Celebrate the opening of a brand new gallery space in the heart of Melbourne’s CBD. Bringing together over thirty years of experience as well as a fresh focus on Asia Pacific contemporary art work, welcome Melbourne International Fine Art (MiFA).
MiFA directors Bryan Collie and Mikala Tai invite you to the opening of MiFA’s inaugural exhibition, Asia Now.
11.00 Tai Chi Performance
11.30 and 2.30: Talks by artists including AASRN member Mayu Kanamori and Lucy Dann, Pia Johnson, Sara Lindsay and consultants Santy Saptari and Deborah Salter.
The Myer Foundation Arts and Humanities Small Grants Program
The current priority areas for this scheme include:
To build capacity of the individual through ensuring that professional artists gain access to training, development and mentoring.
Develop new works by individual Australian artists and small and medium-sized organisations in the following areas: Indigenous arts; Regional areas; and Experimental and emerging art forms.
Projects that support the Humanities, particularly those that contribute to a broad understanding of and engagement with the Humanities.
The program does not fund travel and accommodation costs or the purchase of equipment. The closing dates for expressions of interest are: 28 April 2010, 28 July 2010, and 29 September.
Filmed by Doan Nguyen, Vietnamese Australian around Brisbane.
Free screening: Sunday 18 April 2010, 2pm
at the Schonell Theatre,
University of Queensland, St Lucia Campus
Home of Strangers is a feature film, professionally made by UQ staff and students in 2009 to raise funds to support an orphanage in Vietnam. The film premiered at the Schonell and then Melbourne in August 2009. Special DVD releases will be available with the Director's cut, behind the scenes, and interviews.
Call for Papers: Special Issue of Social Text CHINA AND THE HUMAN
Edited by David L. Eng, Teemu Ruskola, and Shuang Shen
We are soliciting essays that investigate critically the relationship between China and the human as subjects of law, politics, bio-politics, political economy, labor, medicine, science, technology, religion, and culture. By juxtaposing China and the human, we do not assume either concept as a pre-given object of knowledge. Though we place the terms in a comparative context, we seek neither to prove the ultimate sameness of humans qua humans nor to provide a static description of essential human differences between China and the West—across space and time, through the global and the local. Instead, we hope to track the epistemological career and language of the human by thinking China as a set of relational, differential, and contrapuntal events. Without assuming a singular, pre-given China with fixed borders in space or time, we would like to analyze the invocation and articulation of the human in specific historical and geo-political contexts.
The term human interpellates subjects as living organisms, legal and economic individuals, and political and cultural actors. It helps to articulate the ways we exist within and across the boundaries that nation-states imagine as their natural and material grounds. Yet not all nations or civilizations evince their “humanity” equally or coevally. If the concepts of the modern nationstate and the human are two of the most important and totalizing categories of the European Enlightenment, how have Enlightenment conceptions of political subjectivity, the nation-state, and the human configured China historically, and how do they fit together today? While the nation-state persists as the dominant political model for the articulation of the universal, China remains a troubled and troubling subject both of and for this political legacy. Likewise, the human is regarded as both absolutely universal and utterly unique, yet the Chinese instance often disrupts these same assumptions as well. What “alternative” universals inform Chinese conceptions of the human and its political, economic, and social development? Given the influential role of the Chinese state in most aspects of social life, is it possible today to conceptualize the human outside of nation-states’ disciplinary roles and apparatuses? Indeed, does the concept of the human always exist in a dialectical or privileged relationship to the nation-state and/or between nation-states? If not, what new forms of the human might emerge beyond these encounters on translocal, transregional, and transnational scales? Again, we are less interested in substituting one set of idealized (Western) norms with another set of (Chinese) universals for understanding the human than in exploring those instances that challenge, exceed, and fall outside of these norms and universals in both locations.
Recent scholarship concerning genocide, statelessness, and terror in political theory; sovereignty, decolonization, and development in postcolonial studies; and bio-politics, disease control, and the human/animal divide in science studies and evolutionary biology have drawn renewed critical attention to the problem of the human, the inhuman, the non-human, and the humanly unthinkable as well as to predicaments of humanness, humanity, and humanism. The following queries cover a broad terrain, but what unites them is our desire not to take the notion of China or the category of the human as given, but to consider them in constant tension to one other.
Possible topics might address:
• Institutions of knowledge, regimes of authenticity, and technologies of dissemination that define and discipline the question of the human in the imperial and post-imperial Chinese context and elsewhere.
• The human as a traveling concept, a discourse of diapora, a contact zone, an alternative mode of modernity, and a political, social, and aesthetic form with no singular referent.
• Scientific, religious, and cultural conceptions of the body and the mind that underwrite differential conceptions of the human, humanness, and humanity in China and the West.
• The human as subject of development, where development implies not just radical change in people’s immediate natural or social environment, but the increasing incorporation of global capital and labor, the rule of law, and attendant ideologies of a new universalism and enlightenment.
• Historical and contemporary framings of Chinese humanity as particular and excludable from a (Western) international order beset by competing notions of space and time. Epistemological assumptions embedded in discourses that posit the West as universal and China as particular, and the constitutive political, economic, and/or cultural oppositions that make these categories intelligible in the first instance.
• The status of revolutionary, socialist, and capitalist modernity in China today, in particular the human as subject of emancipation in the (post-)socialist setting.
• The human as subject of law, science, and medicine in the face of political unrest, natural disaster, disease control, and contagion (SARS, AIDS).
• The human subject in a nationalist context where conceptualization of power, the body, sexuality, sexual difference, racialism, and disease increasingly exceed the boundaries of the nation-state. The multiplicity of these operations in regard to differences between the country and the city, the coastal regions and the hinterland, as well as different political and geographic “Chinas”—e.g. the Mainland, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the diaspora.
• The problem of human rights and/in China, one indexing a longer history that haunts an uneven genealogy of the human and its attendant universals, marking the clash of liberal and collective forms of political organization, and the cleaving of civil rights- from human rights-based claims.
• Strategies of the dominant Han majority to exclude “minority” and other subjects from full (Chinese) humanity, mobilizing the term to animate internal differentiations of class, gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, region, religion, and culture.
• Recourse to the rhetoric of “human” and “the humanistic spirit” as an index of the national, nationalism, national crisis, national ascension, and national resolution.
• The human as a concept whose manifestation is conditioned by specific historical incidents, but also reflected in long-standing Confucian, Buddhist, Christian, Islamic, and other religious and philosophical traditions.
In addition to standard academic articles, we are open to alternative forms of submissions, such as short essays, memoirs, reviews, photo-essays, and images (pending production approval). Essays must be no longer than 8000 words, and the deadline for submission is 1 July 2010, though the co-editors are happy to discuss abstracts and prospective topics beforehand with potential contributors. Submissions should be emailed to all three co-editors: deng@english.upenn.edu, teemu.ruskola@emory.edu, shuang.shen@att.net
Date: Friday 9 April 2010, 6pm
(note not the first Friday this month, due to Easter)
Admission $2 All Welcome
Venue: Jenny Florence Room, 3rd Floor, Ross House, 247 Flinders Lane, Melbourne (between Swanston and Elizabeth Sts)
Topic: Three approaches to telling the stories of Chinese-Australian families - A panel of papers from Chinese Australian Family Historians of Victoria Inc (CAFHOV)
Speakers: Sophie Couchman, Robyn Ansell, Barbara Nichol
The Chinese Australian Family Historians of Victoria (CAFHOV) is a group of people who gather on the first Saturday of very month to discuss issues related to their research into Chinese-Australian family history. These were the papers presented by members of the group at the 'Dragon Tails Conference' held last year in Ballarat.
Sophie Couchman - 'Remembering Chinatown': The history behind a self guided audio tour of Melbourne's Little Bourke Street
Since the early work of labour historians in the 1970s our knowledge of the history of Chinese in Australia has expanded enormously. The challenge is to bring these understandings to the broader Australian public. This paper explores the difficulties and joys of practically applying current perspectives in Chinese-Australian history to a commercial product aimed at the general public.
Robyn Ansell - The Wives of Hin Yung and Ah Whay
The Irish-Chinese connection is illustrated by this transition across one generation - from shame to sobriety, from goldfield survivor to pillar of the community. Creswick and Maryborough are the setting of the story.
Barbara Nichol - Chinese Restaurant Children negotiating Australian lives
We love stories of those valiant pioneers who tamed the bush, but what about the people who pioneered the urban landscape? The early post-federation stories of Melbourne's Chinese restaurant families will be the focus of this paper. 'Restaurant children' recognised the importance of fulfilling the
obligations of their Chinese heritage, yet at the same time were negotiating their futures as Australians. They tend not to be described as 'pioneers', yet in many ways their struggles were just as valiant and the obstacles they negotiated were no less daunting.
Talk followed by an informal, inexpensive meal in a nearby Chinatown restaurant.
Double Vision: Biennial Australian Studies Conference
An international interdisciplinary conference organised by the International Australian Studies Association
25-26 November 2010
The University of Sydney
Call For Papers
Since the 2008 InASA conference took place the Copenhagen climate change conference has sharpened discussion about the environment; the election of a new American president has shifted the international political landscape; an earthquake in Chile has resonated both physically and emotionally in Australia; the federal government has released new policies that re-orient Australian history education and the health system and has continued the Northern Territory intervention; the AFL and A-League have released details of their western Sydney teams and more gold has been won in the Olympics. In the face of continuing change our 2010 conference again seeks papers from scholars re-envisioning 'Australia'.
Double Vision is an interdisciplinary conference, so it seeks to bring together scholars from across the humanities and social sciences whose research focuses on Australia to discuss the ideas, theories, themes and methodologies that animate their work. It is this breadth of perspectives that we believe will be part of the excitement of the conference.
Though 'Australia' is the focus the organisers are interested in imaginative takes on the object of study. They especially welcome work that explores: Australia in its region but also work on regional Australia; comparative work on Australia; research that locates Australia in a global vision; and projects on Australia’s past, present and future. Other themes for papers might include, but are not confined to:
Environment and Change
Australia and/in the Pacific Rim
Popular cultures
Memory and Memorial
Indigenising Knowledge
New histories, old histories and curricula
Re-orienting the Social
The conference is designed for postgraduates, early career researchers and senior researchers to present new and innovative work.
Abstracts Due: Friday June 4, 2010
Notification of Acceptance: Friday June 18, 2010
Please include: paper title, 200 word abstract, full name and contact details. Send to:catriona.elder@sydney.edu.au
Conference Organisers:
Catriona Elder and Ariadne Vromen
University of Sydney
Found in Translation: Textual Explorations of Australia and the World
An international conference to be held at the Monash Prato Centre (near Florence)
20-25 September 2010
Hosted by the National Centre for Australian Studies, in association with the School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics, Monash University.
Far from being considered as a linguistic activity only, translation is increasingly seen as bridging, and sometimes broadening, gaps between different cultures. There is widespread recognition that translation modifies, or preserves, the perception of the other. Hence, translating as an activity and translation as the result of this activity are inseparable from the concept of culture.
Locating Australian literature and culture in the global context connotes reconfiguring Australia’s relationship with other literatures and cultures. The unique conditions of Australia, including the indigenous cultural traditions, the colonial experience, and the experiences of multiple migrations into and out of the country, illustrate the need for a global viewpoint in approaching Australian literature, culture and identities, particularly with regard to a European setting that itself appears increasingly multicultural.
This conference aims to consider and assess the socio-cultural value of translation not only as an interlinguistic process but also as intersemiotic activity across cultures and languages and also
historically.
Studying perceptions of Australia through translation opens up new areas of research that engage with both ‘internal’ and ‘external’ constructions of cultural identity. Translation and reception of literary works involve a process of acculturation in which literary meanings, values and assumptions are exchanged and adjusted. While discussing critical issues concerning the global reception of Australian literature in translation, we will re-evaluate the economy of individuality and universality in the business of translation and the global literary market.
A key theme of the conference will be translation as a form of mediation facilitating the global exchange of cultural production.
It is envisaged that papers will examine areas where matters of linguistic translation come into contact with questions of community and cultural politics, each applying and exploring the notion of cultural translation in different senses and contexts - from, for example, the translation of texts across various locations of transnational popular culture to those of communities in migration. Another focus will be the mediation and hybridisation of cultural texts from Europe, Asia and elsewhere within Australia to form new identities as part of both colonial and post colonial experiences.
The conference aims to provide a forum that will enable scholars and students across fields such as translation studies, cultural studies, Australian and Indigenous studies and history, to share their diverse experiences. It will encourage the elaboration of proposals regarding the dissemination of national, local and transnational narratives to international audiences through translation, and will explore a range of materials, including literary texts, indigenous cultures, the built environment, new media and film.
The theme of the conference will embrace such topics as transnational media, globalisation, cultural and audiovisual translation, the legacy of empire and colonialism for indigenous and migrant identities, and intercultural relations. Related thematic areas include, but are not limited to, the following:
the role of literary translation in challenging or reinforcing cultural difference
transnational media and their role in facilitating, or discouraging, intercultural understanding
transnational and regional identities and their relationship to culture and processes of translation
the role of translation in disseminating Australian indigenous and settler literature and cultural production in the world and back to Australia
the insights that can be found in the process of thinking critically about practices of translation in research
the role of translation in mediating the exchange of knowledge across cultural and linguistic divides
translating the differences between subcultural, religious, indigenous, ethnic, national and transnational belonging.
the problem of postcolonial cultural translation: how do former colonies and former imperial centres understand each other?
translation between generations: nostalgia , memory and commemoration
Keynote speakers include:
Ien Ang
Jonathan Auf Der Heide
Nicholas Jose
Papers that address any aspect of the conference theme are invited.
The absolute deadline for submission of abstracts for consideration by the Programme Committee is Friday 28 May 2010. Those accepted will be notified by mid-June.
Following the conference, papers will be considered for refereed publications to be produced in association with Found in Translation.
The Vietnam Inheritance Cultural, social and political legacies of the Vietnam War in Australia: An Interdisciplinary Symposium marking the 35th anniversary of the end of the war
Keynote speaker - Paul Ham, author of Vietnam: The Australian War (2007).
The Symposium features a number of AASRN members:
Dean Chan with a paper entitled: ‘Between the Diasporic and the Transnational: Exhibiting Vietnamese Subjectivity in Asian Australia and Asian America’
Dominic Golding on ‘VADs Operation Reunite Adoptee Tour: From opening drinks at the Rex, the C5 memorial, and a Soccer match: Activism and history and return’
and
Hoa Pham with a paper entitled ‘“membering” the American/Vietnam War – Vietnamese-Australian Cultural production’
The symposium provides an opportunity for scholars from a range of disciplines to reflect on the impact of the war and its aftermath in Australia on the occasion of the 35th anniversary of its conclusion. In particular, speakers at the symposium will address the cultural, social and political legacies of the war in Australia. Topics to be covered by speakers at the symposium include:
the legacy of the war on Australian media, journalism and reportage of war and other emergencies
post-war Vietnamese migration to Australia and the Vietnamese diaspora
the legacy of anti-war political mobilisation, and the legacy of the National Service scheme and its opponents
the war and Australian culture (including Vietnamese-Australian cultural production and literary, visual and filmic representations of Vietnam in Australia)
the legacy of the Saigon babylift on intercountry adoption to Australia
the war and tourism
Proceedings will commence on the afternoon of Thursday 29 April and continue with a full day of papers on Friday 30 April.
Details of the symposium including a draft program can be found on: http://www.arts.monash.edu.au/psi/vietnam/index.php
Registration:
Registration is free however if you wish to attend please contact Jan Boey (janice.boey@buseco.monash.edu.au) as soon as possible and no later than Thursday 22 April, as numbers are needed for catering purposes.
Changes and Challenges: The 12th International Conference of Australian Studies in China
October 2010
East China Normal University
Shanghai University
Scholars are invited to participate in the 12th International Conference of Australian Studies in China, which will be jointly held by East China Normal University and Shanghai University between 28 and 30 October 2010. The Conference is to be sponsored by the Australia China Council under Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and supported by the National Association of Australian Studies in China.
The theme of the conference is Changes and Challenges. Changes are accompanied by challenges, which in turn bring about new opportunities. The organisers of the Conference invite participants to share their insights and opinions on the new developments and new opportunities in today’s Australia, and China-Australia relations. We believe such proactive exchanges of views and ideas will be conducive to mutual understanding and trust between the peoples of China and Australia, and promote further development of Australian Studies in China.
The Conference welcomes papers discussing topics in the following areas:
Australian history;
Australian literature;
Australian culture and media;
Sino-Australian relationship and Australian foreign relations;
The issue of climate change in Australia and its impact on China-Australia relations;
Australian politics;
Australian economy;
Indigenous studies;
Ethnic relations in Australia;
Australian language and culture
Political, economic, cultural and education exchanges and cooperation between China and Australia;
Studies on Chinese Australians; and
any other related topics.
The working language of the Conference is English. Participants who submit and present their papers in Chinese are requested to distribute an English abstract of the paper at the Conference.
Please return the application form with an abstract of your paper to Ms. Zhang Lin at: ascecnu2010@gmail.com by 30 April 2010.
The Organising Committee of the 12th International Conference of Australian Studies in China:
Australian Studies Centre, East China Normal University
Australian Studies Centre, Shanghai University
For more information and application form see the document attached below.
2010 is going to be a very exciting year in the community TV sector. Stations around Australia are switching over to digital which means greater coverage and bigger audiences for the programs. TVS Sydney has already made the switch two weeks ago and are now simulcasting on both analogue and digital (on Channel 44). To prepare for the move to digital and to begin production for this year, we are seeking expressions of interest from interested individuals in a number of positions. These are all volunteer positions.
While some roles require experience, others do not and on-the-job training is provided. Please send your expressions of interest and a copy of your CV/Resume to info@pinoytv.com. Job descriptions are available upon request.
Please note: Production located in Melbourne, but other positions are available in other states.
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PINOY TV is a not-for-profit community television broadcasting group, run by a small but dedicated group of unpaid volunteers. The idea behind forming PINOY TV was to develop and produce television programs that was not only aimed at the Filipino community in Australia but to the wider general public. As a largely under-represented ethnic group in mainstream media, the program was to provide a window for viewers to have an opportunity look into the Filipino-Australian community – the people, culture and country of origin.
