Indigenous Knowledges in Latin America and Australia conference

Posted on November 13, 2011 by admin

Please note the upcoming Symposium that SURCLA is organising: Indigenous Knowledges in Latin America and Australia | Locating Epistemologies, Difference and Dissent | December 8-10, 2011.

The symposium will bring together Indigenous educators and intellectuals from Mexico, Argentina and Chile to Sydney to meet with interested Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander educators, scholars and activists, as well as non-Indigenous practitioners and allies, to discuss different models and approaches of Indigenous Knowledges and Education in the tertiary sector and beyond.

This project aims at helping educators and researchers in the Higher Education sector of Australia and Latin America to identify opportunities for integrating in their research and teaching and learning relevant aspects of Indigenous Knowledges in the areas of culture, education and sustainability.

Apart from the symposium itself, academic publications, public lectures by distinguished visitors and the creation of a website, the project will stimulate debate on Indigenous Knowledge and film production in Latin America and Australia by hosting film screenings on the topic.

For more information, visit the website.

Southern Latitudes

Posted on April 6, 2011 by admin

Another forthcoming conference, to be held at the State Library of New South Wales, Southern Latitudes, is presented by the Australia & New Zealand Map Society (ANZMapS) and is to be held from24–27 May 2011. The conference will cover a wide range of topics from presenters including several Petherick readers. Speakers include:

Frederick Muller, ‘The first map documenting Magellan’s sighting of the Southland and sailing of the Pacific: Fries’ Tabula moderna alterius hemispherius, 1525’
Dr Michael Pearson, ‘Charting the sealing islands of the Southern Ocean’
Allen Mawer, ‘Incognita: The Incredible Shrinking Continent’
Sydney map collector Robert Clancy, ‘Shaping Australia: 1850-1950’
Rupert Gerritsen, ‘The Freycinet map of 1811 – The first complete map of Australia?’
John Robson, ‘University of Waikato, ‘John Lort Stokes’
Mark Alcock, Project Leader, ‘Law of the Sea and Maritime Boundary Advice Project’
Bronwen Douglas, Senior Fellow at the ANU, ‘Geography, Raciology, and the Naming of Oceania, 1750–1850’
Christine Kenyon and Katrina Sandiford, ‘Charles Sturt, 1838, Overlander and Explorer: Tracing his journey by map and diary’
Bernie Joyce, ‘The 150th Anniversary of the Burke & Wills Expedition’

Details of the program, and registration etc are at http://www.anzmaps.org/

Stepping forward to the past: William Barak and William Dawes

Posted on July 22, 2010 by admin

Thursday 12 August 7:30-9pm, Institute of Postcolonial Studies

A conversation between Tony Birch and Ross Gibson

Two figures from the early days of the Australian colony that have fresh relevance today – an English scientist at the founding of Sydney and an indigenous leader at the birth of Melbourne.

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William Dawes arrived on the First Fleet as the official astronomer. After arriving, he developed a close relation with the Eora people and learned their language. In the South, Dawes experienced a kind of intellectual upheaval whereby he began to understand the world in a non-hierarchical, fluid and relational way that contradicted most of the rectitude that he’d been trained in.

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William Barak was a Wurundjeri man and member of the party that met John Batman in the ‘purchase’ of the Melbourne area. During subsequent colonisation, Barak fought to protect Coranderrk, a self-sufficient Aboriginal reserve. This defence included three major walks to Parliament House.

During the early days of British settlement in Australia, the relationship between Indigenous peoples and Europeans was potentially quite open. Out of the many possible relationships explored at that time, a particular colonial paradigm emerged of squatters, missionaries and miners. Is it worthwhile delving back into the start of the colony for alternative paradigms that can inform our understanding of biculturalism today? Are there resonances with other colonial beginnings across the South?

Tony Birch writes short fiction, poetry, essays and art criticism. He also works as a curator and teaches creative writing at the University of Melbourne. His books include Shadowboxing and Father’s Day. He has recently been collaborating with artist Tom Nicholson including Camp Pell Lecture (2010) at Artspace.

Ross Gibson is Professor of Contemporary Arts at Sydney College of the Arts. He makes books, films and art installations. He is particularly interested in art and communication in cross-cultural situations, especially in Australia and the Southwest Pacific. His recent works include the books Seven Versions of an Australian Badland and Remembrance + The Moving Image (editor), the video installation Street X-Rays, the interactive audiovisual environment BYSTANDER (a collaboration with Kate Richards) and the durational work ‘Conversations II’ for the 2008 Biennale of Sydney.

Institute of Postcolonial Studies
78-80 Curzon Street
North Melbourne
Victoria 3051 Australia (map)
Tel: 03 9329 6381
Admission – $5 for waged, $3 for unwaged, and free for members.

Islands and Archipelagos: Mapping Contemporary Art from Australia, Asia and the Pacific

Posted on May 9, 2010 by admin

A talk by Francis Maravillas

Wednesday, 12 May, 12-2, TfC Bagel, UTS Building 3, Room 4.02.

Abstract: In its six iterations since 1993, the Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art has established itself as the premier ‘international exhibition’ that focuses on the diverse artistic cultures of the region. Significantly, these Triennials also offered a powerful and proleptic image of Australia’s place in the region, one that accented Australia’s desire for such a place. This paper seeks bring into relief the cartographic dispositions and representational logic underlying the Asia-Pacific Triennial’s curatorial imaginary. I argue that the curatorial agency and imaginary of the Triennial is constituted by the way it positions itself within wider cultural, geographical, and epistemic frames of reference. From this perspective, the Triennial’s engagement with the contemporary artistic cultures of ‘Asia’ and ‘the Pacific’ represents an attempt by the Australian subject to come to terms with its decentred positionality – that is, its peculiar experience of being located ‘South of the West’– by re-positioning itself, via strategic alignments along the periphery, as a cultural-artistic centre in the region, the putative centricity of which is defined by the space of invisible liminality marked by the hyphen that connects ‘Asia’ and the ‘Pacific’.

Francis Maravillas completed his PhD in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Technology, Sydney, where he teaches cultural studies. His current research interests include contemporary art and visual culture in Asia and Australia, curatorial practice and international art exhibitions. His work on Asian art in Australia appears in various journals as well as recent edited collections including Crossing cultures: conflict, migration and convergence (2009), Cosmopatriots: On Distant Belongings and Close Encounters (2007) and In the Eye of the Beholder Reception and Audience for Modern Asian Art (2006). He was previously a board member of the Asia Australia Art Centre (Gallery 4a) Sydney (2003-2006).

Please RSVP to Transforming.Cultures@uts.edu.au

Australia’s Re-engagement with Africa

Posted on February 17, 2010 by admin

The University of Sydney International Forum

Australia’s Re-engagement with Africa

Friday, 19 March 2010, 9.30am – 12.30pm McLaurin Hall, Quadrangle

The University of Sydney is Australia’s first University, founded in 1850.The International Forum series brings together leaders and thinkers from around the world to present their views on strategic international issues and the way in which these issues may impact on Australia and the globe.

The next International Forum to be held on Friday, 19 March will focus on “Australia’s Re-engagement with Africa”.

The Hon Mr Stephen Smith will be one of keynote speakers at the International Forum. This Forum will give the Foreign Minister and opportunity to discuss the Australian Government’s re-engagement initiatives in Africa. A senior African diplomat will follow Mr Smith as the second keynote speaker.

An expert panel discussion including: The Hon Dr. Geoff Gallop, H.E. Mrs. Marie Rousetty (Dean of the Africa High Commissioners Group), an Australia Africa Business Council Representative and an African Government official will follow the two keynote speakers. The audience will include prominent persons from government, business and academia.

We invite you to attend the International Forum on Friday March 19, 2010 at 9.30am in MacLaurin Hall, Main Quadrangle University of Sydney. Registration will be open from 9.00am. On conclusion of the Forum at 12:30pm lunch will be served in the Hall. Information on the location of the venue is included on the registration form.

To register for the International Forum please complete the attached form and return it via email: international@sydney.edu.au by Friday 5th March 2010 or via fax 02 9036 6047 As there are limited places for this important event and seats are reserved upon receipt of registration, please notify us as soon as possible if you are able to attend.

Verticalism talk

Posted on August 11, 2009 by admin

Poster advertising space in Santiago metro, aligning north and south america on a horizontal axis

Transnational and Transcultural Research Network is developing a conference “Transcultural Mappings : emerging issues in comparative, transnational and area studies” (see here for details).

They are having a network meeting and seminar this Thursday 13 August. All welcome.

Network meeting: 4-5pm. Come to meet others in the network, bring along colleagues who may be interested, and hear about our other plans.

Seminar: 5-6.30pm. Kevin Murray, Adjunct Professor, RMIT, will speak on “Verticalism and the Idea of South” (see here for text)

“How is the world constructed such that it has a top and a bottom? What role does this play in global politics? How is this arrangement contested today? This talk outlines the role that the idea of south continues to play in how the world is understood. It makes particular reference to a growing field of south-south exchange in academic fields.”

Location:
New Law 105
University of Sydney (see map)

Planet Bollywood

Posted on May 16, 2009 by admin

The Indian Ocean and South Asia Research Network invites you to its third seminar in 2009:
Anjali Roy (Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India):
“PLANET BOLLYWOOD”

DATE: Thursday, 28th May
TIME: 12.00 pm
VENUE: TfC Bagel, UTS, Building 3 (Bon Marche), Level 4, Room 4.02
Please RSVP: Cornelia.Betzler@uts.edu.au

Abstract
Walter Mignolo has defined cosmopolitanism as a counter movement to globalisation on the homogenisation of the world from above – political, economic and cultural but differentiated it from globalisation from below. But Mignolo’s working definition of globalisation as a set of designs to manage the world and cosmopolitanism as a project towards planetary conviviality has been complicated and critiqued since he first reflected on the relationship between globalisation and cosmopolitanism. Arguing that cosmopolitan narratives have been performed from the perspectives of modernity, Caro Breckenbridge has underlined the need to reconceive cosmopolitanism from the perspective of coloniality that she calls critical cosmopolitanism. Making a distinction between cosmopolitan projects from the perspective of modernity and critical cosmopolitanism from the exteriority of modernity, she conceives the latter as a project for an increasingly transnational and postnational world.

Bollywood, a derogatory term coined by the English language media to refer to Hindi popular cinema, signals a phase shift in the production, distribution and consumption of Indian cinema. Despite their implication in nationalist ideology and the construction of the citizen subject, Indian films had leaked across national borders and were appropriated in diasporic nostalgia narratives in the past. However, Indian Cinema’s global flows at the end of the twentieth century, driven by the new dynamics of transnationalisation of production, marketing, circulation and reception, challenge traditional notions of language, genre, national and culture. Reinscribed as Bollywood, Indian Cinema has been disengaged from its specific location and become part of global popular culture constructing new transnational identities that recall prenational imaginings of home, belonging and community. This paper aims to compare the transnational flows of Hindi cinema in the present and the past to unpack the meaning of global culture and to examine it as an instance of critical cosmopolitanism.

The Impact of the Antipodes on Ecological Thought: Landscape, Evolution, and Sustainability

Posted on May 1, 2009 by admin

Friday, 8 May 2009, 1–5pm
Sutherland Room, Holme Building, Science Road, The University of Sydney

Convenor: Iain McCalman
Presenters:

Julia Horne ‘Landscape and Wonder’
Peter Denney ‘Picturesque Farming: The Sound of ‘Happy Britannia’ in Early Australia’
Martin Thomas ‘Cross-Cultural Exchange in Arnhem Land: The Legacy of the 1948 American-Australian Scientific Expedition’
Richard Waterhouse ‘Taming the ‘Wastelends’: the dream of the yeoman in Australian history’

From the eighteenth century, the discovery by Europeans in the southern hemisphere of new landforms, species and indigenous cultures prompted intense and continuing debate about natural economies (later called ecologies) on both sides of the world. We will explore these issues through papers on comparative art, aesthetics and landscape; on the rise of Darwinian evolutionary ecological theory; and on European scientific and Indigenous Aboriginal conceptions of nature and environmental management.

Ex Plus Ultra post-colonialism

Posted on March 28, 2009 by admin

From the University of Sydney comes a new postgraduate journal Ex Plus Ultra, which means ‘nothing further beyond’.

The journal sets out to question the categories of ‘colonial and ‘post-colonial’:

There was no cataclysmic rupture heralding the arrival of the ‘post-colonial’ nor was the advent of colonialism defined, uncontested or in some cases even as significant for the colonised as has previously been assumed. The very categories of ‘colonial’ and ‘postcolonial,’ insofar as they subscribe to linear, progressive time, are themselves imperial legacies.

This seems to be an attempt to de-centre the role of the British empire in the development of post-colonial theory.

In their aim to pluralise this field, the editors seek to reintroduce the concept of the national:

Beyond transnationalism
What are the problems with transnational histories? Is there an implicit masculinisation of the global and feminisation of the local? Does a transnational approach simply reinstate the national? Does it forget about the minutiae or the nationless? Is it really new? Are the terms global, supranational or cosmopolitan more useful?

It will be very interesting to see what perspectives emerge from this new opening. There’s an obvious danger. In the turn to particularities, will the only connecting element in this direction be its reaction to previous universalisms? Let’s see how they do it.

Sydney University Research Community for Latin America seminar series

Posted on March 4, 2009 by admin

SURCLA (Sydney University Research Community for Latin America)
Research Seminar Series Semester 1 – 2009
Venue: Room S225, Main Quadrangle, Camperdown Campus
Time: 5 pm

March 10 Paul Allatson
University of Technology Sydney
“Star Spangled Trespass: Auditory Dissonance and the Latinization of the USA”
Please note: this seminar will be followed by a Wine Reception to celebrate the creation of SURCLA

March 24 Barry Carr
La Trobe University
“Pink, Red or Tutti Frutti? Where Is Latin America Heading Politically?”

April 7 Professor Consuelo Ahumada
Pontifica Universidad Javeriana, Colombia
"Latin American labour migration to the United States in the context of economic crisis in the South and in the North (1990-2008)"

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Please note: This event is jointly organised by SURCLA and the University of New South Wales with the support of COALAR (Council on Australia Latin America Relations) and ANCLAS (Australian National Centre for Latin American Studies).

April 28 Isidoro Castellanos
Director Cervantes Institute, Sydney
“Instituto Cervantes en Australia: Presente y Futuro”
(Cervantes Institute in Australia: Present and Future)

May 12 Diana Palaversich
University of New South Wales
"La narcoliteratura y el mercado cultural global"
(Narco-literature and Global Market Culture)

May 26 Fernando J. García Selgas,
Universidad Complutense de Madrid
“Significado y Encarnación”
(Meaning and Embodiment)

Southern Perspectives

A lateral dialogue of ideas

Tag Archives: Sydney