I’m looking forward to speaking at Embodiments and Inhabitations, the sixth Asian Australian Identities (AAI6) conference of the Asian Australian Studies Research Network (AASRN). This year the conference is on 25–26 October at the Immigration Museum, Melbourne. Other speakers include:
- Dr Helen Ngo (School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Deakin University)
- Dr Jane Park (Department of Gender and Cultural Studies, University of Sydney)
- A/Prof Anoma Pieris (Melbourne School of Design, University of Melbourne)
- Dr Indigo Willing OAM (Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research, Griffith University).
Better pick up a doctorate before I head over.
The call for papers is now open, with abstracts due 21 April.
Closely linked to borders and bounds, boundaries are lines that mark the limits of an area. Taking as our foundational assumption that all boundaries involve processes and practices of embeddedness as well as transgressions of socio-cultural and eco-political spheres, this conference seeks to mark an inquiry into specific kinds of boundary-crossings that involve embodiment and inhabitation for Asian-Australian land/mind/body-scapes.
Theories of embodiment recognise the critical politics of emplacement associated with the body as well as such situatednesses as sites of performance. What happens when such locations shift due to boundary crossings in terms of family, bloodlines, gender, race, class, caste, nation, region, sexuality, religion, among others? How do embodiments that cross boundaries inhabit their place and being, both in the Bourdieusian sense of the habitus as well as that of phenomenologists like Merleau-Ponty?
The conference invites papers, presentations and performances on how Asian-Australian embodiments are made meaningful in changing contexts of communities and crossings, how inhabitations over space, time and history challenge our ideas of being and body.