Scholarship Offer: The Search for Asia’s Next Top Writer in English
The Department of English at City University of Hong Kong is pleased to announce a one-year full Tuition Scholarship, to be awarded to a 2010 candidate for our new, international, low-residency Masters of Fine Arts (MFA) in Creative Writing. The winner will be the applicant who submits the sample of creative writing that demonstrates the greatest potential for success as a professional literary author.
Applicants in any genre are eligible, as long as they meet the acceptance criteria for this postgraduate degree. There is no restriction as to country of residence, age or nationality. At City University, we seek to develop Asia’s future writers, and this scholarship is offered to attract the most talented writers to our programme. This summer, we begin our first class of writers for the MFA in Creative Writing specialising in Asian Writing in English, the first programme in the world to offer this specialty. Based in the English department, the innovative 45-credit, two-year programme will accept a limited number of students in creative non-fiction, fiction and poetry. The degree is benchmarked to international standards for the MFA. The Hong Kong native author Xu Xi assisted in its development and joined the Department as their first Writer-in-Residence on March 1. "We anticipate the majority of applicants to be from Asia," Xu says, “but many writers in the West, both of Asian and non-Asian ethnicity, are increasingly drawn to Asia, especially China".
The MFA is generally considered a professional degree, qualifying students to work in professions where good writing skills are required, as well as providing the groundwork for an international writing and publishing career.
The first residency is scheduled for summer 2010. The internationally renowned novelist Timothy Mo will be Visiting Writer and the faculty writers for the 2010 class features an international cast from Hong Kong, India, the U.K, Canada and the U.S., with connections and roots in China, Japan, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia and elsewhere. The writers include Tina Chang, Marilyn Chin, Luis Francia, Robin Hemley, Justin Hill, Sharmistha Mohanty, James Scudamore, Ravi Shankar, Jess Row and Madeleine Thien.
4A presents a 24 hour performance by Young Sun Han, in 4A's street front gallery. Sliding Mirror: 24 Hour Embrace involves the artist finding strangers matching his physical description through online listing services.
At the stroke of midnight the artist and a stranger will embrace for 24 hours.
The embrace, silently endured, will take on the presence of a transient moving sculpture. Using the body as a medium, the performance raises questions about intimacy, our longing to connect with others and critically explores an art practice ambivalent to object making.
Sliding Mirror: 24 Hour Embrace is a work in 4A’s major curated exhibition Last Words an exhibition project that will unfold over the 2010 calendar. Comprising performance, workshops, lectures, solo and group exhibitions, Last Words explores language, knowledge and communication in an age of cultural diversity and globalisation, particularly focused on younger generations of Asian artists living here in Australia and overseas.
“Representing and Governing HIV/AIDS in China”: thematic issue for International Journal of Asia Pacific Studies
Call for Papers
This thematic issue of IJAPS (scheduled for publication in January 2012) calls for submissions for an interdisciplinary collection on the theme of “representing and governing HIV/AIDS in China”. The issue aims to bring together original articles from diverse disciplinary areas to engage in a timely dialogue on how HIV/AIDS is represented and governed in China and how such representations and techniques of governance are communicated via the mass media. This special issue addresses itself specifically to the relations of power and representation in the above context. A comparative analysis is also welcome.
With the largest infected population in the Asia-Pacific, China has ramped up HIV/AIDS campaigning in recent years, with the help of non-governmental organisations. From public health campaigns and media education programs in the official media, to individual initiatives asserting rights and community endeavours for self-help—utilizing both old and new media communication technologies—the issues of representation and governance are key to our understanding of HIV/AIDS in China. A range of questions have arisen in our investigation:
The evolution of Chinese public health campaigns;
The role of HIV/AIDS in China’s public health reform;
The impacts on Chinese consumers of media representations of the virus;
The implications of alternative media (e.g. digital video, blogging, twittering, etc) in HIV/AIDS campaigns at the grassroots;
The relationship between HIV/AIDS activism and new social movements;
Issues related to gender and sexuality—how they are represented and/or governed via various media, and in what ways are they uniquely Chinese;
The state/non-state (including NGOs) relations in a time of AIDS;
Issues related to identity, subjectivity, and body politics
HIV/AIDS campaigns across the Taiwan Strait, and/or experience from Hong Kong
HIV/AIDS in visual culture
The socio-graphic history of HIV/AIDS
Submissions are not limited to the above areas of enquiry.
Abstracts of no more than 500 words, with a short bio, should be sent to the guest editor Dr Haiqing Yu (h.yu@unsw.edu.au), University of New South Wales, Australia, by August 31, 2010 for advice on whether a full paper is required for the reviewing process. Full contributions of 4000-6000 words, prepared in IJPAS style, are to be submitted by March 2011.
Launch of Memory Is Another Country: Women of the Vietnamese Diaspora
by Nathalie Nguyen
The National Library of Australia, 17 March 2010.
The book will be launched by Professor Mandy Thomas, Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research and Graduate Studies), Australian National University, and Nathalie will then give a lecture on the book.
The event forms part of Women's History Month at the NLA. Please find attached the e-flyer from the NLA with all the details relating to the event.
October 2011 Australasian Drama Studies Focus Issue
Transcultural. Transnational. Transformation. : seeing, writing and reading performance across cultures
Co-editors Maryrose Casey and Will Peterson
This issue seeks to act as a forum to explore, bring together and/or set in opposition cross-cultural practices and receptions of performance, visions, borrowings, understandings, practices, theories and ethical ponderings about performance.
We welcome articles on any of the following topics: transcultural flows; cultural translations; inter-, intra- and cross-cultural performance practices and reception; and discussions, critiques or defences of ways of seeing, documenting or analysing performance across cultures.
Proposals and expressions of interest due by March 2010. Final deadline for submission of full articles October 31st 2010.
Keith Cameron Chair in Australian History, University College Dublin (UCD)
The Keith Cameron is held for one calendar year, and we are currently looking for applicants for two appointments, one for the calendar year 2011 and one for 2012.
go to "Job Vacancies for External Candidates" and then search in "History and Archives".
The Keith Cameron Chair was initially endowed in 1985, and recent holders of the position have been Brian de Garis (Murdoch), Nicholas Brown (ANU), Hilary Carey (Newcastle NSW) and Stuart Ward (Copenhagen). The current Professor is Katie Holmes (La Trobe). Some background information can be found on the UCD Australian Studies Centre website: http://www.ucd.ie/historyarchives/austud.htm. (This is in the process of being updated at the moment, as we move to a new contents management system.)
The Australian Critical Race and Whiteness Studies Association is pleased to announce the inaugural Essay Competition for the best critical scholarly essay or article in the field of Critical Race and/or Whiteness Studies.
Prizes include:
$200 for the best essay by an Indigenous scholar
$200 for the best essay by a non-Indigenous scholar
Prize winning essays to be published in the Australian Critical Race and Whiteness Studies e-journal (www.acrawsa.org.au/ejournal.htm)
The competition is open to undergraduate, honours and postgraduate students and early career researchers. Essays should be under 5000 words, and may be from any area of the Humanities, Social Sciences, Education and Law. Please see the attached entry form for more details.
The 2010 biennial conference of the Association for Canadian Studies in Australia and New Zealand (ACSANZ) seeks to investigate the various connections and interconnections of community - physical, ecological, social, legal, economic, cultural, political, institutional, technological, and individual - between Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
Submission of abstracts are invited for papers and workshops. Papers and Workshops addressing some aspect of the conference theme are encouraged but papers dealing with any aspect of Canadian Studies will be very welcome.
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
Abstracts of up to 200 words should be submitted online by 12 March, 2010.
Alternatively, abstracts can be emailed as an attachment to confco@une.edu.au
If emailing, please include the following:
Title;
Specify Paper or Workshop;
Author(s) full name(s) - with the presenting author underlined;
Affiliation; and
Complete mailing address with telephone, fax, and email.
Abstract submissions will be acknowledged by return email and acceptances will be communicated by 2 April, 2010. Those wishing to have their papers refereed by peer review will need to submit a completed paper by a date to be announced. Please refer to the author guidelines.
You do not have to be a current member of the ACSANZ to submit an abstract, however, registration fees are lower for members than for non-members. If you are considering joining the association, more
information and membership benefits can be found on the ACSANZ website: www.acsanz.org.au/joining.html
If Your Abstract is Accepted: If you are chosen to present at the conference you will also need to register to attend. All expenses including conference registration, accommodation and travel are the responsibility of the presenter. Submission of an abstract implies permission for it to be published in the conference proceedings and other relevant publications.
From White Australia to multiculturalism, from 'Fortress Australia' to globalisation, from picket fence to demographic diversification, the last few decades have seen dramatic changes in the way 'Australia' is understood. The return of a more exclusionary form of nationalism with the Howard government and some sporadic explosions of extreme reactions (Pauline Hanson and Cronulla) challenged what appeared to be a trend towards an increased acceptance of the 'other' within Australia. After a decade that has seen the country participate in two wars, a persistent anxiety over asylum seekers arriving by boat, the continued failure of Reconciliation and the election of the Rudd government, how are we to think about nationalism in Australia in 2010?
The aim of this symposium will be to discuss the role and place of nationalism in Australia today. Should nationalism remain relevant? Can nationalism be progressive? What are the links between nationalism, patriotism and racism? Can nationalism be considered Left-wing? Has nationalism become crucial in electoral politics?
This symposium will take place at La Trobe University on 22 April 2010. It will be organised into panels focusing on different aspects of Australian nationalism. To stimulate discussion, three 10-minute papers will be delivered at the beginning of each session. It is our hope that an edited book will result from the proceedings.
In association with Professor Robert Manne's Ideas and Society programme, a public debate chaired by Phillip Adams featuring Marilyn Lake, Ghassan Hage, Raimond Gaita and Andrew Markus will take place during lunchtime. This debate will feature key commentators offering different perspectives on Australian Nationalism.
The symposium organisers encourage non-paper givers to take part in the discussions. For organisational purposes, confirmation of attendance would be appreciated. The symposium will be fully catered.
"Multicultural questions without multiculturalism": The Japanese discourse of "multicultural co-living"
by Professor Koichi Iwabuchi
Jointly presented by the Asia Institute and the School of Culture and Communication, The University of Melbourne
The new millennium has seen the marked decline of multiculturalism in many Western countries. Conversely, in Japan as well as Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong, multicultural issues have come to be more seriously discussed. Sharing with Western counterparts a similar trend of tightening national borders and stressing patriotism, East Asian societies differ significantly in lacking national policies of multiculturalism and immigration.
This lecture will explore the politics of multiculturalism in the Japanese context. Koichi Iwabuchi is Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at the School of International Liberal Studies of Waseda University, Tokyo.
Wednesday 17 March 6.30pm
Elisabeth Murdoch Building, Theatre A
The University of Melbourne, Parkville.
Admission is free. Seating is limited.
For further information or to register: www.asiainstitute.unimelb.edu.au
