Category Archives: Seminar
Decolonial Gazing and Hermeneutic Resistance: Black German Challenges to White German Cultural Hegemony in the Museum
Tomorrow, Thurs 6/10 @4:30pm AEDT (with apologies for late posting)
This work in progress essay highlights the ways that Black Europeans, in this case in the German context, challenge universalizing notions of cultural heritage to highlight decolonial possibilities and interrogate the collection, display, and spectatorship of museum objects in majority-white contexts. I use the Berlin Ethnological museum in its former and current iterations as a representative example of debates about collecting and looking at museums, showing how thinkers like Fatima El-Tayeb and Kum’a Ndumbe III and initiatives like No Humboldt21! offer challenges to universalizing discourses and reflect the gaze back on whiteness. Finally, I offer a reading of a literary challenge to this universalism in Sharon Dodua Otoo’s 2021 novel Adas Raum (Ada’s Realm).
Maureen Gallagher is a lecturer in German Studies at ANU. She holds a PhD in German Studies from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and is currently working on a book manuscript on whiteness in Wilhelmine German youth literature and culture based on her dissertation. Her research and teaching interests include race and gender in German colonial literature, Black German Studies, connections between German Studies and Indigenous Studies, and inclusive, anti-racist and decolonial teaching practices.
Transforming Small-Scale Irrigation in sub-Saharan Africa
Thursday, 13 October 2022, 2–5pm
Small-scale irrigation schemes have been identified as a major vehicle to improve the livelihood of smallholder farmers and their communities in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), including improving food security, education, health and adapting to climate change.
The Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) funded the project Transforming Small-scale Irrigation in Southern Africa (TISA) from 2013. The proposal was to use innovative institutions and technologies to address the complex set of challenges and barriers inhibiting the profitability of this sector, and its ability to initiate the process of transforming small scale irrigation schemes from underperforming to sustainable and profitable systems.
This session will report on the outcomes of the first nine years of TISA, which has had a remarkable impact on the livelihoods of smallholder farming families. We also outline our vision for how this success should inform a future program to develop circular food systems to accelerate sustainable rural development.
Speakers
- Prof Jamie Pittock, ANU
- Dr Mario Chilundo, Eduardo Mondale University
- Dr Luitfred Kissoly, Ardhi University
- Thabani Dube. International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, Bulawayo, Zimbabwe
- Dr Richard Stirzaker, CSIRO
- PhD Candidate Karen Parry, UniSA
- PhD Candidate Michael Wellington, ANU
- Dr Njongenhle MB Nyoni, The Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network, Pretoria, South Africa
- Dr Ana Manero, ANU
- Dr Neil Lazarow, Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research
Location
Frank Fenner Seminar Room, Building 141 Linnaeus Way, Acton ACT 2601
Also online via Zoom
Studying Africa in Australia – Report and Public Lecture
The results of research into the current situation of African studies in the Australian Capital Territory, are available online. A lengthy report, contextualizing the past and present situation of African studies in Canberra, with reference to international developments, and a shorter article recently published in the Australasian Review of African Studies, focusing on changes in Australian universities and academic life, reveal the importance of research methodologies rather than regional specialization.
A reminder that this research project will also be the focus on the Future of the Humanities and Social Sciences Annual Lecture, delivered online via Zoom at 5pm on Wednesday 25 May (Africa Day).
Studying Africa in Australia: The Future of the Humanities and Social Sciences Annual Lecture
On Africa Day, May 25, Dr Ibrahim Abraham (Humanities Research Centre, ANU) presents the annual Future of the Humanities and Social Sciences Lecture, a critical overview of the study of Africa in Australia in the past and present, with an eye to the future.
In a time of increasing disciplinary fragmentation in the humanities and social sciences, and strengthening methodological and moral scrutiny around the study of a misrepresented continent of many cultures, this lecture suggests paths toward strengthening and promoting multidisciplinary research on Africa in Australia.
About the presenter: Ibrahim Abraham is the Hans Mol Research Fellow in Religion and the Social Sciences in the Humanities Research Centre at the ANU. His most recent book is Race, Class and Christianity in South Africa: Middle-Class Moralities (Routledge, 2021).
This event is part of the Humanities Research Centre’s 2022 Distinguished Lecture Series.
Tomorrow (20 May): Senegambian Rhythmic Traditions, Embodied Knowledge, and Adaptation
Senegambian Rhythmic Traditions, Embodied Knowledge, and Adaptation
Lamine Sonko and King Marong
Date & time: Thursday 20 May 2021, 3.30–5pm
Location: Kingsland Room, Level 6, ANU School of Music
In this research seminar, Lamine Sonko and King Marong will reflect on their longterm engagement with embodied knowledge of ancient rhythmic traditions in West Africa, as well as current research exploring the adaptation of traditional music, dance, and theatre in contemporary Australia. The seminar will include a discussion and live music demonstration.
Lamine Sonko is a composer, director and multi-instrumentalist, originally from Senegal and living in Australia since 2004. In his artistic practice he draws on traditional wisdom to create inter-disciplinary & multi-sensory arts experiences inspired by his cultural background as a Gewel (hereditary cultural role). His role as a Gewel is to be a keeper and communicator of history, customs, rituals and sacred knowledge through music, dance and oral storytelling. Through his work he has defined new ways to present and re-imagine the traditional African, contemporary and classical synthesis of music and theatre. As a composer he has arranged and recorded award-winning music including two compositions for Grammy Award-winning album ‘Winds of Samsara’ (2015). He has composed and directed large scale works including the Boite Millennium Chorus ‘One Africa’ (Arts Centre Melbourne) and has presented and performed throughout Australia and internationally.
Born in The Gambia, King Marong has been performing professionally since the age of 12. King developed his skills in the coastal fishing village where he grew up surrounded by the griots (hereditary musicians) and international musicians who were his mentors for Senegambian drumming and cultural priorities. In his late teens he formed his band Kunta Kinteh and consequently toured The Gambia, Senegal, UK and Europe. King has since built an international reputation as a master of many African drumming styles on instruments such as the Djembe, Boucarabou, Doundoun and Sabar, performing and teaching percussion to students from around the world.
God, Development, and Technology Transfer: Mediated Ethics between Chinese and Ethiopians
Online and in person, China in the World seminar rooms (Building 188), Fellows Lane, ANU
Details and link to registration here.
Abstract The rolling out of China’s Belt and Road Initiative and overseas projects provides a window to examine the intercultural dynamics between Chinese expats and local communities. Ethiopia, an East African country, has become a strategic partner of China and hosts a growing population of Chinese developers, business people and workers. In this contact zone, assumptions and misassumptions, tentative adjustments, and reevaluation of Chinese and local communities’ relations are abundant to the extent that any culturalist explanation is insufficient to grapple with the Chinese’s evolving ethical experience. This study shows how the Chinese and Ethiopians relate to one another ethically in different contexts and why the boundary between them becomes explicit or less so.
Bio Dr Liang Chen’s research interests involve migration, urbanisation, and intercultural encounters in China and Africa. He has been studying the trans-continental business network of African expatriates in China, the Chinese working in Ethiopia, and Afar pastoralists’ urbanisation in Ethiopia and Djibouti since 2016. He is currently visiting the School of Culture, History, and Language of ANU.
Truth and Reconciliation: South Africa and Victoria
Date and time: Thursday 08 Apr 2021, 1–2pm
Speaker: Ibrahim Abraham
Event series: Freilich Research Network Event
Location: online zoom webinar, register here
Victoria’s recently announced Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) draws inspiration from the famous TRC initiated in South Africa in 1995. Both initiatives endeavour to reveal historical truths and heal broken and unjust relationships between indigenous and non-indigenous communities. Whereas South Africa’s TRC was limited to political violence taking place between 1960 and 1994, excluding the broader sweep of South African history, the willingness of Victoria’s TRC to investigate events as far back as European colonization makes it a conceivably more radical and potentially more contentious initiative. Offering an overview of South Africa’s TRC, drawn from the presenter’s forthcoming book, this lunchtime talk will also draw out some of the likely similarities and differences between the South African and Victorian initiatives, and highlight some of the challenges inherent in any TRC, including the implicitly religious nature of narratives of confession and reconciliation, and the difficulty of finding a common moral language in diverse societies.
Ibrahim Abraham is the Hans Mol Research Fellow in Religion and the Social Sciences in the Humanities Research Centre of the Australian National University, and a former Convenor of the Freilich Project for the Study of Bigotry. His book Race, Class and Christianity in South Africa: Middle-Class Moralities will be published by Routledge in 2021.
Books that Changed Humanity: J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace
Date and time: Friday 19 Mar 2021, 5.30–6.45pm
Speakers: Dr Ibrahim Abraham (Humanities Research Centre, ANU)
Location: Zoom (registration required)
Series: Books that Changed Humanity
Africa and its People: Interdisciplinary Lessons from ANU Research
Wed., 4 March 2020, 9:00am–4:30pm
Fenner Seminar Room, Fenner Building (#141), ANU