Please find below a list of IOSARN events taking place in 2014, we look forward to seeing you.

8 October

Lecture by Meenakshi Shedde:

Fight Club: Bollywood’s women punch back

When: Wednesday, 8th October, 12.30 – 2pm
Where: UTS, Level 9, Room 113, Building 10 (235 Jones Street, Ultimo)
RSVP: cornelia.betzler@uts.edu.au
 
Meenakshi Shedde will give a one hour illustrated lecture followed by 30 minutes of Q&A.

About the presentation: Women in Bollywood films are fighting back. Meenakshi Sheddewill give an illustrated lecture on how recent Bollywood–and South Asian films–are mirroring brutal oppression against women, but also spunky, inspiring women–with film clips. Bollywood offers us Daawat-e-Ishq, Queen, Mardaani, Mary Kom and Chak de! India. There are independent Indian films like Kajarya, Akam and Paromitar Ek Din; Sri Lanka’s 28 and Bangladesh’s Television, and documentaries Invoking Justice and Gulabi Gang. Films that are hard hitting. Sickening. Empowering. Liberating.

Meenakshi Shedde is India Consultant to the Berlin Film Festival, based in Mumbai, India. She is also an award-winning film critic, curator to festivals worldwide, and journalist. A board member of Point of View, a women’s organization, she has written for 12 books, including on the political empowerment of women, and issues of women and water.

31 July

Public Lecture by Professor Dipesh Chakrabarty, University of Chicago:

Postcolonial Theory and Its Contemporary Challenges

When: Thursday, 31 July
Time: 5.30pm for 6pm
Where: UTS Building 2, Level 4, Room 410
RSVP: cornelia.betzler@uts.edu.au

About the lecture: This lecture will address three main challenges that posicolonial thinking now faces in the Anglo-American academy: ideological fragmentation of academic Marxism, the creation of a global precariat, and environmental crises of planetary proportions.

20 May

Seminar: Higher Education in India and its discontents

With Professor Sanjay Seth, Goldsmith College London. Professor Seth is this year’s Distinguished Visiting Scholar, funded by the UTS Deputy Vice Chancellor Research.

Time: 12 – 2 pm
Where: Room 201, Level 14, UTS Building 10 (235 Jones Street)
RSVP: Jo.Bu@uts.edu.au

Please click here for more information about the seminar and about Professor Seth: https://iosarn.com/events/seminars/

27 May

Documentary Film Screening: Robyn Beeche – A Life Exposed. A photographer’s transformation

An Australian photographer at the height of London’s high fashion world finds that fame and success are no longer enough and makes life-changing move to India.

A documentary screening followed by Q&A with documentary filmmaker Lesley Branagan.

When: 12.30 – 2 PM, Tuesday 27th May 2014
Where: Room 201, Level 14, Building 10 (235 Jones Street), University of Technology, Sydney
RSVP (spaces are limited): Jo.Bu@uts.edu.au

About A Life Exposed: Australian-born photographer Robyn Beeche became renowned in London for her iconic 80s images. In a time rich with experimentation and creativity, she was celebrated for her ground-breaking photographs of painted bodies, and collaborations with counter-culture personalities Zandra Rhodes, Vivienne Westwood, Leigh Bowery and Divine.

At the peak of her career, Beeche was transformed when she experienced the Indian colour-throwing festival of Holi. “Drawn like a magnet”, she gave up her high-flying career for the life-changing move to the Indian pilgrimage town of Vrindavan. 25 years later, she continues to document the area’s vibrant traditions as spiritual service, and her extensive archive is prized by international scholars.

A Life Exposed: Robyn Beeche weaves between Australia, London and India, dramatically depicting Beeche’s extreme paradigm shift from highly constructed studio body-painted images, to documentation of a culture where body transformation occurs spontaneously as part of saturnalian religious rituals.

15 & 16 August

Workshop: Gallipoli Reflections

A workshop in light of the Centenary of the beginning of the Gallipoli landing. The goal of this workshop is to build an ongoing campaign towards modifying ANZAC ceremonies.
Themes include perspectives from the following countries: Turkey, Armenia, India, New Zealand, Aboriginal Australians, Interventionist Australians

November

Conference: Environmental Justice

A conference in light of the 30th anniversary of the Bhopal disaster in India. The focus of this two day conference will be Bhopal and the transnational corp control and power.

The following themes will be covered:- Industrial pollution in Australia and India
– Chemical Warfare
– Water Environmental Justice
– Coal, Power and land rights

Speakers will include Nityanandan Rajaram, a coal and nuclear power activist from Chennai, India, and Ravi Rajan from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Rajiv Gandhi Visiting Chair for Contemporary Indian Studies at UTS

ISOARN is pleased to announce that Professor Ujjwal Kumar Singh (Department of Political Science, University of Delhi) is the first incumbent of the Rajiv Gandhi Visiting Chair for Contemporary Indian Studies at UTS. The chair, a collaborative venture between the Indian Council for Cultural Relations and the University of Technology Sydney,  was announced in 2011 during the visit to UTS of Dr Abdul Kalam, former President of India.

Professor Singh specialises in the areas of laws and institutions, electoral governance, democratic and human rights and indigenous rights. He is the author of The State, Democracy and Anti-Terror Laws in India (2007, Sage, New Delhi) and Political Prisoners in India (1998, 2001, Oxford University Press)

Professor Singh will be at UTS for four months and leaves on the 20th June. He will be engaged with students in the undergraduate subjects ‘Global Politics’ and ‘Ideologies, Beliefs, Visions’. Professor Singh will also be available for consultations with postgraduate students.

He will be presenting seminars at various universities and for the Indian Ocean and South Asia Research Network at UTS .The title of his talk at UTS is ‘Cat and Mouse Games: Hunger Strikes and Political Prisonerhood’ and it will take place in late April. Please contact Cornelia Betzler on ph 02 9514 2768, email cornelia.betzler@uts.edu.au or Associate Professor Devleena Ghosh on ph 02 9514 1963, email devleena.ghosh@uts.edu.au for details.

Professor Singh’s visit to UTS will help to increase Australia’s understanding of India’s economy, culture and politics and the complexities of the bilateral relationships between India and Australia in its political, economic and cultural aspects. His enhanced knowledge of Australia’s diverse, dynamic and multicultural society will also add to the connections between the two countries.

Financial Review Australia publishes article about Visiting Professor Ujjwal Singh: http://readnow.mediamonitors.com.au/Temp/39602/139212726.pdf

News: Forging New Academic Links between Australia and India

The Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) and UTS will establish the Rajiv Gandhi Visiting Chair of Contemporary Indian Studies, ICCR’s first chair in Australia. Read more.