Arts Faculty News

Professor Margaret Kartomi, from the School of Music – Conservatorium, has been awarded an Australia Research Council grant for a 3-year project entitled ‘Female body percussion music as a contribution to cultural identity in western Aceh before and after the conflict and tsunami’.

Project Description

This is the pioneering project on an unstudied but widely practised mode of music and dance in the world: female body percussion. The fieldwork locale is western Aceh, which recently experienced prolonged war and the tragic tsunami. The project aims to analyse the techniques and social functions of the body percussion genres, examine change caused by the conflict and tsunami, and develop the first theory of the functions of female body percussion. Research outcomes include archival deposits of audio-visual recordings, three refereed articles, an edited book on cross-cultural comparative body percussion, two book chapters, and a PhD thesis.

View Monash Magazine article ‘Taking Notes‘ for further information on Professor Kartomi’s research.

View Professor Kartomi’s profile.

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.

How do I look? Aesthetics Through Theory

Thursday 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

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:

• Tom Moylan, author of Demand the Impossible (1986), Scraps of the Untainted Sky (2000) and Dark Horizons (2003)
• Kim Stanley Robinson, author of Antarctica (1997) and the Science in the Capital Trilogy – Forty Signs of Rain (2004), Fifty Degrees Below (2005) and Sixty Days and Counting (2007).

Full information on submitting papers and registration is available on the conference site.

Anzac Beach, Gallipoli 1915 (from Australian War Memorial Collection)

Interested in studying abroad as part of your Monash degree?

Want to visit Anzac Cove and walk in the footsteps of legends?

In 2010, the National Centre for Australian Studies is offering three $3,500 scholarships to take you to Gallipoli and then on to our historic campus in Prato, Italy. You can earn 12 points towards your degree and also be eligible for further Monash subsidies.

To be eligible for the scholarships you need to complete (or have completed) any of the Australian Studies units offered on our Clayton Campus. If you complete AUS1060 Australian Idol or AUS2001/3001: Broken Earth: Journeys through the Australian Landscape in Semester 1, 2010, you are also eligible for the Monash Gallipoli Travelling Scholarship.

For further information on how to apply view NCAS Monash-Gallipoli Prize 2010.

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:

• Professor Andrew Benjamin (Director)
• Associate Professor Dirk Balzy
• Dr Franz-Josef Deiters
• Dr Michael Fagenblat
• Associate Professor Karen Green.

Forthcoming events for this year include:

• Workshop on Hegel’s Aesthetics (11 November 2009)
• Australasian Society for Continental Philosophy Annual Conference: Philosophy and the Work Of Art (29, 30 November & 1 December 2009)

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’.

Dr Tony Gould from the School of Music – Conservatorium has received the 2009 Classical Music Award for Instrumental Work of the Year for The River Meets the Sea. The piece was composed with cellist Imogen Manins and percussionist David Jones.

The River Meets the Sea can be heard on the CD Under the Tall Trees from ABC Classics.

View further information about the Classical Music Awards.

Gough Whitlam: A Moment in History

The latest book from Professor Jenny Hocking, Gough Whitlam: A Moment in History, has been shortlisted in the non-fiction category of the 2009 Prime Minister’s Literary Awards. Earlier in the year the book was also shortlisted for The Age Non-Fiction Book of the Year 2009.

Comments from the judges stated:

“No stranger to the political biography, Hocking gives us a portrait of a man who has cast a longer shadow on Australia’s history than most of his predecessors or successors as Prime Minister. There have been many books on Whitlam as Prime Minister—yet no detailed biographic account of his long and remarkable life, of his journey to the Lodge. Hocking combines fine writing with exemplary research including extended interviews with Whitlam and his family. A vivid and engaging book.”.

Gough Whitlam: A Moment in History is published by Miegunyah Press.

More information about the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards.

Visit Jenny Hocking’s profile page on the National Centre for Australian Studies site.

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:

• Mark Baker, director of the Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation
• Adrian Martin, world-famous film critic and Co-Director of the Research Unit in Film and Cultural Theory
• Jan Epstein, Melbourne film critic and broadcaster
• Nathan Wolski, lecturer in Jewish Studies.

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.