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Participating in the ‘Asia Pacific Transculturalisms’ two... |
Overseas scholars address ‘Asia Pacific Transculturalisms’ workshop
Three international prominent scholars addressed a two-day workshop held in the Faculty of Arts this week on ‘Asia Pacific Transculturalisms: New Theoretical Perspectives’.
The keynote speakers were Professor Sneja Gunew (University of British Columbia), Professor Robbie Goh (National University of Singapore), and Professor Vijay Mishra (Murdoch University).
With the support of CAPSTRANS (Centre for Asia Pacific Social Transformation Studies) and APFRN (Asia Pacific Futures Research Network), postgraduate and early career researchers working in the field of cultural analysis involving Asia Pacific cross-cultural relations participated as panellists and discussants. Three were from the University of Wollongong and 14 from Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney and Perth.
Participants in the workshop explored current theoretical discourses in transcultural studies and debated the relevance of these to research dealing with the Asia Pacific.
In keeping with the aim of the workshop to develop interdisciplinary approaches to transcultural analytical practice, the disciplines represented were diverse but related (including literary studies, cultural studies, media and cinema studies, and art history).
Working as an intimate group, the participants explored some of the more recent concepts and ideas developed in this area (such as vernacular cosmopolitanism, cultural citizenship, border discourse, and transnationalism) and put them to the test in the context of the participants’ research projects -- all of which deal with aspects of Asia Pacific cultural exchange.
The workshop was convened by members of the Wollongong-based team of the ARC Discovery project ‘Globalising Australian Literature: Asian-Australian writing, Asian perspectives on Australian literature’ (Professor Wenche Ommundsen, Associate Professor Paul Sharrad, and Dr Alison Broinowski).
Keynote speaker Professor Gunew is Professor of English and Women’s Studies at the University of British Columbia. Her degrees are from Melbourne, Toronto, and Newcastle (NSW) and she is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. She has taught in England, Australia and Canada and has published widely on postcolonial, multicultural, and feminist critical theory. Among her publications are Framing Marginality: Multicultural Literary Studies (1994) and Haunted Nations: The Colonial Dimensions of Multiculturalisms (2004).
She was Director of the Centre for Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of British Columbia in 2002-2007 and is Associate Principal of the College for Interdisciplinary Studies, UBC. She is North American editor of Feminist Theory (Sage). Her current work is in comparative multiculturalism and in diasporic literatures and their intersections with national and global cultural formations.
Professor Goh is Head of the Department of English Language and Literature, and Deputy Director of the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore. He works mainly on Asian Anglophone literatures and cultures, Christianity in Asia, and popular culture.
His recent publications include Christianity in Southeast Asia (2006); Theorizing the Southeast Asian City as Text (2003, co-edited with Brenda S. A. Yeoh), Asian Diasporas: Cultures, Identities, Representations (2004, co-edited with Shawn Wong), and Contours of Culture: Space and Social Difference in Singapore (2005). He is working on a book on Christianity in the Indian Diaspora, and has forthcoming articles on Amitav Ghosh, Kazuo Ishiguro, Cosmopolitan Cities and other topics on transnationalism and cultural studies in Asia.
Professor Mishra is Professor of English Literature at Murdoch University, Perth. He holds doctorates from the Australian National University and Oxford University. Among his publications are Dark Side of the Dream: Australian Literature and the Postcolonial Mind (with Bob Hodge), The Gothic Sublime, Devotional Poetics and the Indian Sublime, Bollywood Cinema; Temples of Desire and The Literature of the Indian Diaspora: Theorizing the Diasporic Imaginary.