17 December 2006

CFP - ASAL Conference 2007: 'The Colonial Present : Australian Writing for the 21st Century' (1-4 July 2007; University of Queensland)

The 2007 ASAL (Association for the Study of Australian Literature) conference will explore 'the temporal continuum of a past that "is not even past", and the austral convergences of literatures across the Southern hemisphere'.

Proposals for 20-minute papers are invited on the following themes:


  • legacies, complicities and implications across the South;
  • transnational and postcolonial frameworks in current criticism;
  • the role of testimony, memoir and life narrative;
  • the presence of poetry;
  • the historical novel and millennial writing.
Please send 300-word abstracts along with a brief biography to:

Gillian Whitlock (g.whitlock@uq.edu.au) or

Chris Tiffin (C.Tiffin@uq.edu.au)

by 23 February 2007.

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Notice for Postgraduates: Partial Financial Assistance

Postgraduates may apply to the conference convenors of ASAL 2007 for financial assistance towards the cost of essential travel and accommodation.

Applications should include:

• details of the degree in which you are enrolled;
• an estimate/quote of anticipated expenses; and
• notice of any financial support that may be provided by your institution (or other sources).

ASAL's policy is to award financial assistance to postgraduates on the basis of:

a. The demonstrated necessity of the funding.
b. The applicant's distance from the proposed activity.
c. The acceptance of the abstract detailing the applicant's proposed conference paper.

Preference will be given to applicants who are not in a position to receive funding from other sources. Postgraduates wanting to apply should signal their interest when they submit their abstracts to the convenors.

14 December 2006

CFP - Edited book - Everyday Multiculturalism (Deadline for abstracts: 16 Feb 2007)

EVERYDAY MULTICULTURALISM
Amanda Wise & Selvaraj Velayutham (editors)

Following a successful conference on Everyday Multiculturalism organised by the Centre for Research on Social Inclusion at Macquarie University, Australia, we have received expressions of interest from a number of publishers keen on publishing a collection on this topic. They have encouraged us to attract a good international spread of papers. While research on multiculturalism and racism is well developed, qualitative research into everyday modes of lived multiculturalism remains fairly limited. We invite papers that explore quotidian experiences of cultural difference and diversity. Quotidian diversity has been variously described as 'togetherness-in-difference' (Ang 2000), and 'inhabiting difference' (Hage 1998). We take the term to mean those perspectives on cultural diversity which recognize the embodied or inhabited nature of living with cultural difference.

We welcome expressions of interest from scholars doing grounded research on the topic of multiculturalism which explores the ways in which people experience and (dis)engage with cultural difference using case studies from around the world but which also make broader theoretical points relevant beyond the locality involved. Accessible theoretical papers which engage with the concept of the everyday are also welcome.

We are interested in papers that explore the intersections and relationships between cultural groups, rather than research taking a single ethnic group as a focus.

Papers can also examine:
  • Interconnections between the everyday and larger discourses of multiculturalism and nation;
  • Everyday affinities and solidarities
  • Everyday disjunctures, discomforts, and racisms between cultures;
  • Modes of living with and across difference in cities, suburbia or regional areas;
  • Food, neighbouring, shopping, school, sport, etc. as sites for multicultural encounters and negotiations at the neighbourhood level;
  • Multicultural place-sharing and battles over place identity and belonging.
Perspectives from any discipline are welcome, especially sociology, anthropology, cultural studies, and human geography. Please send a proposed title, a 500 word abstract and a short bio by 16 February 2007 to Banu Senay - banu.senay@scmp.mq.edu.au

Accepted contributions (5-7,000) words will have to be completed by 31 July 2007 with a view to publication in early 2008.

For all enquiries please contact:
Dr Selvaraj Velayutham - selvaraj.velayutham@mq.edu.au
or
Dr Amanda Wise - amanda.wise@mq.edu.au

REPORT - "Transnational Dialogues on Bollywood" by Amit Sarwal (Conference held 30 Nov 2006; Melbourne)

On Thursday 30th November 2006, The Australian National University and Monash University jointly organised a one-day conference titled “Transnational Dialogues on Bollywood: Australian Perspectives” at the Monash Law Chambers, Melbourne.

The convenors of this conference, Debjani Ganguly (ANU) and Andrew Hassam (Monash University) succeeded in bringing together a group of scholars from India (Makarand Paranjape, Anjali Gera Roy, Nagamallika G.) and Australia (Andrew Hassam, Debjani Ganguly, Vijay Mishra, Goldie Osuri) to “explore the transnational impact of Bollywood on public spheres around the globe and to assess its contribution to creative industries in Australia.”

The conference addressed the following themes, with particular reference to the Australian context:
  • Transnational circulation of Bollywood as a marker of Indianness
  • Bollywood as a shared cultural idiom among the Indian diaspora
  • Translation of Bollywood themes, genres, styles into various popular cultural forms around the world (e.g. the Melbourne Commonwealth Games, new media art, intercultural youth films)
  • Impact of Bollywood on material culture, such as food, fashion and fitness
  • Production, distribution and reception of Bollywood films
  • Bollywood’s contribution to creative industries
>>> READ AMIT SARWAL'S FULL REPORT (MS-Word doc).

Please Note:
A follow-up workshop is in the process of being planned for January 2008 at the Centre for English Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.

Scholars who are interested in participating can contact Prof. Makarand Paranjape for more information: makarand@mail.jnu.ac.in or makarand.paranjape@gmail.com

8 December 2006

CFP - Moving Cultures, Shifting Identities conference (3-5 Dec 2007; Flinders U, SA)

This conference will examine issues of migration, transnational connection, displacement heritage, global space and cultural memory created by the movements of peoples between cultures in the modern world.

Moving Cultures, Shifting Identities will explore the cultural connections between homelands and new lands, and the complexities of reshaping cultural identities and shifting allegiances between cultures of departure and cultures of arrival. The conference will have three main streams:

1. The public policy stream will cover issues of economics, population, forced migration, security, “core values”, education and the managing of cultural impacts of migration.

2. The history of migration stream will include sessions on pre- and post-World War Two migration, recent arrivals and diasporic communities.

3. The Cultural Migration stream will include sessions on memory, writing, language, cultural maintenance and sustainability, and the plurality of migrant identities.

Conference themes
Papers are invited on the following:
• The demographics of people flow: who moves where? And why?
• Forced migration in the Asia Pacific
• Cultural, political and economic factors shaping migration. How are connections made?
• Bordering the nation: migration and national security
• Transnationalism, citizenship and sovereignty
• Gender and generational issues in the migration experience
• Linguistics, diaspora and migration• Settling down, settlement patterns and return migration
• Can multi-cultures and multi-ethnicities produce one nation?
• Multiculturalism
• Language maintenance in the new culture
• Foodways
• Migration, place and situated identities
• Connections with the new place and (re)negotiating with the old
• Home and Away: What is transferred from the home culture to the new culture? What cannot fit in the baggage?
• Imaginary homelands: life-writing, creative writing and film responses to the migration experience
• Unsettlement: the idea of the settler colony
• Cultural memory: heritage and exchange
• Transplanted cultures as tourist attractions
• Fusion, “cultural hybridity”, cosmopolitanism

Guest speakers
The conference will feature plenary session addresses by leading international scholars in the field, as well as parallel presentations by researchers and policy-makers.

Proposals for panel sessions will be considered as well as abstracts for individual papers. Panel proposals should include a theme for the session, the names of all speakers, the titles of their papers, and a session summary of 250-300 words.

Abstracts of 250-300 words should be submitted for each paper, whether they are included in a panel session proposal or not. Where abstracts are intended for a proposed panel session, this should be indicated on the abstract.

Abstracts and session proposals should be sent to:
Nena Bierbaum
School of Humanities
Flinders University
GPO Box 2100
Adelaide, South Australian 5001

or by email to nena.bierbaum@flinders.edu.au by 31 March 2007.

All abstracts will be refereed. Further information may be obtained from the Flinders Humanities Research Centre for Cultural Heritage and Cultural Exchange website.

Moving Cultures, Shifting Identities is a conference organised by the Flinders Humanities Research Centre for Cultural Heritage and Cultural Exchange, the Centre for Research into New Literatures in English (CRNLE) and Flinders International Asia Pacific (FIAP).

CONFERENCE CONTACT
Nena Bierbaum, School of Humanities, Flinders University, SA.
Ph: (+61 8) 82012578 or 82012257
Fax: (+61 8) 82013635

7 December 2006

NEW SPECIAL ISSUE - ACRAWSA E-Journal "Queer Race"

NOTE: For access to full text, ACRAWSA membership is required. Visit the ACRAWSA site for more information.

Special Issue: "Queer Race" 2.2 (2006)
Edited by Damien W. Riggs

You can view issue abstracts HERE.

Of particular interest to Asian Australian Studies are the following:

"THE (GAY) SCENE OF RACISM: FACE, SHAME AND GAY ASIAN MALES"
GILBERT CALUYA
As adept as we have become in tracing the discursive and institutional contours of contemporary Australian racisms, such a focus sometimes shifts attention away from the ‘lived experience’ of racism, in Fanon’s sense. What does it mean to face racism? What does it mean for gay Asian men to face racism on the gay scene? How is it possible to face racism? Indeed, do we face racism or does racism ‘face’ us? Drawing on autoethnographic research, this essay focuses on the lived experience of anti-Asian racism on the gay scene. It analyses cultural examples of racial wounding on the gay scene to tease out the constitutive role of shame for gay Asian men’s racial-sexual subjectivities.

"WHAT A DRAG! FILIPINA/WHITE AUSTRALIAN RELATIONS IN THE ADVENTURES OF PRISCILLA QUEEN OF THE DESERT"
ELAINE LAFORTEZA
This paper tracks the ways in which the deployment of Orientalist logic (in)forms the Australian film The Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert (1994) and responses to the film. I argue that Orientalism within Priscilla privileges a white hegemony that denies the potentialities of queer as destabilising normative coherence. I focus on the white protagonists’ relationship with Cynthia, the Filipina character, in order to interrogate how whiteness and Orientalism (in)forms their contact with one another, and I process queer (to a heterosexist social order) characters as normative protagonists because of their whiteness. Here, I insinuate my own readings of the film to show that while Orientalist whiteness shapes the film, it also produces and is produced by perceptual practices that deploy investments in and/or resignify the scope of white Orientalism. I track this simultaneous affirmation and reconceptualisation of normative structures through the characters’ use of drag. Such impermanence maintains whiteness as the speaking/subject position. Consequently, queer potentialities for extending the scope of white Orientalism cannot eventuate. This paper pushes towards recognising whiteness and Orientalism as integral facets of queerness within Priscilla and through responses to the film. With this, the multiple ways in which queer identities are experienced can be addressed.

"I THINK YOU’RE THE SMARTEST RACE I’VE EVER MET: RACIALISED ECONOMIES OF QUEER MALE DESIRE"
ALAN HAN
This paper explores how queer white men become both the desiring subjects and desirable objects of the queer male gaze. By analysing the personal experiences of queer Asian men, this paper argues that queer white men claim possession of desire as capital through racialised economies of queer male desire. These economies privilege queer white men by racialising queer Asian men and other non-white queer men, and ascribes them desirability according to the queer white male gaze. By racialising nonwhite queer men, queer white men’s whiteness is unracialised, and so, conceals their possession of desire as a white possession. I argue that it is only by exploring how queer white men claim possession of desire as capital within these racialised economies of queer male desire, that we can consider how they dominate the queer male gaze.

CULTURAL EVENT - Chutney Generations (Liverpool Regional Museum, NSW; 16 December 2006)

Join us for Chutney Generations> on Saturday 16 December from 4 - 8pm
Liverpool Regional Museum, cnr Congressional Drive and Hume Highway.

Chutney, a salsa of tamarind, mint, coriander or tomato ground together into a tangy flavour is the metaphor for the cultural extravaganza that is Chutney Generations.

The exhibition celebrates the heritage of the Australian-Fijian-Indian commmunity, Liverpool’s largest ethnic group, while highlighting their contribution towards multicultural Australia.

Join us for what promises to be a fun and interactive day of dancing, live music, fashion parades, food sampling, henna painting and sari wearing.

To be officially launched by Paul Lynch MP, Member for Liverpool.

Free event. RSVPs appreciated by Wed 13 December.
phone: (02) 9821 1121, email: reception@casulapowerhouse.com
www.casulapowerhouse.com

1 December 2006

RECENT SPECIAL JOURNAL ISSUE - Journal of Chinese Australia ("Rituals, ceremonies and processions")

The special issue of Journal of Chinese Australia titled, "Rituals, ceremonies and processions," was published in October 2006.

Articles include:

  • Michael Williams, "Departed friends."
  • Kevin Wong Hoy and Patricia Monaghan-Jamieson, "Chinese feasts and festivals in colonial Australia."
  • Drew Cottle and Angela Keys, "Building the bridge of solidarity: The politics of the Chinese Youth League in Australia, 1939-73."
  • Cora Trevarthen, "After the gold is gone: Chinese communities in northeast Victoria, 1861-1914."

JCA is an online journal dedicated to providing access to research and resources on the history and culture of Chinese people in Australia. It is a place for family and community researchers, historians and students to share their ideas and questions.

NEW JOURNAL ISSUE - Issue 2 of Aotearoa Ethnic Network Journal launched

Issue 2 of the AEN Journal was formally launched yesterday at Creative New Zealand's Auckland Office.

Now available online, the issue focuses on creativity, identity and ethnicity. A timely topic considering that national identity is one of three strategic policy goals of government. This new issue is infused with contributions from writers, poets, visual artists and film makers. We contextualise this with writing by leading academics, an architect and from creative organisations and the museum sector.

The AEN Journal includes poetry, prose and visual arts. It presents a diverse array of ideas, with twenty articles drawn from Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia, Hawaii and the UK.

Contributors include the Governor General Anand Satyanand, Athena Gavriel, Catherine Nesus, Ellen Altschuler, Fe Sarmiento, Helen Bartle, Hye Rim Lee, Ian Clothier, Jameela Siddiqi, Julie Roberts, Karlo Mila, Mallika Krishnamurthy, Manase Lua, Natasha Beckman, Nigel Murphy, 'Okusitino Mahina, Pip Cheshire, Robert Sullivan, Sandor Lau, Sapna Samant, Sean Cubitt, Te Aouru Biddle and Vicky Te Puhi-o-Te Arawa Rangi.

This issue of the AEN Journal makes the point that creativity builds bridges and creates understanding within and between people.

Edited and designed by Wairua Consulting's Andy Williamson and Ruth DeSouza, the AEN Journal aims to create a space for critical conversations that help us shape an exciting and ethnically diverse New Zealand.

Wairua Consulting is proud to be a member of Te Ngira: The NZ Diversity Action Programme.

The AEN Journal is a free open-access journal and can be read online or download as individual articles or in full from http://journal.aen.org.nz