Events 2009
December Seminar
Date: Monday 14th December 2009
Time: 5:00pm-6:30pm
Venue: New Law Room 340, The University of Sydney
Speaker: Phoebe Alexander
Title: TBA
November Seminar (TENTATIVE)
Date: Monday 2nd November 2009
Time: 5:00pm-6:30pm
Venue: Refectory, Main Quadrangle Building, The
University of Sydney
Speaker: Professor Peter Worsley
Title: TBA
September Seminar (A.R. Davis Memorial Lecture)
Date: Monday 21 September 2009
Time: 5.00pm to 6.30 pm
Venue: New Law Room 340, New Law Building,The University of Sydney
Speaker: Professor Neville Meaney
Title: The Problem of Nationalism and Race: Australia and Japan in World Wars I and II.
Download Flyer HERE.
Abstract: This lecture consists of some reflections on the major conceptual problem and cultural issue which I wrestled with in my two latest works, Towards a New Vision: Australia and Japan across Time (UNSW, 2007) and Australia and World Crisis, 1914-23(SUP, 2009). The central problem that dominated both countries, as it dominated the whole modernised world from the end of the 19th century to the end of World War II, was nationalism. The first part of this talk will look briefly at the scholarship dealing with the origin and nature of nationalism which has emerged in the last thirty years coeval with the post-nationalist era in Western Europe. The second part of the talk will deal with Australia’s peculiar form of race nationalism, white Britishness, and how this came to express itself in relation to Asia, most particularly Japan, in the years leading up to and including World War I. The last part will deal with the form of race nationalism centred on Kokutai and Tennosei which informed Japan’s political culture and warfare state in the period leading up to and including the Pacific War, and its relation to the Japanese POW breakout at Cowra in 1944.
Biography: Neville Meaney is an Honorary Associate Professor of History. He has a B.A.Hons and an M.A. from the University of Adelaide and a Ph.D. from Duke University. He taught for many years in the History Department of the University of Sydney. His research interests are centred on international history, especially Australia's relations with the world. The paper will draw on issues dealt with in his two latest works, 'Towards a New Vision: Australia and Japan across Time'(University of New South Wales Press, 2007) and 'Australia and World Crisis, 1914-23' (Sydney University Press, 2009).
Dinner invitation: All Welcome Time: 7:00 for 7:30 Venue: Spicy Sichuan Restaurant Address: 1- Glebe Point Road Sydney. NSW Tel: 9660-8200 Enquiries and dinner attendance: please contact to Seiko Yasumoto by 20th September Telephone: 9351 4716, Fax: 9351 2319, email: Seiko.Yasumoto@usyd.edu.au
August Seminar
Date: Monday 24h August 2009
Time: 5.00pm to 6.30 pm
Venue: The Refectory Room, Main Quad., The University of Sydney
Speaker: Dr Andrew Chan
Title: The Sinless Chinese
Biography:After completing a PhD in the ANU Dept of Far Eastern History, supervised by Prof Wang Gungwu, Adrian taught Political Science at UNSW, concentrating on Chinese Political Thought - Classical and Contemporary – until he took early retirement because he had too many research students to do any personal research. Since retirement, he has published CHINESE MARXISM (Continuum, 2003) and more recently, ORIENTALISM IN SINOLOGY (Academica Press, 2009). Download the Flyer HERE.
Numismatic Conference 2009
The International Numismatic Conference and Exhibition, under the
auspices of the Oriental Society of Australia, University of Sydney.
Date: Thursday 16 July –Saturday 18th July2009
Venue: The University of Sydney
Covenor: Dr Nicholas Hardwick, Fellow of the Society
of Antiquaries of London (FSA),
Conference Convenor, OSA Numismatic Conference 2009.
Member, Executive Committee, Oriental Society of Australia.
Honorary Associate, Department of Classics and Ancient History,
University of Sydney, A14,NSW 2006.
Tel: (61 2) 9516 0357
Fax: (61 2) 9351 3918
Mob: 0450 117 629
For details go to the Numismatic
Conference and Exhibition hompage.
SHORT NOTICE: Executive Committee Meeting
Date: 13th July 2009
Time: 4:00pm-4:30pm
Venue:Common Room Brennan MacCallum, The University of Sydney
July Seminar
The Oriental Society cordially invites members and guests of the
Society to a presentation by the distinguished Scholar Professor
Leith Morton, this presentation follows the 2009 Annual General
Meeting.
Presentation Title: Rethinking Literary History
Date: Monday 13th July 2009
Time: 6:00-7:15pm
Presenter: Professor Leith Morton, Tokyo Institute
of Technology
Venue: Quad Refectory Room, Main Quadrangle Building,
The University of Sydney
Abstract: Japanese literary history is being rewritten:
from works composed in ancient Chinese to the literatures of Japan’s
pre-war colonial empire, the canon of Japanese literature has expanded
enormously. Literary histories of Japan have been rewritten in accordance
with this enlarged canon. But the first literary history recognizable
as such produced in Japanese well over a century ago was unashamedly
an imitation of a genre originating in the West and therefore was
something completely new. This lecture proposes a reexamination
of these fundamental categories: ‘literature’, ‘history’,
and ‘literary history’ from the perspective of the invention
in Japan of a new genre called ‘bungakushi’ or literary
history. My thesis is that the variety of literary history created
in Japan pertaining to the literature of that country is a creature
with an edge; indeed it is all edges, with margins and centers being
a matter of perspective alone. The very nature of the colonial project
rehearsed by the Japanese state in the early decades of the 20th
century meant that a literary history of that state was a challenge
to Western notions of literary history: it was an edgy project,
and envisaged margins and centers very different from those prevailing
in the West. I will endeavour to describe and analyse literary history
as practiced in modern Japan as the first step in a fundamental
reexamination of the notion of literary history.
Biography: Leith Morton graduated with a PhD from
the University of Sydney in 1983. He has been a visiting researcher
and lecturer at universities in Japan, the USA, Poland, Germany,
and Britain. He was formerly senior lecturer in Japanese at the
University of Sydney and foundation Professor of Japanese at the
University of Newcastle. He is now a professor at the Tokyo Institute
of Technology. He has written 6 books of poetry, including At The
Hotel Zudabollo (2004) and Tokyo: A Poem in Four Chapters (2006).
His other books include Modern Japanese Culture: The Insider View
(2003); Modernism in Practice: An Introduction to Postwar Japanese
Poetry (2004); Yosano Akiko no ‘Midaregami’ o Eigo de
Ajiwau (2007) and The Alien Within: Representations of the Exotic
in Twentieth-Century Japanese Literature (2009).
Annual General Meeting 2009
Date: Monday 13th July 2009
Time: 5.00pm –7:15pm
Venue: Quad Refectory Room, Main Quadrangle Building,
The University of Sydney
Agenda:
1. Minutes from the 2008 Annual General Meeting
2. Attendance and apologies
3. President’s Annual Report
4. Treasurer’s Annual Financial Report
5. Election of office bearers
6. Any other business
Nominations for all office bearers can be downloaded from HERE
and should be sent to the Honorary Secretary: seiko.yasumoto@usyd.edu.au
by 8th July, 2009.
Seiko Yasumoto
Honorary Secretary
EC and JOSA editorial committee meetings.
1) Date: Friday 9th January 2009
Time: 5:00pm-6:30pm
Venue: Meeting room on the 5th floor, Brennan MacCallum
building, The University of Sydney
2) Date: Monday 20th April 2009
Time: 5:00pm-6:30pm
Venue: Meeting room on the 5th floor, Brennan MacCallum building,
The University of Sydney
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