About the Centre for Postcolonial Writing
CPW aims to provide a stimulating forum for the exchange of creative and intellectual inquiry by organising visits, fellowships and writer's residencies for distinguished scholars, creative writers, individuals. Conferences and student and staff exchanges are being planned. CPW promotes team-research and co-authored publications and encourages their sponsorship.
What is Postcolonial?
The Centre defines as postcolonial the period from the moment of European colonisation to the present day.
Postcolonial Writing crosses traditional literary borders into new frontiers that subversively redescribe and reshape the world. With growing demand and opportunity, it will increasingly shape the future of tertiary study and research in the Humanities.
It engages with the discourses of empire, the special positioning of colonizing cultures in the colonized environment, and the subtleties of subject-construction in colonial discourse. It extends to the resistance of those subjects and their contentious dialogue with the colonizing culture in redefining themselves in pre and post independence contexts, and considers the effects of globalisation and diaspora in this revolutionary process.
Aims of the Centre
CPW aims to promote excellence in teaching and research by offering innovative postgraduate courses, developing resources for undergraduate teaching, and undertaking a vigorous research and publications program.
CPW extends its activities locally, domestically and internationally. Important collaborative links have been formed with similar enterprises elsewhere. Areas of current interest include Africa , Australia , Canada , China , India , Japan , Latin America , New Zealand , the Pacific, Sri Lanka , South East Asia , and the West Indies .
Special features
CPW is possibly the first in the world to move beyond traditional reading practices and generic structures by integrating Creative Writing into the rigors of academic assessment and critique. It thereby promotes critical engagement as an exercise that is as creative as it is scholarly.
The Centre provides students with the opportunity to engage in the traditional pedagogical reader-text relationship by theoretical research into postcolonial literature and discourse.
Crystallizing the diverse research and writing interests of the staff, the Centre offers a variety of undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate subjects that focus exclusively or in important segments on postcolonial themes.
The Centre provides an excellent location to both local and international students. Considering Monash's and Melbourne's strategic positioning, it could lead the field in postcolonial creative and literary writing in Australia .
The Centre offers students a unique opportunity study in the pluralistic and multicultural environment of Australia 's largest university.
Postgraduates and Graduates of the Centre
Postgraduates and graduates of the centre have archived considerable international acclaim and success.