Ideas in Action seminar series
Upcoming seminars:
Dictionary of Sydney - City of Sydney historian and adjunct at UTS Shirley Fitzgerald in conversation with Assoc Prof Paul Ashton
Date: 23 November 2007
Time: 5pm - 6.30pm
Location: Room 2.7065, UTS Broadway
What is a city dictionary? How does it become a participative on-line community that grows the meanings of the city through the work of hundreds of contributors? In this conversation Shirley Fitzgerald, arguably Sydney's leading historian, explores the way in which history and the city can come to life through the sustained involvement of citizens and professional researchers.
Past seminars:
Will religion's comeback last? - modernity and secularism in global perspective.
Date: Friday 28 September
Time: 5pm - 6.30pm
Location: Room 2.7065, UTS Broadway
Presenters:
Paul Gillen and Devleena Ghosh
For most of the twentieth century it was widely believed that modernisation led to a weakening of religious beliefs and institutions. Modern societies were secular: tolerant of religious difference while tending to limit or exclude religion from legal, economic, political, and perhaps educational spheres. To be modern was to be relatively dispassionate about religion, if not openly skeptical.
Late twentieth century developments- including 'New Age' spirituality, Christian Evangelism, Islamism, the resurfacing of religion in former Communist states, and a spate of religiously inspired political movements and conflicts across Asia, Eastern Europe and Africa - have led many to question the conventional secularization thesis.
This talk will discuss the difficulties of defining and measuring secularisation, whether and how it is associated with modernity, and some of the theories that have been advanced to explain the connection.
RSVP attendance only a.jakubowicz@uts.edu.au
Gender Politics News
Date: Friday 31 August, 2007
Time: 5pm - 6.30pm
Location: Room 2.7065, UTS Broadway
Presenters:
Prof Karen Ross (U Liverpool UK) on Gender Politics News - reflecting
on her research on women politicians and the politics of gender in
the news media in the UK and NZ
in conversation with Dr Christina Ho
RSVP attendance only Andrew Jakubowicz.
Torture, Trauma, Rights
Date: Friday June 22 2007
Location: 5pm - 6.30pm
Location: Room 2.7065, UTS Broadway
Presenters:
Michael Humphrey
Dept of Sociology and Social Policy
University of Sydney
in conversation with Catherine Robinson
Prof Humphrey presents his research on the political management of trauma as a legacy of state violence. It addresses torture as secret state violence in which the perpetrator in the triadic structure of perpetrator/victim/witnesses remains largely concealed and immune. While truth politics have sought to reveal the hand of perpetrators trauma has frequently been confined within a therapeutic discourse of state recovery (not rocking the boat) or of individual healing. Interestingly the history of human rights movements in the context of democratisation is that trauma has been a central mobilising emotional resource for not giving up. The emergence of new victims human rights movements in many post-dictatorship states in Latin America reveals the potency of trauma and suffering as a source of identity politics and the demand for the recovery of justice and a moral state/politicians.
Biography:
Michael Humphrey holds the Chair in Sociology in the Department of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Sydney. He has published widely on the themes of multiculturalism and immigration, Islamic identity and politics, urbanisation, the anthropology of globalisation, and violence, trauma, human rights and reconciliation. His main publications are Islam, Multiculturalism & Transnationalism: from the Lebanese Diaspora, IB Tauris, London, (1998) and, The Politics of Atrocity and Reconciliation: from terror to trauma, Routledge (2002). His current research is on human rights and democratisation with a special focus on Argentina and South Africa and Islam and transnational governmentality.
Coming up
July - no session
August 31: Karen Ross (U Liverpool UK) on Women framed: gender, politics and news, in conversation with Chris Ho
September 28: Paul Gillen on secularism, in conversation with Devleena Ghiosh
October 26: to be announced
November 23: Shirley Fitzgerald (City of Sydney) on Sydney histories and the dictionary of Sydney, in conversation with Paul Ashton
Contact
To find out more about the Ideas in Action seminar series, please contact Prof Andrew Jakubowicz.