"Change is One Thing, Acceptance is Another" Research Seminar

Cardiff Centre for Critical and Cultural Theory & The Reconstructing Multiculturalism Network

Research Seminar
Wednesday 13th March 2013,
John Percival Building, 5.15 pm ROOM 1.26

Dr. Julia Hoydis
University of Cologne

"Change is One Thing, Acceptance is Another": Negotiating Ethics & Politics in Contemporary Indian Fiction

At the core of postcolonial writing practices lies a concern with questions of justice and inequalities. A preoccupation in Indian literature is negotiating the “idea of India” and the ideal of “unity in diversity” which clash with realities of communal violence and global/domestic terror. Interrogating the legacies of colonialism and the possibilities of social change are other importance issues engaging a dual perspective towards past and present, ‘home’ and the world.

This paper look at how works by Tharoor, Roy, Rushdie and Desai engage in a renegotiation of the values of modernity and reflect the conflict between political/individual freedom and the impact of history in a ‘globalized’ world in which the concept of the nation-state along with Enlightenment values and secularization become unstable. Dealing with violent episodes of personal/national history the novels underscore the fragility of an ideal of cosmopolitanism and highlight the destructive impact of wounded gender identities and personal emotions evoked by betrayal, jealousy, and loss. 

AHRC-funded Collaborative Skills Development Project

Dear Postgraduate or Early Career Researcher,

There will be a seminar for all PGRs and ECRs who are interested in the participating in the AHRC-funded Collaborative Skills Development Project on WED 20 FEB at 4.30 in the John Percival (Humanities) Building Room 1.26.

The seminar will include an introduction to research impact and a "brainstorming" discussion, with input from experienced academics, to encourage you to explore which aspects of your research are most appropriate for  engagement work at Butetown History & Arts Centre. We would begin to identify themes into which you will be able to feed aspects of your research.

Professor Alison Wray will provide expert advice and other interested academic are also welcome to come along and contribute.

I am including below the remit of the project. If you definitely intend to come, please email Samuel Sequeira (email address above) and let him know asap.

After this seminar the PGR steering group will meet to take the project further. We have some volunteers for this steering group but there is still space for other to join in and help with organising and realising the project. You are welcome to become involved in the process even if you are not working in the areas specified below.

With best wishes,

Chris Weedon

AHRC Collaborative Skills Development Project
Aims and Objectives
The programme aims to build capacity in the areas of: (i) identifying impact possibilities; (ii) planning and realising these possibilities via activities that promote knowledge transfer and public engagement outside academia; and (iii) collecting and critically reflecting on feedback from these activities.  In the process students and ECRs will acquire useful experience of organising activities, project management, facilitation, and enhanced communication skills.
The overall aim is to improve the employability and impact-capabilities of the participating students.
Content of the Skills development Programme
Four key objectives with specific outcomes are planned to achieve these aims:
1. Brainstorming meetings and discussions guided by experienced academic facilitators to examine the nature of research impact, and to encourage the students to explore which aspects of their research are most appropriate for this sort of engagement work. With input from Butetown History & Arts Centre, this will lead to the identification of themes into which students can feed aspects of their research.
Outcome: a list of themes, relevant to the lay consumer, into which the researchers can feed insights from their work.
2. Training through simulations, where students explain to each other what their research is, and why it is important, and receive feedback.
Outcome: presentations to other PhDs outlining what was learned about the interface of research and outreach/impact.
3. A planned set of 4 thematic core events that include minority community participants and attract a broader public together with  appropriate feedback mechanisms. The events might address, for example, urgent issues in multiculturalism, diasporic and hybrid cultures, racism and representation, Welshness, Britishness and interculturalism. Students will be encouraged to devise ways of organising, marketing and evaluating the events that makes them interesting to target audiences. Training in this will be provided.
Outcome: short reports on the organisation and conducting of the events; feedback forms from attendees; and short interviews with attendees on what made most impact.
4. A meeting to evaluate the efficacy of the events and reflect on what they have learned.
Outcome: a report on the key learning points.

Public Lecture Invite - 'The Autumn Of Women'

You are invited to a public lecture by Professor Shereen Abou el-Naga from the University of Cairo on Tuesday 9th October 2012, 7:00 pm in the Humanities Building, Room 2.03.  Please see below for more information:

2012/2013 Seminar Series

RECONSTRUCTING MULTICULTURALISM:

RESEARCH NETWORK SEMINARS

2012/2013

Humanities, Room 1.52

Wednesdays 5.15pm

Drinks are available before each seminar from 5.00pm in Room 1.52

10 Oct -- Professor Shereen Abouelnaga, English Literature, Cairo University, The Aesthetic Articulation of Protest


31 Oct -- Dr Marcelo Svirsky, Political Science, University of Wollongong & Cardif University, After Israel: Collaborative Struggle and Cultural Transformation


28 Nov -- Dr Pamela Kea, Anthropology, University of Sussex, "Willing Subjects of a Particular Discourse": Female Genital Mutilation and the Politics of Asylum claims in the U.K.


27 Feb -- Dr Neil Evans, Harlech, From "Darker Cardiff" to "Tiger Bay": Racialising the Social Problem, 1840-1930.

17 Apr -- Student Presentations

24 Apr -- Student Presentations

Multicultural Environments and Spaces Luncheon, 6th June, RSVP

Dear Multicultural Friends,

We would like to invite you to the last (Re)-Constructing Multiculturalism Reading Group luncheon next Wednesday 6th June 2012 from 12pm to 2pm in room 3.10, Graduates Centre, Students' Union, Cardiff University.

The program is entitled Multicultural Environments and Spaces and will include the following presentations:

Intercultural dialogue: Engaging Urban Communities and the European Union
By: Jessica Kent

Constructing multicultural web spaces: digital activism in contemporary Italy
By: Marina Morani


Lunch will be provided free of charge.  If you would like to join us for lunch please RSVP to miteffmc@cardiff.ac.uk before 5pm Wednesday, 30th May.

We hope you can join us!

Best Wishes,

The (Re)-Constructing Multiculturalism Reading Group

Call For Papers - Deadline Extended - Multicultural Spaces

We would like to remind you of the Re-Constructing Multiculturalism Reading Group (with help from the University Graduate College) lunchtime talks taking place this semester. We invite you to present your work in the final session dealing with topics in multiculturalism.


The final session will take place June 6: ‘Multicultural Environments and Spaces’.  Topics to include but not limited to motion pictures, print media, music, literature, city planning, architecture, history, social science.


Deadline for abstracts has been extended to 18th May.


If you would like to present a paper please email a 200 word abstract to Corbett (miteffmc@cardiff.ac.uk) before 18th May.


The session will examine multicultural issues relating to various subjects dealing with spaces.  Following a short introduction, two to three postgraduate students are invited to give a 10-15 minute presentation broadly relating to the issue at hand. A discussant will provide comments before opening the debate up to the floor, where audience as well as other participants may make their contributions. Designed as matinée sessions  (12 noon - 2pm), light lunch and refreshments will be provided.

Fashionably Muslim Symposium, Saturday 28th April

New Dates & Canceled Dates

Dear All,

The Reconstructing Multiculturalism (new) students' presentation seminar advertised for 7 March has been postponed.  Once the date has been rescheduled I will post the information on this blog. 

There will be an additional Critical Theory seminar, probably of interest to Multiculturalism students and open to all, on:

14 March in Humanities Room 1.26 at 5.15:

Dr. Sonja Frenzel, University of Cologne
 
London Urban Gender/s: Gendering urban theory and mapping urban movement in London urban poetry of the 20th century
 
In recent years, urban theory has emerged as a particularly flourishing strand of contemporary studies of culture. Many subjects in the humanities have expanded their disciplinary scope to incorporate the urban as a new field of study. Indeed, studying urban space/s yields for pertinent insights into contemporary culture/s.
The urban, however, is a multi-faceted category: it may encompass, for instance, a city’s geographical and topographical particularities, its built substance as well as its inhabitants’ individual and collective practices of habitation. All of these features are intricately intertwined and none of them can be analysed in isolation. Rather, I will propose an intersectional model that brings together the category of the urban and its (re-)productions and (re-)presentations in the genres of the lyric and the cartosemiotic respectively.  This intersectional model provides the backdrop for my subsequent endeavours to introduce gender into urban theory and to then trace gender issues in selected examples of London urban poetry and urban mapping. These (re-)productions and (re-)presentations of the urban will foreground urban dwellers’ movements through the city. After all, movement and mobility are key concepts of modernity. Besides, they allow for particularly thought-provoking insights into urban dwellers’ practices of habitation and into the intersections of the urban, the lyric and the cartosemiotic.