News from the Faculty of Arts, Monash University, Melbourne Australia
Travel in Atomic Sunshine
Robin Gerster’s book Travels in Atomic Sunshine: Australia and the Occupation of Japan has won the prestigious New South Wales Premier’s Australian History Prize for 2009. The prize was awarded by the NSW Premier the Hon Nathan Rees at a dinner in Sydney on 27 October.
Travels in Atomic Sunshine is published by Scribe Publications, 2008.
Associate Professor Kevin Foster contributes to a discussion on Australian Defence Force’s involvement in the Afghan campaign via ABC’s Media Watch on 5 October 2009.
The Embedding in Afghanistan segment transcript and vodcast be viewed on the ABC Media Watch site.
How do I look? Aesthetics Through TheoryThursday 10 and Friday 11 December
Keynote speaker: Dr Alison Ross
Featuring a screening of the film Examined Life
The Centre for Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies organises an annual postgraduate colloquium, where postgraduate students from the Centre and the wider Faculty are able to share ideas. The colloquium is an opportunity for postgraduate students and emerging scholars, conducting research in literary studies, cultural studies or critical theory, to present aspects of their work. The colloquium seeks to provide a forum for stimulating academic exchange in a relaxed and supportive atmosphere. Lunch and refreshments will be provided.
The title of this year’s colloquium will be ‘How Do I Look? – Aesthetics through Theory’. While contemporary research in the humanities considers a broad range of questions, aesthetics arguably remains a central concern for us all. The organisers invite potential participants to reflect on their own research with regard to contemporary considerations of aesthetics. The overall intention remains the sharing of original ideas and research; accordingly, participants are under no obligation to narrow their focus.
Prospective participants are invited to present a paper of 25–30 minutes length (plus discussion). Proposals should be emailed to colloquium09@arts.monash.edu.au by 30th October. Please include a title and an abstract of 100–150 words. Presentations incorporating audiovisual media are welcome. Please mention any technical requirements and preferences as to date and time.
Further information is available on the CCLCS Postgraduate Colloquium page.
Changing the Climate: 4th Utopias Conference invites papers from scholars, writers and others interested in the interplay between ecology and ecocriticism, utopia, dystopia and science fiction.
This conference will directly address the questions of dystopia and catastrophe with special reference to a problem that increasingly haunts our imaginings of the future, that of actual or possible environmental catastrophe. As Jameson himself wrote in The Seeds of Time: ‘It seems … easier for us today to imagine the thoroughgoing deterioration of the earth and of nature than the breakdown of late capitalism; perhaps that is due to some weakness in our imaginations’. Hopefully, this conference will play some small part in changing that particular climate of opinion.
Its keynote speakers will be:
Full information on submitting papers and registration is available on the conference site.
Jane Montgomery Griffiths discusses the legacy of Sappho on Poetica, ABC Radio National.
A podcast of the program may be download from the ABC site: Searching for Sappho – exploring the legacy of the famous ancient Greek poet.
Dr Alan Dilnot discusses the use of music in fiction on The Book Show, ABC Radio National.
A podcast of the program may be download from the ABC site: The role of music in novels.
The newly formed Research Unit in European Philosophy in the School of English, Communications and Performance Studies brings together experts and scholars in the areas of Aesthetics, Ancient Philosophy, the History of Philosophy, Continental Philosophy, Hermeneutics and Philosophy and Judaism.
The unit’s core members are:
Forthcoming events for this year include:
During the course of 2010 workshops and seminars are planned on ‘Hellenism and Continental Philosophy’, Hamlet and a series of lectures on the ‘Philosophy, Theory and the History of Art’.
Kevin Foster, Associate Professor in the School of English, Communications and Performance Studies, has released a new book titled Lost Worlds: Latin America and the Imagining of Empire.
Lost Worlds is an illuminating account of how both an imagined and real Latin America has become a privileged, symbolic site for working through the crises of national identity of Britain, the United States and Australia.
“From British adventure fiction to football, from utopian workingman’s colony to the Falkland Islands, this book sensitively explores how the lost worlds of Latin America have served to reimagine and refashion the lost worlds of the English-speaking west.” Professor Noël Valis, Yale University
Published through Pluto Press, UK.
Travel in Atomic Sunshine
Robin Gerster’s book, Travels in Atomic Sunshine: The Australian Occupation of Japan has been shortlisted, in a group of three, for the 2009 NSW Premier’s Australian History Prize.
Travels in Atomic Sunshine was also shortlisted earlier this year for the Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards.
Travels in Atomic Sunshine is published by Scribe Publications, 2008.
On Thursday 24 September 2009, Monash University’s Research Unit in Film Culture and Theory collaborated in its inaugural public event: a lively and thought-provoking seminar devoted to Quentin Tarantino’s divisive and highly popular new film, Inglourious Basterds.
Hosted by The Age critic Philippa Hawker, the speakers were:
This event was presented by the Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation in association with the Research Unit in Film Culture and Theory at Monash University.
The talks given on the night were filmed and can now be viewed, free of charge, at the Slow TV site of the Australian arts and current affairs magazine The Monthly.
For more of Adrian Martin’s analysis of Tarantino’s film, consult the forthcoming issue of the Australian art magazine UN, his extended essay on ‘sadistic cinema’ (in French translation) in the next issue of Trafic, and his feature piece “Revenge is Useless” which appeared (in Spanish translation) in the September-October issue of Cahiers du cinéma España.
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