Seminar: On Whiteness and its Borders: Current Debates in Australian Cultural Studies
CONVENORS: Anne Brewster, Lars Jensen, Katherine E. Russo
Since their first appearance, Ghassan Hage’s White Nation (1998), and Aileen Moreton-Robinson’s essay, “Talkin’ Up to to the White Woman”(1999), have arguably redressed Australian Cultural Studies by demonstrating how whiteness is constituted in forms of epistemic privilege and in the asymmetrical access to visibility and voice. Since then, the debate on Australian history, multiculturalism, immigration, and decolonization, has been shaped by ambivalent desires to deny or abandon the invisible white norm. Following American Whiteness Studies, whiteness has been redefined as a discursive category of privilege and authority, whose power derives from its invisibility and ordinariness, but also as a mobile social category exercised in the inclusion/exclusion of subjects from the imagined sovereignty of the national community. As a consequence, Australian Whiteness Studies have often crossed the paths of Indigenous, Gender, Migrant and Post-colonial Studies, contributing to the defamiliarization of Australian sovereignty based on the implementation of a permanent state of exception as a justification of obsessive biopolitical governmental practices.
We invite contributions that deal with questions of national and ethnic identity in
Australian literatures, cultures and languages and aim to expand or question the whiteness approach in Australian Cultural Studies.
Anne Brewster teaches at the University of New South Wales. Her books include Literary Formations: Postcoloniality, Nationalism, Globalism (1996), Aboriginal Women's Autobiography (1995),Towards a Semiotic of Post-colonial Discourse: University Writing in Singapore and Malaysia 1949-1964 (1988) and Notes on Catherine Lim's Little Ironies: Stories of Singapore, with Kirpal Singh (1987). She co-edited, with Angeline O’Neill and Rosemary van den Berg, an anthology of Australian Indigenous Writing, Those Who Remain Will Always Remember (2000). She has widely published on whiteness studies in journals such as JASAL, Australian Humanities Review, Australian Literary Studies and Journal of Postcolonial Writing and in edited collections including Literary Theory and Criticism in English, ed David Carter (in press), Practice-led Research, Research-led Practice in the Creative Arts, eds Roger Dean and Hazel Smith and The Racial Politics of Bodies, Nations and Knowledges eds Barbara Baird and Damien Riggs. She is the Regional Chair of the Commonwealth Writers Prize (South Pacific and Southeast Asian Region) for 2009-10.
Lars Jensen is Lecturer at Cultural Encounters, Roskilde University, Denmark. He has worked on and off in Australian Studies for two decades. He is the co-editor of A Historical Companion to Postcolonial Studies: Continental Europe and its Empires (EUP, 2008). He has published a book on Australian Studies, Unsettling Australia: Readings in Australian Cultural History (Atlantic Publishers, 2005). His most recent publication is 'Locating Asian Australian Studies' in the special Journal of Australian Studies issue, “Asia@Home: New Directions in Asian Australian Studies” ed. by Tseen Khoo and Jacqueline Lo (Dec, 2008).
Dr. Katherine E. Russo holds a PhD at the University of New South Wales (Sydney) and is currently post-doctoral fellow in English at the University of Naples “L’Orientale”. Her research focuses on Australian and New Zealander languages, literatures and cultures, modernity and modernism, Translation, Gender, Post-colonial and Whiteness Studies. Her publications include ContamiNATIONS (2005), a special issue of New Literatures Review, and, as co-author, Middle Passages: English for Cultural and Postcolonial Studies (2007).
WORK-IN-DEVELOPMENT PERFORMANCE OF THE BANH CHUNG PROJECT
The Banh Chung project explores site, place and space through an installation/performance which explores three interlinked storylines: Tet in Australia, Tet in Ancient Vietnam and Tet in War. Banh Chung is a savoury sticky-rice cake filled with mung bean and marinated pork, wrapped in bamboo leaf, which is eaten to celebrate the Lunar New Year. In this durational performance, AASRN member artist Chi Vũ will count down to the New Year with the creation and unwrapping of the bánh chưng.
The Banh Chung project will be piloted as part of Punctum’s In-Habit residency. A work-in-development presentation will take place at regular intervals on Wednesday 10th February 2010 between 3pm – 8.30pm at the Richmond Library, 415 Church St, Richmond, Melbourne, Victoria. Entry is free, but people are welcome to give a donation. For further information see the flyer attached below and the website: http://www.punctum.com.au/inhabit.html
Submissions now open for Cordite Poetry Review ZOMBIE 2.0
We’re going back to the future for our 32nd issue, revisiting 14: Zombie, one of the four issues originally guest-edited by Terry Jaensch in 2003. Way back then, we were slowly coming to grips with our online format and the NLA’s archive of Zombie catches us right in the middle of that transformation. It’s also the issue of Cordite with the most braaaiins, so who needs excuses. Send us five of your best, brainiest, bloodiest, goriest, ooziest, undead poems before February 15, 2010. The poetry in Zombie 2.0 will be guest-edited by AASRN member Ivy Alvarez, and the issue will appear online in April 2010. We’re also seeking feature articles and rants that address the undead theme from a poetic angle, audio that drips gothic, images of actual zombies (alive or dead) and illustrations from the darkest depths of your troubled psyches.
Announcing a unique initiative commencing at The Potter in 2010, supported by the Ian Potter Foundation.
The Ian Potter Museum of Art is currently recruiting for the inaugural Curator of Academic Programs at the Potter, the first such position offered by a university art museum in Australia. Modelled on successful programs at major American university art museums, this three-year position will establish curriculum links between art and collections, exhibitions and academic programs at the University of Melbourne. This is not an education officer or public programs position; it seeks to integrate encounters with art works, exhibitions, collection research and exhibition development with the tertiary curriculum. We are seeking applicants with a commitment to museum-based research and learning, an understanding of interdisciplinary curricula, and the capacity to act as an advocate recruiting academic staff as partners.
The position description at the University of Melbourne Jobs site:
INDAAR is an international network for researchers interested in comparative and transnational studies of diasporic Asian art.
The network facilitates opportunities for initiating transnational dialogues and generating collaborative research projects.
Art by artists of Asian descent in countries such as Australia, Britain, Canada and the United States is a significant cultural production, both in historical and contemporary terms. INDAAR offers a context to internationalise research on diasporic Asian art in these countries and others. AASRN member Owen Leong is the first artist to be featured on the new website.
This network is a special project of the Asian Australian Studies Research Network (AASRN) and established in association with the Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Project entitled “Being Asian in Australia and the United States”.
INDAAR is also supported by the School of Communications and Arts, Edith Cowan University, Australia.
Congratulations to AASRN member Dr Michelle Antoinette and Dr Caroline Turner who have recently been awarded an ARC Discovery Grant for their project:
The Rise of New Cultural Networks in Asia in the Twenty-First Century
Asia is now a key player in world affairs economically, politically and culturally. This project analyses the rise of new cultural networks influencing Asia's dynamic regional cultural economies today. It examines cultural organisations across Asia and their networking strategies, focussing on contemporary art and art museums as key indicators of cultural change. The study includes museums, exhibitions, commercial organisations, information networks, cultural diplomacy, artist and community networks. It will document developments and enhance Australian understanding of Asian cultural industries, building Australian research on Asian cultures.
International Science Linkages: Humanities and Creative Arts Programme
Following a very successful first round, the Australian Academy of the Humanities is now pleased to call for applications for the second round of the International Science Linkages - Humanities and Creative Arts (ISL-HCA) Programme, funded by the Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research (DIISR) to support international collaborative research activities in the humanities and creative arts.
The International Science Linkages (ISL) Programme aims to facilitate and support research cooperation between Australian researchers and leading counterparts overseas. This new ISL Humanities and Creative Arts (ISL-HCA) Programme will provide targeted support in order to:
promote access and participation for Australian humanities and creative arts researchers in strategically focused, leading edge, international research; and
increase strategic alliances between Australian and overseas researchers.
In this second round, three different schemes are being offered:
International Research Fellowships for early to mid-career researchers to work in collaborative research groups abroad;
Visiting Fellowships for eminent humanities and/or creative arts scholars to visit Australia and participate in seminars and masterclasses.
International Collaborative Workshops, with a focused objective, which bring together researchers from different countries and may be hosted in Australia or overseas.
The deadline for this scheme is Monday, 8 February 2010
The aim of The Winston Churchill Memorial Trust is to provide an opportunity for Australians to travel overseas to conduct research in their chosen field that is not readily available in Australia. No prescribed qualifications are required and the subject of the proposed project is limitless provided a benefit to Australia is evident. Merit of the proposed project is a key factor and a desire to share the research findings with the Australian community must be displayed.
The deadline for this scheme is Friday 26 February 2010
Applications for the next round of AIATSIS grants has opened. The current round funds projects from 1 July 2010. The Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies is a national funding body for research in a variety of areas, including history, politics, law, public policy, education, linguistics, social anthropology, archaeology and the arts. Funding for projects is yearly (extendable); typically about 30 projects ranging from around $7000 to $43,000 are supported each year.
Following on from the successful inaugural exhibition in 2006, we bring you many more alterNATIVE perspectives from this big brown land, Australia.
Coinciding with and responding to the 6th Asia Pacific Triennial at QAG and QGOMA, in Brisbane, Queensland, the other APT features a range of artworks from Australian-based artists of various cultural backgrounds and artforms:
Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander, Australian South Sea Islander, Fijian, Maori, Tongan, Samoan, Vietnamese, Chinese, Filipino and more.
