further information and application forms see the section 'Fulbright Scholarships/For Australian citizens' on our website at www.fulbright.com.au

Applications close 31 August 2008.

Enquiries should be forwarded to:

Kate Lyall, Administrative Officer
Australian-American Fulbright Commission
P O Box 9541, Deakin ACT 2600
E: katelyall@fulbright.com.au
W: www.fulbright.com.au

SEMINAR - Newcomers & the ‘Locally Established’: Indian overseas students and the local Indian community in Melbourne, Australia (UTS; 27 June 2008)

Newcomers & the ‘Locally Established’:
Indian overseas students and the local Indian community in Melbourne, Australia

Friday 27th June, 6pm
Venue: University of Technology Sydney (Bldg3, rm210, enter via 755 Harris St)

As statistics show, the propensity of Indian overseas students in Australia applying for permanent residency (PR, in short) after graduation is very high; nearly three quarters are expected to do so. As the number of Indian overseas students is increasing considerably, so does the number of permanently settled Indians in Australia. It is on the ambivalent relationship between Indian overseas students and the locally established Indian community that I wish to focus in this presentation. Central to my analysis will be the role the local Indian community plays in the lives of Indian overseas students; how they see and interact with each other as well as how they profit from each other. It will be argued that Indian students are seen to be a threat to the image the Indian community has of itself; an image which they also ‘imagine’ (white/Anglo-Saxon) Australians to have of them. Although Indian students generally come to Australia to undertake their Masters’ degrees, the fact that the majority enrol at lower ranking ‘cheap’ universities makes them ‘suspect’ in the eyes of the community. The jobs they seem to find after graduation (taxi driving, waiting tables) further threatens the image the community has of itself. In order to analyze this further I will make use of anthropological literature on the Indian diaspora as well as the way success and failure have been conceptualized in the literature on migration and transnationalism.


Short Curriculum Vitae

Michiel Baas obtained his BA degree in International Management in 1998, and studied Cultural Anthropology & Non-Western Sociology from 2000-2003. He did research among the IT professionals of Bangalore (India) for his MA thesis and graduated (cum laude) in December 2003. In March 2004 he joined the Amsterdam School for Social Science Research (University of Amsterdam) as a PhD student. His project is entitled: “Flexible Transnationalism - Displaced Indian Overseas Students In Between Legality and Illegality in India and Australia. If all goes well his dissertation will be submitted in July, 2008. He is also currently the branch office coordinator of the International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS) in Amsterdam.