What happens when technologies become obsolete? – and all you wanted to know about Lifewriting

• Obsolescence: Media history, policy and aesthetics workshop will be held on 1 and 2 October at the University of Wollongong. The workshop will bring together researchers from around Australia to discuss what happens when technologies, and even cities, become obsolete.

Topics covered will include the impact of e-waste on the environment, the problems for industrial cities in a post industrial economy, and how some obsolete technologies are recovered as collectable objects of nostalgia.

Researchers will work towards outcomes including publications, exhibitions and interventions including the design of recycling programs.

The workshop has been funded by the Australian Research Council Cultural Research Network and the Innovations in Cultural Research node of CAPSTRANS. [CAPSTRANS is the Centre for Asia Pacific Social Transformation Studies].

Where: Room 1064, Arts Building (Bldg 19). When: 10am, Thursday 1 October

For further information contact workshop convener Dr Jason Wilson on 4221 3088 or 0432 955 503.

********************************

• “Dissenting Voices” – Symposium on Lifewriting will be held on 1 and 2 October at the University of Wollongong. Twenty invited speakers will meet to present their work on “lifewriting” – a genre that includes autobiography, biography, memoirs, diaries/journals and letters.

Keynote speakers will be the Co-director of the Centre for Life History and Life Writing Research, Dr Margaretta Jolly from the University of Sussex, UK; Associate Professor Maureen Perkins from Curtin University; and prizewinning Caribbean-Canadian writer, Olive Senior.

The event is being conducted by the Literature, Identity and Culture Research Group in the Faculty of Arts.

Where: Room 101, McKinnon Building (Bldg 67). When: 8.45am, Thursday 1 October

Further information: Associate Professor Anne Collett on 4221 3736; or Dr Tony Simoes da Silva on 4221 5898 .

Last reviewed: 30 September, 2009