Eventlist

Thinking the Atipodes: Australian Essays, to be launched by Nikos Papastergiadis.

In 1956 Bernard smith wrote that we in Australia were migratory birds. This was to become a leading motif of his own thinking, and a significant inspiration for sociologist Peter Beilharz. Beilharz came to argue that the idea of the antipodes made sense less in its geographical than its cultural form, viewed as a relation rather than a place. Australians had one foot here and one there, whichever 'there' this was. This way of thinking with and after Bernard smith makes up one current of Beilharz's best Australian essays.

Two other streams contribute to the collection.

The second recovers and publicises antipodean intellectuals, from Childe to evatt to stretton to Jean Martin, who have often been overshadowed here by the reception given to metropolitan celebrity thinkers; and examines others, like hughes and Carey, who have been celebrated as writers more than as interpreters of the antipodean condition.

The third stream engages with mainstream views of Australian writing, and with the limits of these views. if we think in terms of cultural traffic, then the stories we tell about Australia will also be global and regional in a broader sense. Australia is the result of cultural traffic, local and global.

About Peter Beilharz

Peter Beilharz is professor of Culture and society at Curtin university. For many years he was professor of sociology and director of the Thesis Eleven Centre for Cultural sociology at la Trobe university. he has published 24 books and 200 papers across five continents. his major works include Imagining the Antipodes (1997) and Sociology – Antipodean Perspectives, with Trevor Hogan (2012). he has been affiliated with harvard, yale and leeds universities, and in 2015 will work at the stellenbosch institute for Advanced study in south Africa (STIAS) with Sian Supski.

About Nick Papastergiadis

Nikos Papastergiadis is Professor at the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne. He studied at the University of Melbourne and University of Cambridge. Prior to returning to the University of Melbourne he was a lecturer at the University of Manchester. His current research focuses on the investigation of the historical transformation of contemporary art and cultural institutions by digital technology. His publications include Modernity as Exile (1993), Dialogues in the Diaspora (1998), The Turbulence of Migration (2000), Metaphor and Tension (2004) Spatial Aesthetics: Art Place and the Everyday (2006), Cosmopolitanism and Culture (2012) as well as being the author of numerous essays which have been translated into over a dozen languages and appeared in major catalogues such as the Sydney, Liverpool, Istanbul, Gwanju, Taipei, Lyon and Thessaloniki Biennales.