Polysynthetic Sociolinguistics: The language and culture of Murrinh Patha youth
Lecture
Come and celebrate John Mansfield's pre-thesis submission seminar. In this seminar I present a summary of my PhD research investigating the life and language of kardu kigay – young Aboriginal men in the town of Wadeye, northern Australia. I describe first my ethnographic observations on how kigay…
Morgan's Australian Descendants: Fison and Howitt Abandon Kinship and Save Their Skins
Lecture
Presented as part of the Humanities Research Centre Seminar Series Lorimer Fison had made a great breakthrough in kinship studies around 1870 when he recognized the system in the part of Fiji where he was working as having an essential identity with that of South India (Dravidian) but…
The Natural History of Memory: Reading Narratives of Contact in the Anthropocene
Lecture
Presented as part of the Literary Studies Seminar Series This paper arises from an invitation to contribute to a memory studies network on ‘The Natural History of Memory’. In the first part of the paper, I reflect on the openings created by the perplexing phrase ‘the natural history of memory’:…
Portuguese Online – a complex enterprise between Indiana and ANU
Lecture
Presented as part of the ANU Language Teaching Forum ANU’s recent decision to start offering Portuguese as an elective course in collaboration with Indiana University (USA) proved very successful, but quite challenging. Delivered online and in real time by a course convener (Dr. Castro) based in…
Pontius Pilate Revisited: Washing One’s Hands of Refugees
Lecture
Jointly presented by the Humanities Research Centre and the Asia-Pacific College of Diplomacy The parable of the Good Samaritan is often invoked in discussion of refugee issues, but in the times in which we are living, Pontius Pilate seems to be the more popular role model. In this lecture,…
Cake or Death: The Beneficence of Hades
Lecture
Presented by The Friends of the ANU Classics Museum. Hades, god of the underworld, is an anomaly among Greek gods: the dark ruler of the dead, remaining in his gloomy home, emerging only to abduct Persephone and snatch the occasional hapless mortal. And yet under the name of Plouton he is a rich…
Command at a Distance: Foucault, the Natural Body and Robert Jackson’s Systematic View of the Formation, Discipline and Economy of Armies (1804)
Lecture
Presented as part of the Literary Studies Seminar Series Speaker Neil Ramsey is a Lecturer in English Literature at the University of New South Wales, Canberra. He is currently working on a monograph, Technicians of Discipline: Romanticism, Vitality and the British Military Enlightenment, 1766-1839…