News from the Faculty of Arts, Monash University, Melbourne Australia
Joseph Gelfer recently featured on the ABC Radio National show The Spirit of Things. The show was the latest in a series about the Seven Deadly Sins and was focused on Envy. A podcast of the show can be downloaded from the ABC’s The Spirit of Things site.
Joseph Gelfer is an Adjunct Research Associate in the School of Political and Social Inquiry.
Dr Anna Eriksson from Criminology in the School of Political and Social Inquiry, has been awarded the Australian and New Zealand Society of Criminology New Scholar Prize for 2009. The prize is awarded each year for the best publication in criminology or a related area.
The article for which the prize was awarded, ‘Challenging Cultures of Violence through Community Restorative Justice in Northern Ireland’, was published in Sociology of Crime, Law and Deviance, 2008.
Dr Eriksson will next be exploring the latest developments around restorative justice and policing in Northern Ireland through a Travelling Fellowship with Kings College London. This research builds on her book Justice in Transition: Community Restorative Justice in Northern Ireland, published in June this year.
During her time with Kings College Dr Eriksson will also be working on a major project titled Penal excess and penal exceptionalism: contrasts in imprisonment between Anglophone (England, New Zealand and New South Wales representing Australia) and Scandinavian (Norway, Sweden and Finland) societies. This is a collaborative project with Professor John Pratt from Victoria University Wellington. The project explores why prison rates and prison conditions, although very similar in the immediate post 1945 period, now differ so much between these two clusters of societies.
As well as collaborating with the International Centre for Prison Studies at King’s College London and other relevant research centres at the Law School, she has also been invited as a guest researcher at Gothenburg University where she will spend August before beginning her Travelling Fellowship in September.
Further information on the Criminology program.
Further information on Justice in Transition: Community Restorative Justice in Northern Ireland, Willan Publishing.
Australian Catholic University, Melbourne City Campus
Room 5.29
115 Victoria Parade
Fitzroy
Perspectives on local and inter-country adoption: Canada, US and Australia.
Speakers include:
Short films on adoption screening as part of the TTAF tour, plus a reading of a new play, Umbilical, by Dominic Hong Duc Golding.
This event is proudly brought to you by Monash Arts, in collaboration with the Australian Catholic University and the Inter-Country Adoptee Support Network.
Note: Seats at this event are strictly limited. Please contact Amy at amy.pollard@arts.monash.edu.au to reserve your place.
Dr Matt Tomlinson’s new book In God’s Image: The Metaculture of Fijian Christianity has recently been published by the University of California Press.
“In God’s Image is at once a textured, consistently engaging, and revelatory ethnography; a significant contribution to our broader understanding of the complex intersections of religion, culture, and history within and beyond Fiji; and a subtle and provocative theoretical exploration of semiotics in and as social practice.”
Cover of Splashed by the saint
Abdul Qadir al-Jaelani (d. 1166) is a truly global saint. Born just south of the Caspian Sea in Iran, his tomb is now a prominent place of pilgrimage in Baghdad. He is the subject of intercessionary practices performed by Muslims the world over.
Dr Julian Millie (PSI) spent more than a year (2002-2003) attending intercessionary rituals amongst Muslims of Bandung, West Java. His book on the subject, ‘Splashed by the Saint: Ritual reading and Islamic sanctity in West Java’ has just been published by the Royal Anthropological Society of the Netherlands.
In West Java, the intercessionary ritual takes the form of reading or singing the tales of Abdul Qadir’s saintliness in a ritual setting. The practice is of long standing in West Java, and has left a large legacy of literary translation (from Arabic and Javanese) in the holdings of Sundanese manuscripts. But the ritual reading tradition has received stimulus from the recent regeneration of the sufi order known as the Tarekat Qadiriyyah wa Naqsyabandiyyah, the most popular sufi order in Java.
The book, heavily reliant on Millie’s fieldwork and his skills in Sundanese and Arabic, explores the meanings the ritual has for Sundanese Muslims of the past and of contemporary Bandung. It explores how the contemporary resurgence of the sufi order brings a supralocal nuance to an event which has traditionally displayed string signs of local tradition, and discusses the multiple and contested meanings of sanctity in Islamic society.
Cover of Numen Old Men
Joseph Gelfer, a PSI Adjunct Research Associate, has a new book in press, “Numen, Old Men: Contemporary Masculine Spiritualities and the Problem of Patriarchy”. Canvassing the mythopoetic, evangelical, and to a lesser extent Catholic men’s movements, “Numen, Old Men” argues that masculine spirituality is little more than a thinly veiled patriarchal spirituality. Gay spirituality is then offered as a form of masculine spirituality which to a large degree resists patriarchal tendencies, suggesting a queering of spirituality could be useful for all men, both gay and straight. For further information visit the Equinox Publishing website.
An insight into the research contained in the book can be seen in a recent article of Gelfer’s – Pray like a man in The Guardian (UK)
Mr Orhan Cicek, Executive Advisor, AIS, Professor Rae Frances, Dean of Arts, Dr Salih Yucel, Lecturer in Islamic Studies, Professor Greg Barton
The Monash Staff Club recently hosted a lunch at which the guest of honour, the Hon. Laurie Ferguson MP, Parliamentary Secretary for Multicultural Affairs and Settlement Services, launched the Faculty of Arts’ new Centre for Islam and the Modern World. He was accompanied by state and federal parliamentary representatives, Ms Anna Burke MP and Mr Hong Lim MP, Monash Vice-Chancellor Professor Richard Larkins, Dean of Arts Professor Rae Frances, Counsel General for Turkey Mr Aydin Nurhan, Counsel General of the Sultanate of Oman His Excellency Mr Hamed Al-Hajri, Head of the Delegation of Palestine Ambassador Izzat Abdulhadi and leading members of Victoria’s Muslim communities.
More News about Gary Bouma
Press Release
The Australasian Theological Forum (ATF) Ltd awards an annual prize for outstanding theological books published in the area of Christian theology in the past year. Recently it announced the recipients of the 2007 prize for books published in 2006.
Rev Dr Paul Babie, Associate Dean of Law (Research) at the University of Adelaide Law School, Priest of the Eparchy for Ukrainian Catholics of Australia, New Zealand and Oceania, and Chair of the Board of Directors of ATF Ltd, announced the winners at the ATF Office in Adelaide on 2 May 2008.
Rev Dr Babie said that ‘the criteria used by the panel of judges require that a book be well-written, of international standard, and that it be challenging and constitute an original contribution to its field of theology.’
‘In awarding its prize the ATF aims to recognise and encourage theological work of real quality in Australia and New Zealand’, Rev Dr Babie said.
Professor Emeritus Gary D Bouma has been awarded the first prize for 2008 for his book Australian Soul: Religion and Spirituality in the 21st Century, published by Cambridge University Press. Professor Bouma is an Anglican Priest and Emeritus Professor of Sociology in the School of Political and Social Inquiry at Monash University and the UNESCO Chair in Interreligious and Intercultural Relations, Asia Pacific.
In awarding the prize, Rev Dr Babie said that ‘Professor Bouma’s research has primarily focussed on the interaction between religion and society in Western societies including Canada, the United States, Australia, New Zealand and Europe. His current work includes a major study of religious plurality in multicultural Australia making strategic comparisons with other societies and an attempt to delineate Australia’s religious institutions and continuing work on Post-Modernity as a context for interfaith dialogue and theological reflection. In Australian Soul, Professor Bouma challenges the idea that religious and spiritual life in Australia is in decline, arguing instead that far from petering out, religion and spirituality are thriving. This makes a very important contribution to contemporary political and social dialogue.’
Rev Dr Babie also announced the second prize, highly commending Aloysius Rego, OCD, of the Discalced Carmelite Friars in Victoria, for Suffering and Salvation: The salvific meaning of suffering in the later theology of Edward Schillebeeckx, published by Peeters Press and WB Eerdmans. Rev Dr Babie said that ‘Fr Rego’s book is a challenging and significant work exploring the deeper questions of God’s role in suffering and salvation through the lens of Edward Schillebeeckx’s later theology. The project ultimately builds a contemporary soteriology.’
Further information:
Mr Hilary Regan
ATF Press
0411 876 099
Professor Gary Bouma
Deputy Vice-Chancellor Professor Edwina Cornish will host an event, attended by Vice-Chancellor Professor Richard Larkins and other members of the Monash community at the Monash Club on 14 December, to farewell Professor Gary Bouma on his retirement and pay tribute to his illustrious career as one of the University’s leading contributors.
Dr Bree Carlton's book Imprisoning Resistance
A Monash University researcher has uncovered the compelling story behind the closure of Victoria’s most controversial prison block.
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