Past Events 2005 - 2007
Nominations for the Executive Committee of the Oriental
Society of Australia.
Members, who wish to nominate for any of the Executive Committee
positions falling vacant on the 26th March 2007 of President, Vice
President, Honorary Secretary, Honorary Treasurer, Editor of the
Journal of the Oriental Society of Australia (JOSA), Review Editor
of JOSA, and nine other Executive Committee members are to forward
their nominations in writing supported by a proposer and seconder
to Seiko Yasumoto, Honorary Secretary of OSA, by the 19th March
2007.
Seiko.Yasumoto@arts.usyd.edu.au
Telephone #61 2 93514716
Room 544
Christopher Brennan Building
University of Sydney
Download Form: HERE (Available Shortly)
Events 2007
End of Year Seminar and Christmas Dinner Party
The Oriental Society cordially invites members,
friends and guests of the Society to the end of year seminar 2007.
After the presentation a Christmas dinner party will be held at
the Spicy Sichuan restaurant. Please join us for a most interesting
seminar and after the seminar for dinner to celebrate our 2007 year.
Date: Monday 17th December 2007
Time: 5.30pm to 6.30pm
Venue: Quadrangle Building Room S421,The University
of Sydney
Speaker: James Stuart
Presentation Title: The Homeless Gods: exploring ancient Mesopotamia
Biography:
James Stuart is a poet, editor/curator and new media artist with
a specific interest in collaborative language-based projects. He
also co-directs arts and debate night The Salon. In 2007, he edited
and designed an e-anthology of text-based art and intermedia writing,
The Material Poem: www.nongeneric.net. He is completing a Masters
of Creative Arts at the University of Technology, Sydney, centred
on poetry as material form.
His current writing projects include a manuscript
of poems (through an Australia Council New Work grant) exploring
the Australian landscape through new myth structures. The Salon
appeared at the 2007 Sydney Writers Festival where The Salon Anthology:
new art & writing 2005-2007 was launched. He is judge of the
2007 Newcastle Poetry Prize’s New Media Category, an award
he won in 2004 for Frequencies (with Karen Chen and Jon Wicks).
The Homeless Gods was created in collaboration
with artist and animator Karen Chen and sound-artist Guillaume Potard.
The project was assisted by the Australian Government through the
Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.
Abstract:
What happens to gods when the civilisations that worship them fall
from grace? In this seminar poet and new media artist James Stuart
will discuss his creative project The Homeless Gods, an online poem-world
presented as an interactive Flash animation.
In the mythological structure of this world, when
a civilisation falls, so too do its gods: without their worshipers,
they become mortals and are banished to subsist at the outskirts
of humanity. Envisaged as an expanding online world, The Homeless
Gods begins in the city of New Eridu, where reside the gods, demons
and monsters of ancient Mesopotamia…
After presenting the project and reading some poetic
extracts, Stuart will discuss the collaborative process that underpinned
the creation of the world, the issues of cultural loss he explores,
and his decision to explore Mesopotamian mythology rather than,
for instance, Classical or Egyptian mythology. Intertwined will
be an insight into his research and interpretation of the epic poetry,
history, archeology and architecture of Mesopotamian civilisation,
and why he believes this civilization still has contemporary relevance.
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Time: 7:00-9:30
Venue: Christmas Dinner at the Spicy Sichuan restaurant,
1-9 Glebe Point Rd Glebe , Tel: 9660-8200
Enquiries and dinner attendance: please contact to Seiko Yasumoto
Telephone: 9351 4716, Fax: 9351 2319, email: Seiko.Yasumoto@usyd.edu.au
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OSA seminar series
Presentation Title: From Diaspora to Globalised Islam: Muslims
and Islam in Australia
Date: Monday 26th November
Time: 5pm-6pm
Venue: The University of Sydney: Quadrangle Building
Room S421.
Presenter : Prof. Michael Humphrey,
Chair, Department of Sociology & Social Policy, SOPHI,
University of Sydney
Biography: Michael Humphrey holds
the Chair in Sociology at the University of Sydney. He has published
widely on the themes of the Islam in the West, the anthropology
of globalisation, political violence and terrorism, human rights
and reconciliation. A major theme is his work has been the changing
relationship between the individual, collectivities and the state.
His main publications are Islam, Multiculturalism & Transnationalism:
from the Lebanese Diaspora, IB Tauris (1998) and The Politics of
Atrocity and Reconciliation: from terror to trauma, Routledge (2002).
His current research is on contemporary human rights politics and
democratisation in Argentina and South Africa and globalised Islam
and transnational governmentality
Abstract: This paper explores
the emergence of a 'globalised' Islam, what Roy describes as the
'way in which the relationship of Muslims to Islam is reshaped by
globalisation, westernisation and the impact of living as a
minority'. It is the product of the experience of the de-territorialisation
and de-culturalisation of Islam in immigrant Muslim communities
and their identification with a millenarian Islam. The paper explores
the shift from 'Diaspora Islam' produced through immigration and
settlement to an increasingly socially and culturally detached 'Globalised
Islam'. Globalised Islam is a new imaginary shaped by Muslim social
experience of
marginalisation and generational change in distinct Western countries
and the politicization of cultural difference and identity in the
context of jihadist international terrorism. The paper explores
the way globalised
Islam articulates different forms of religiosity dominated by neo-fundamentalist
interpretations of religion as a re-universalised set of beliefs
which has created a new Muslim identity de-linked from the nation-state
project but with no substitute political centre. This only reinforces
a globalised imaginary of Islam. In response Australia, in line
with Europe and North America, has securitised Islam/Muslims and
wages public safety wars which seek to manage the invisible threats
of dangerous global circulation. Post September 11 'human security'
has shifted from a focus on the security of populations (biopolitics)
in failed states to the safety of homeland populations. Globalised
Islam can also be understood as just another instance of the predominance
of global idioms over local idioms to interpret the complex reality
of contemporary social life.
Previous seminars and other activities this year:
•Presentation Title: 'Recent research in
Oriental numismatics - A bibliographical survey'
Date: Monday October 29th 2007
Time: 5pm-6pm
Venue: The University of Sydney: Eastern Avenue
Seminar Room 310.
Presenter: Dr Nicholas Hardwick,
Honorary Associate,
Department of Classics and Ancient History,
School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry,
University of Sydney
Biography:
Dr Nicholas Hardwick is an Honorary Associate,
Department of Classics and Ancient History, University of Sydney.
A specialist in ancient Greek coinage before Alexander the Great
and the iconography of the theatre in Greek vase painting, he graduated
in Archaeology from the University of Sydney in 1985 and completed
his doctorate at the University of Oxford in 1991. He then undertook
research and teaching in Greece, where he participated in the excavations
at Torone, specialising in the coins which were recovered there,
and has worked as an antiquities curator in Melbourne and as Assistant
Curator of Numismatics at the Nicholson Museum, University of Sydney,
2003-4. At the OSA Conference in 2006 he convened and chaired a
panel and prepared a display of coins in the Nicholson Museum.
Abstract: As in every field of
oriental research, the study of coinage proceeds and continues to
provide a rich source of evidence for every aspect of human experience.
This seminar will introduce researchers to some of the bibliographical
tools for numismatics and give an overview of recent research in
the geographical region from the Arab world to Japan.
The principal bibliographical resources are two
series. The International Numismatic Commission publishes 'A Survey
of Numismatic Research', in conjunction with the International Numismatic
Congresses, which take place every six years, with the last one
being in Madrid in 2003. This has chapters on various historical
and geographical areas, in which the authors note the publications
in the field since the previous 'Survey', and give a brief summary
and indication of their significance. The American Numismatic Society
in New York publishes 'Numismatic Literature', an annual bibliography
of titles of publications and abstracts, often written by the respective
authors, about every aspect of coinage, which are grouped in the
various historical and geographical areas. This is in the process
of being put online.
The geographical region of Asia is notable for
increased awareness in recent years of the coinage of regions such
as China, both from the publications of scholars within and outside
that country. For areas such as Indo-China, there has been significant
progress from a position of very little knowledge 50 years ago.
•Presentation Title: China’s Islamic Minorities: Contemporary
Perspectives
A.R Davis Memorial Lecture
Date: Monday September 17th 2007
Time:5pm-6pm
Venue: The University of Sydney: Carslaw Tutorial
Room 360.
Presenter: Professor Colin Mackerras
Biography:
Colin Mackerras (Fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities)
gained his PhD from the Australian National University, Canberra,
in 1972. He worked as Foundation Professor in Asian Studies at Griffith
University, Queensland, from 1974 to 2004, becoming professor emeritus
upon retirement in 2004. He has written widely on Chinese history,
theatre, and ethnic studies, and Western images of China. His many
authored books include China’s Ethnic Minorities and Globalisation,
Rutledge Curzon, London, 2003.
Abstract:
China’s Islamic Minorities: Contemporary Perspectives
Among China’s fifty-six state-recognized
ethnic groups, ten are classified as Muslim. Of these, the two most
populous are the Hui, who are Sinic culturally, and the Uygurs,
who are Turkic. There are also some smaller Muslim ethnic groups
who are Turko-Mongolian. According to the 2000 census, the total
population of the ten Islamic ethnic groups was 20,320,580, and
that is about the number of Muslims in China today. Muslims live
all over China, but are concentrated in two province-level units,
namely Xinjiang and Ningxia.
The lecture will look at some interesting factual
material about the Muslims of China, but will focus mainly on issues.
One of these is how Muslims have fared in a state that is inimical
to religion, both in theory and practice, even though policy has
changed greatly over the years. The lecture will argue that Islam
has grown in social, and to some extent political, influence during
the reform period since 1978. Another issue is the extent to which
we can disaggregate religion and ethnicity, especially given that
many Muslims contrast themselves with the Han because of their adherence
to Islam.
How seriously should one take traditions of animosity
between Muslims and neighbouring non-Muslims in China? There is
no doubt that some hostility exists, but there is debate over whether
it should loom quite as large in the historical or contemporary
record as has in fact been the case. It may be too easy to focus
only on Islam as a marker, without giving enough consideration to
other matters, including social status, economic wealth, whether
we are talking about urban or rural communities, and so on.
The collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of
1991 and the September 11 Incidents nearly ten years later also
impacted greatly on the way in which people in China regarded Muslims.
There have been reports of renewed disturbances, especially in Xinjiang,
since 1990. The lecture will ask how the collapse of the Soviet
Union and September 11 have affected the state’s attitude
towards Muslims and relations between Muslim ethnic minorities and
other ethnic groups.
The lecture concludes by emphasizing the diversity
of Chinese Muslims and, while acknowledging conflict, warns against
any blanket classification of them as hostile either to the Han
or to the Chinese state.
•Presentation title: Allied and Addicted: Australia’s
Asian Amnesia.
Dr Alison Broinowski will be joined in discussion by former
NSW Attorney-General Bob Debus.
Date: Thursday 19th July 2007
Time: 5pm-6pm
Venue: The University of Sydney: Quadrangle Building,
Room S241
Presenter: Dr Alison Broinowski
Biography:
Dr Alison Broinowski, formerly an Australian diplomat, has written
and edited ten books about the interface between Australia and Asia
and Australia’s role in world affairs. She is a Visiting Fellow
at ANU and UNSW, an Honorary Associate at Macquarie University,
a Council member of the Australian Institute of International Affairs
(NSW) and a member of the Oriental Society of Australia and the
Australian Republican Movement. She lectures in Macquarie University’s
Masters program in International Relations, and is leading a research
team on Australian-Asian fiction at Wollongong University. Her most
recent book, Allied and Addicted (Scribe, 2007) challenges the value
of the Australian-American alliance. For further details go HERE.
Abstract:
Australia's Asian Amnesia
In Australia, enthusiasm for Asia has always risen and fallen in
waves. The troughs seem to coincide with conservative governments,
who redirect Australia towards the Commonwealth or the United States.
Alison Broinowski argues in her new book, Allied and Addicted, that
to be as attached as Australians are to an alliance that does not
do what they expect it to do, but actually damages Australia's interests
in several respects, is irrational as well as immature behaviour.
The way Australia goes to war provides telling examples; so does
the way the Howard government has responded to climate change; and
Australia's recent record at the United Nations reveals policies
that are internationally out of step. The solution involves renewing
Australia's concentration on Asia, including reviving Asian languages
and studies, and rejecting the false construction of Asian threats.
Alison is joined in discussion by former NSW Attorney-General Bob
Debus, who some forty years ago broadcast a series on ABC radio
about 'Australia's Asian Future'.
•OSA Publication Committee meeting
Date: Monday 18th June
2007
Time: 5:00pm-6:30pm
Venue: 5th floor meeting room, Christopher Brennan
Building, The University of Sydney
Agenda:
- Publications from post OSA Conference held in 2006
All participants' papers submitted for consideration to be included
in JOSA shall be refereed.
Deadline for submission is the end of May 2007.
Seiko Yasumoto
Honorary Secretary
17-05-2007
•OSA executive committee meeting
Date: Monday 18th June
2007
Time: 4:15pm-5:00pm
Venue: 5th floor meeting room, Christopher Brennan
Building, The University of Sydney
Agenda:
- OSA activities this year.
- Confirmation of the publication committee.
- Other matters
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