Programs and Activities - 2003
2 August - All Canada Day III
As with past Canada Days, this year's event was a great success. The Centre for Canadian-Australian Studies with the Student Exchange Office and the Canadian High Commission once again combined to promote Canadian education at the University of Wollongong. Students and academics alike were able to attend a number of sessions which helped outline Canadian Studies and the availability of grants. A buffet style lunch was hosted by the Canadian High Commissioner Jean Fournier, and was attended by VIPs, students, and the media. At an award ceremony, Angela Pratt and Professor Clem Lloyd were presented with grants to do research in Canada.
24 July - Law and Colonialism Theory: Recent Trends
Professor Russell Smandych visited the University of Wollongong on 24 July 2003 as part of a ten-stop tour of Australia and New Zealand, where he delivered the talk "Recent Trends in Law and Colonialism Theory: From Legal Pluralism to Postcolonial and Governmentality Theory". His visit was co-hosted by the University of Wollongong's Legal Intersections Research Centre and the Centre for Canadian-Australian Studies. The arrangements for the visit were secured by Associate Professor Luke McNamara who was awarded a grant from ACSANZ to sponsor Professor Smandych as a Visiting Professor. Smandych hails from the University of Manitoba where he is a Professor of Sociology and Criminology. On this trip Professor Smandych sought to develop his comparative research on how the Indigenous peoples of Canada, Australia and New Zealand were assimilated into the colonial common law system imposed by Britain. The foundation for this work was Smandych's earlier examination of Western Canada and what impact the creation of the Hudson's Bay Company monopoly had on the Indigenous people who inhabited the region which fell under its governance.
27 - 28 June - Performing the Nation
As such, conference papers explored Australia's establishment of a colony in Antarctica, events such as the Sydney Mardi Gras and the Gay Games, and the effects of collaborations that are taking place in the area of Indigenous writings. The blend of disciplines and the combination of postgraduates and academics taking part in the conference led to engaging discussion.
Four plenary talks were delivered over the two-day event: Richard Cavell, from the University of British Columbia, spoke on "Performing the Nation in Theory: The Case of Frye and McLuhan"; Peter Dickinson of Simon Fraser University, BC, presented "Canadian Queerness in an Inter-national Frame"; the University of Wollongong's John McQuilton discussed "Ned Kelly as a National Icon"; and Alan Filewod of the University of Guelph, Ontario examined "Performativity, Enactment and Auxiliary Nationhood".
The conference was made possible by a grant from the University of Wollongong's Internationalisation Committee, a Program for International Research Linkages grant from the Canadian Government, and the support of the University of Wollongong's Institute of Social Change and Critical Inquiry. Envisioned as the first in a series of collaborations among partner universities in Canada and Australia, it is expected that an Australian delegation will soon travel to Canada to continue the discourse begun so successfully in Wollongong.
27 June - Book Launch Hauntings: the "Varuna" poems
A lunchtime champagne reception on 27 June 2003, coordinated by Jane Langridge of the University of Wollongong UniCentre Bookstore, celebrated the release of Associate Professor Gerry Turcotte's latest book Hauntings: the 'Varuna' poems . Ron Pretty of Five Islands Press, the publishing house that produced Hauntings , and Associate Professor Dorothy Jones who launched the book, spoke to a large enthusiastic crowd.
While working to complete his first novel Flying in Silence at the famed Varuna Writers' Centre in Katoomba, NSW, Gerry was inspired to write the small collection of poetry. "It was an unexpected gift," he told the lunchtime crowd. "A found book that seemed to emerge effortlessly and fully-formed." The poems talk about the Blue Mountains and the Writers Centre, including the lore of Eleanor Dark's ghost - who owned Varuna - and the strange experience for all the writers of being watched by the many tourists who wander through the Centre's grounds, peering in the windows at all hours of the day.
26 June - Nortel Networks Publication Series Launch
Canadian publishing in Australia was given a boost with the launch of the Nortel Networks' Canadian Studies Series during a reception hosted by Mr. James Langridge, Vice-Principal (International) of the University of Wollongong. The launch was timed to coincide with the Fourth Annual Nortel Networks Canadian Studies Address, presented in 2003 by famed photojournalist Peter Bregg, and with the release of Margaret Atwood's 2002 address, Entering the Labyrinth: The Blind Assassin , published by the University of Wollongong Press.
Mr. Gaston Barban, Canadian Deputy High Commissioner, launched the series which aims to capture the individual and unique nature of each talk. Citizenship and Immigration: The Chinese-Canadian Experience , was written by Canadian Senator Vivienne Poy's inaugural Nortel Networks Canadian Studies Address, which she delivered when she opened the Centre on 1 July 2000. Senator Poy's talk was introduced by NSW Senator Helen Sham-Ho.
Entering the Labyrinth: The Blind Assassin , is the second book in the series, and combines the Nortel Networks Canadian Studies Address delivered by Margaret Atwood shortly after her novel The Blind Assassin was awarded the prestigious Booker prize, with two specially-commissioned critical essays by University of Reading scholar Coral Ann Howells, and the University of Wollongong's Honorary Fellow, Dorothy Jones.
The third publication, A Little Bit of Witchcraft: Patriots in the New Land of Writing , is a collection of works by Roch Carrier, the National Librarian of Canada. His Nortel Networks Canadian Studies Address is paired with a first-ever English translation of L'Ours et le Kangourou , prepared by University of Wollongong's Dr. Brian McCarthy, and another talk by Mr. Carrier which addresses the issue of multiculturalism in Canada. The third volume will be ready for distribution in July 2004.
4 June - Public Forum: Government Responses to Terrorism
A public forum on government responses to terrorism was held at the Faculty of Law Moot Court at the University of Wollongong on 4 June 2003.
The forum examined the policies and laws adopted by governments in the wake of September 11, 2001, focusing on a comparison of the responses of the Australian and Canadian governments.
The guest speakers were Professor W. Wesley Pue from the University of British Columbia in Canada who spoke on "Terrorism Policy in the Shadow of the Hegemon: Canadian Constitutional Governance in a State of Permanent Warfare?"; and Dr Bronwyn Winter from the University of Sydney, who spoke on "Pre-Emptive Fridge Magnets and Other Weapons of Mass Disinformation: Australia Does 'War on Terror'".
The event was organised by the Legal Intersections Research Centre and the Centre for Canadian-Australian Studies.
27 May - Indigenous Writers' Night - Celebrating the Voice
On the evening of 27 May 2003 a crowd of almost sixty people gathered to witness the work of six Indigenous performers. The event, co-hosted by the Centre for Canadian-Australian Studies and the South Coast Writers' Centre, was held at the Aboriginal Cultural Centre in Wollongong.
Barbara Nicholson, a local Wodi Wodi woman and Honorary Senior Fellow in the Faculty of Law at the University of Wollongong, began the evening with a Welcome to Country before introducing the evening's MC, Dr Anita Heiss. Heiss is a noted and award-winning writer and historian who read from a work in progress, a humorous account of a thirty-something Koori woman in search of Mr. Right.
The performers included Shona Huritu, a Maori woman from the Bay of Plenty, New Zealand, who performed five Maori songs in Maori and in English, Elizabeth Hodgson, a Wiradjuri woman from Wollongong, who read from a new collection of her poems and Ernie Blackmore, an award-winning playwright and a post-graduate from the University of Wollongong. Barbara Nicholson and writer and singer Brenda Webb also performed. During the intermission the crowd was treated to a bush tucker provided by chef Aunty Coral Pombo.
23 May - "Borders Permeable and Impermeable: Canada's Immediate North American Dilema"
At lunchtime on 23 May 2003, a small group gathered for an intimate talk delivered by Daniel Drache. Drache is a Professor of Political Science at York University in Toronto and is also the Director of the Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies. While he is best known for his work on globalisation and the limits of markets, trade blocs, employment, Harold Innis and economic integration, this talk featured subject matter from his upcoming book, In Search of North America: Do Borders Matter Any Longer?
Drache's talk opened with observations on the post-9/11 shift in the unique border relationship that has existed between Canada and the United States. While many see this border as separating two groups that are fundamentally the same, Drache argued that there are major ideological differences that unequivocally differentiate the two nations. He focused on the rise of conservatism in the United States and what he perceives as a rejection of this same philosophy in Canada.
24 April - Canadian-Australian Speculative Fiction Forum
On 24 April 2003 over 70 people convened to hear a special talk delivered by Professor Ken Gelder, from the University of Melbourne, entitled "Fantasy and Terrorism: J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings , Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials Trilogy and Global Terrorism". The timing of its delivery - immediately following the declared end of the war in Iraq - gave the talk a particular relevance. The forum also offered several University of Wollongong post-graduate students the opportunity to deliver papers in preparation for various conferences.
Wendy Pearson looked at the means by which contemporary Canadian speculative fiction authors transport the reader into the place of reading. Emphasising a gay and lesbian perspective, the talk addressed the duplicities in language that create a venue accessible only to readers who approach the text with intent or the ability to listen for double entendres .
The second presenter, Robyn Morris, delivered a talk that tackled the sense of belonging and the sense of otherness in Bladerunner , Frankenstein and the writings of Larissa Lai. Lai, a Chinese-Canadian writer, challenges the dominance of the white, heterosexual, western, male persona by outsider figures to contest master narratives. Bladerunner 's Replicants, Shelley's monster and Lai's Sonias are excluded from 'humanity' and cast out. Morris argues that this marginalisation serves as a vehicle to demonstrate the similar modern day alienation of races and sexes which fall outside the white, heterosexual, western, male persona and are consequently regarded as 'sub-human' or 'other'.
The afternoon concluded with Maureen Clarke's discussion of Mudrooroo's vampire trilogy. Clarke gave her analysis of Mudrooroo's exploration of a new role for his latest hero, the ex-African-American slave Wadawaka - and himself - as one seduced by the politics of cross-culturalisation in post-colonial Australia.
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