French curator and writer Nicolas Bourriaud presents his concept of the altermodern as the 21st century ‘frontier’. There are many who would contest the Western-centric view of modernism, yet do not subscribe to the idea that it has an ‘other side’ in the South. Nicolas Bourriaud, author of Relational Aesthetics, presents the idea of a [...]
Posts under ‘News’
Savage Europeans! Settler colonial studies call for papers
Call for Papers: What is Settler Colonialism? SAVAGE EUROPEANS! Ye doubted at first whether the inhabitants of the regions you had just discovered were not animals which you might slay without remorse, because they were black, and you were white. […] In order to repeople one part of the globe, which you have laid waste, [...]
Argentine Culture Symposium
Saturday 29 May, 4.30pm – 8.00pm To celebrate the bicentenary of the Argentine independence revolution, the School of Music in collaboration with the School of Languages, will host a half-day symposium on Argentine culture showcasing the work of Argentine academics and scholars at the University of Melbourne. The programme will include papers on tango, rock, [...]
Education for Sustainable Development – from South Pacific
An important new initiative from the University of the South Pacific: image The Pacific Regional Centre of Excellence for ESD, the University of the South Pacific through its School of Education has produced a 3-volume book series devoted to Education for Sustainable Development. The books are an outcome of a School of Education initiative under [...]
Sociology goes south
Last Wednesday, 2 December, at the annual conference of the Australian Sociological Association (TASA), there was a plenary titled ‘Southern Perspectives’. Speakers included Raewyn Connell, Chilla Bulbeck, Margaret Jolly and Peter Beilharz. They considered the following questions: Is there a ‘southern sociology’? What kind of sociology do we teach and research in Australia? Should southern [...]
India has not been displaced
A recent issue of the new journal The Global South focuses on the relative absence of India-based voices in cultural theory dealing with India and postcolonialism. They ask, quite directly: Why, for example, do India-based scholars remain so woefully underrepresented in postcolonial and globalization studies, even as India itself has become the field’s most widely [...]
To reform or to start again? An argument across the south
In Kuala Lumpur 24-26 January 2009 there was a south-south event titled The International Conference on Hegemony, Counter Hegemony and Alternatives to Hegemony: Implications for the South. This event was part of a ‘scholarly collaboration program’ between three major academic networks across the South – CODESRIA, APISA and CLACSO. The participants represented a tri-continental range [...]
Epeli Hau’ofa (1939-2009)
image Tongan writer and cultural theorist Epeli Hau’ofa passed away on Sunday 11 January 2009. Hau’ofa was born in Papua New Guinea in 1939 of Tongan missionary parents. He was educated in a variety of countries, eventually receiving his PhD at the Department of Anthropology, Australian National University. His positions included Keeper of Palace Records [...]
