ArabSouth is a podcast from the Department of Arabic Language and Cultures at the University of Sydney. It is produced by Drs Lucia Sorbera, Nesrine Basheer and Ali Aldahesh. 

Inspired by ongoing discussions among academics in the department about the phenomenological, pedagogical and political implications of studying, researching and teaching Arabic language and Middle East Studies in Australia, it conceives its location as an opportunity to engaging with southern and especially indigenous epistemologies, henceforth contributing to the debate on decolonising the fields. 

ArabSouth builds on the tradition developed by the department of combining teaching and research in multiple fields – especially the pedagogy of Arabic language, translation studies, history and literary studies – with public outreach and community work. It brings a southern perspective on Arabic, Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies by featuring interviews with scholars, intellectuals and artists who blend their knowledge in the field with decolonial and Indigenous epistemologies.
    
Note: Views and opinions expressed in episodes of ArabSouth are the participants’ own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the University of Sydney or the Department of Arabic Language and Cultures.

For more information about the Department of Arabic Language and Cultures, visit: sydney.edu.au/arts/arabic

ArabSouth | Department of Arabic Language and Cultures

Founded in 1956 by Professor A.R. Davis, then-Head of Department of Oriental Studies at the University of Sydney, The Oriental Society of Australia was established to promote the knowledge of Asia in Australia as well as to provide a venue for scholars to present their work to their peers and others interested in Asia and Asia-related matters. The Society became the Australian Society for Asian Humanities in 2020.

For more information about the Australian Society for Asian Humanities, visit: https://josah-publications.sydney.edu.au

Australian Society for Asian Humanities | The A R Davis Memorial Lectures

AraBooks is a seminar series curated by the Department of Arabic Language and Cultures. It features scholars, writers and artists whose scholarship and artistic productions focus on the Arab World, the Middle East and its diasporas. Each semester we explore a thematic thread through the discussion of a series of books in conversation with their authors. 

For more information, visit: sydney.edu.au/arts/arabic

AraBooks: Literature, politics, society and the arts from the Middle East and its diasporas

Podcasts from the third international congress of the World Literature Association hosted by the School of Languages and Cultures at the University of Sydney on 23–25 August 2019. 

Co-convened with the Peking University Australian Studies Centre and the World Literature Association, this international conference engaged with literary production on and from the Global South in their own languages as well as in translation.

More info: https://sydney.edu.au/world-literatures-global-south

World Literatures and the Global South Conference 2019

Dr Ali Yunis Aldahesh is Lecturer at the Department of Arabic Language and Cultures, University of Sydney and researcher in the field of Qur’anic studies and a professional translator. Along with Dr Abbas Brashi, Assistant Professor of Linguistics and Translation at the English Language Department, College of Social Sciences of Umm Al-Qura University in Makkah, Saudi Arabia, they discuss Dr Aldahesh’s newly published book al-Tarjamātu al-Ingilīziyyatu li-Maʿānī al-Qur’āni al-Karīm: Dirāsatun fī Maḍāhiri al-ʾIkhtilāf (2020)(English Translations of the Qur’an: A Descriptive Comparative Study in their Aspects of Disagreement) published by Hala Publishing Company in Cairo, Egypt.

In this interview, Dr Aldahesh highlights issues pertinent to aspects of disagreement among English translators of the Qur’an. He demonstrates that the translators – given their religious, ‎dogmatic, linguistic, cultural, ideological, political and sectarian backgrounds – vary in the ways by which they deal with the sacred and highly eloquent text. Dr Aldahesh presents the variations of disagreement among the translators in ‎different aspects, including formal, stylistic, dogmatic and methodological ‎aspects.

Read Dr Abbas Brashi’s review of Dr Aldahesh’s book in the Australian Journal of Islamic Studies (Vol 6, Iss 1, 2021): ajis.com.au/index.php/ajis/article/view/339 

Note: Views and opinions expressed in episodes of ArabSouth are the participants’ own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the University of Sydney or the Department of Arabic Language and Cultures.

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Track edited by Jacob Craig (FASS Media Room, University of Sydney)

For more information, visit: https://sydney.edu.au/arts/arabic

Disagreement among English Translators of the Qur’an (Arabic) – Ali Aldahesh | ArabSouth

Lucia Pozzi, postdoctoral fellow of the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH) at the University of Queensland, explores the alliance between the State and the Catholic church working together against ‘the contraceptive mentality’. Audience Q&A at 51:39.

Pozzi looks at some archival documents as case studies to show how Catholic discourses on morality shaped Italian conceptions of sexuality and gender relations. She examines the meaning of marriage for Italian Catholicism in the process of secularisation, the fight against the ‘contraceptive mentality’, the opposition to sex reform and feminism, and the spiritual transformation for the ‘battle of births’.

Historical research cursorily acknowledges the Catholic contribution to Italian eugenics. Yet there is a substantial link between Catholic discourses on morality and the emergence of Italian eugenics. Sexual normalisation was a key source of consensus during Fascism. Masculine and patriarchal values strengthened the strategic collaboration between Fascist demographic policies, the Italian interpretation of eugenics, and Catholic doctrine. 

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Lucia Pozzi is currently a postdoctoral fellow of the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH) at the University of Queensland. She has published articles and book chapters on the history of Catholic discourses on sexual morals, on eugenics and birth control. Among her research interests there are the history of the Society of Jesus and the history of everyday Fascism. Her forthcoming book (Catholicism and Sexual Knowledge in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Palgrave Macmillan) investigates how Catholicism modified and adapted itself to scientific modernity, through an exploration of its encounter with 19th-century and 20th-century medical discourses.

This is part of the University of Sydney's Department of Italian Studies Research Seminar Series held and recorded on 3 December 2020.

Image courtesy of the Department of Special Collections, Memorial Library, University of Wisconsin-Madison

For more information, visit: sydney.edu.au/arts/italian

Against the ‘Contraceptive Mentality’: Italian Legacy of Traditional Catholic Morality – Lucia Pozzi

Between 1997 and 2005 Iranian reformist governments sought to utilize gradual reforms to control independent activism. While the governments successfully ‘set the field’ of permitted political participation, part of the civil society that took shape was unexpectedly independent. Despite being a minority, independent activists were not marginal: without them, in fact, the Green Movement of 2009 would not have taken shape. Building on in-depth empirical analysis, the author explains how autonomous activism forms and survives in a semi-authoritarian country.

Paola Rivetti is an Associate Professor in Politics and IR at the School of Law and Government, Dublin City University. Her research interests focus on the government of societies and polities in the Middle East and North Africa. She is the author of Political Participation in Iran from Khatami to the Green Movement (2020), and co-editor of Islamists and the Politics of the Arab Uprisings: Governance, Pluralisation and Contention (2018) and Continuity and change before and after the Arab uprisings: Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt (2015).

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AraBooks is a seminar series curated by the Department of Arabic Language and Cultures. It hosts a series of talks by scholars, writers and artists whose scholarship and artistic productions focus on the Arab World, the Middle East and its diasporas. Each semester we explore a thread through the discussion of a series of books and in conversation with their authors.

For more information, visit: sydney.edu.au/arts/arabic

Paola Rivetti – Political Participation in Iran From Khatami to the Green Movement | AraBooks

What are the role and function of religion in Hezbollah’s political strategy in the context of contemporary Lebanese politics and global security action? How does Hezbollah use religious mechanisms such as taklif shari (religious assignment), ijtihad (interpretation) of jihad, and fatwa (religious verdict) as political tools to mobilise the Shi’a in Lebanon and the Middle East and to build political support? 

Mariam Farida’s book provides with new and interesting insights into Hezbollah’s ideology and identity as a domestic and regional non-state actor, and the social mobilisation of Shi’a in Lebanon and the region, providing a nexus between religion, politics and security.

Mariam Farida was awarded a PhD in Security Studies and Criminology in 2019 at Macquarie University. She is currently an Academic Learning Facilitator at UNSW and a Project Officer with Counter Violent Extremism (CVE) unit in CSNSW at Pro-active Integrated Support Model (PRISM).

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AraBooks is a seminar series curated by the Department of Arabic Language and Cultures. It features scholars, writers and artists whose scholarship and artistic productions focus on the Arab World, the Middle East and its diasporas. Each semester we explore a thematic thread through the discussion of a series of books in conversation with their authors. 

For more information, visit: sydney.edu.au/arts/arabic

Mariam Farida – Religion And Hezbollah: Political Ideology And Legitimacy | AraBooks

When women took to the streets during the mass protests of the Arab Spring, the subject of feminism in the Middle East and North Africa returned to the international spotlight. In the subsequent years, countless commentators treated the region’s gender inequality as a consequence of fundamentally cultural or religious problems. In so doing, they overlooked the specifically political nature of these women’s activism. Moving beyond culturalist accounts, this book turns to the relations of power in regional and international politics to understand women’s struggles for their rights.

Professor Nicola Pratt is Reader in the International Politics of the Middle East at the University of Warwick (UK). Her research and teaching interests are located at the intersections between the politics of the Middle East and feminist international relations theory. She has researched and written on women’s activism, democratization, human rights and conflict in a number of Middle Eastern countries. Her most recent book, 'Embodying Geopolitics: Gender and Women’s Activism in Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon' has been awarded the Susan Strange Best Book Prize by the British Society of International Studies in 2021.

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AraBooks is a seminar series curated by the Department of Arabic Language and Cultures. It features scholars, writers and artists whose scholarship and artistic productions focus on the Arab World, the Middle East and its diasporas. Each semester we explore a thematic thread through the discussion of a series of books in conversation with their authors. 

For more information, visit: sydney.edu.au/arts/arabic

Nicola Pratt – Embodying Geopolitics: Gender & Women Activism in Egypt, Jordan & Lebanon | AraBooks

In early 2011, Safdar Ahmed visited Sydney’s Villawood Immigration Detention Centre for the first time. He brought pencils and sketchbooks into the centre and started drawing with the people detained there. Their stories are told in this book.

Interweaving journalism, history and autobiography, Still Alive is an intensely personal indictment of Australia’s refugee detention policies and procedures. It is also a searching reflection on the redemptive power of art.

Safdar Ahmed is a Sydney based artist, musician and writer. He works primarily in the mediums of drawing and comics, focusing on issues of representation and belonging with regard to language, religion and culture. He is the author of Reform and Modernity in Islam (IB Taurus, 2013) and the Walkley Award-winning documentary web-comic Villawood: Notes from an immigration detention centre. That comic was expanded and published as the graphic novel Still Alive. It details Australia’s treatment of refugees and was published by Twelve Panels Press in 2021. He is a founding member of not-for-profit community art organisation Refugee Art Project, for which he conducts regular art workshops with people of an asylum seekers and refugee background in their studio at Thirning Villa in Ashfield.

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AraBooks is a seminar series curated by the Department of Arabic Language and Cultures. It features scholars, writers and artists whose scholarship and artistic productions focus on the Arab World, the Middle East and its diasporas. Each semester we explore a thematic thread through the discussion of a series of books in conversation with their authors. 

For more information, visit: sydney.edu.au/arts/arabic

Safdar Ahmed – Still Alive: Notes from an Australian Immigration Detention System | AraBooks

Sherine Hamdy is Professor of anthropology at UC Irvine, where she studies medical anthropology and science and technology in the Middle East. She is an experimental ethnographer who uses comics to bring her research to a wider audience. 

Her first graphic novel 'Lissa: A Story about Medical Promise, Friendship, and Revolution' (University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 2017), is a fictional piece based on her research, which Sherene Hamdy co-authored with her former student Coleman Nye. The story is set against the backdrop of the Egyptian 2011 revolution and presents a way for readers outside of academia to relate to topics that touch on health, politics, and medicine in the US and Egypt.

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AraBooks is a seminar series curated by the Department of Arabic Language and Cultures. It features scholars, writers and artists whose scholarship and artistic productions focus on the Arab World, the Middle East and its diasporas. Each semester we explore a thematic thread through the discussion of a series of books in conversation with their authors. 

For more information, visit: sydney.edu.au/arts/arabic

Sherine Hamdy – Lissa: A Story about Medical Promise, Friendship, and Revolution | AraBooks

Dr Nesrine Basheer (Lecturer in the Department of Arabic Language and Cultures) interviews Dr Lama Nassif (Associate Professor of Arabic Studies at Williams College) about current research on L2 Arabic acquisition and teaching Arabic as a foreign language (TAFL). The field has responded gradually to calls for a shift from traditional to more communicative teaching approaches. With Arabic being a diglossic language, this shift has created a pressing need for empirical research that informs decisions and practices at the classroom, curriculum, program and policy levels. 

In this episode, Dr Basheer and Dr Nassif attempt to answer key questions: What are the recent developments in Arabic Second Language Acquisition? What are some research priorities in TAFL? What can research tell us about multidialectal teaching?

Note: Views and opinions expressed in episodes of ArabSouth are the participants’ own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the University of Sydney or the Department of Arabic Language and Cultures.

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Track edited by Jacob Craig and Tyler Mahoney (FASS Media Room, University of Sydney)

For more information, visit: sydney.edu.au/arts/arabic

Arabic Second Language Acquisition – Lama Nassif | ArabSouth

Chihab  El Khachab is associate Professor in Visual Anthropology at the University of Oxford. His research focuses on Egyptian media production. He was educated at the University of Ottawa (BA) and the University of Oxford (DPhil). He has broader interests in cinema, labour, technology, bureaucracy, humour and social theory.

Making Film in Egypt: How Labor, Technology, and Mediation Shape the Industry provides a fascinating glimpse into the lived reality of commercial film production in today’s Cairo, with an emphasis on labor hierarchies, production practices, and the recent transition to digital technologies. Drawing on in-depth interviews and participant observation among production workers, on-set technicians, and artistic crew members, Chihab El Khachab sets out to answer a simple question: how do filmmakers deal with the unpredictable future of their films?

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This talk was held on 6 April 2022 and hosted by the University of Sydney.

AraBooks is a seminar series curated by the Department of Arabic Language and Cultures. It features scholars, writers and artists whose scholarship and artistic productions focus on the Arab World, the Middle East and its diasporas. Each semester we explore a thematic thread through the discussion of a series of books in conversation with their authors.

For more information, visit: sydney.edu.au/arts/arabic

Chihab El Khachab - Making Film In Egypt | AraBooks

Audio article based on the written version by Dr Benjamin Nickl, The University of Sydney. Audio version performed by Dr Kylie Giblet, The University of Sydney. Sound editing and mixing for this sonic article was done by Jacob Craig, The University of Sydney.

Full article in the In Many Voices magazine: https://bit.ly/slcmag47bn

While the article on sonic translation emphasises the role of sound in conveying meaning, we want to assure members of the Deaf, Late-Deafened, Deafblind, Deaf-disabled, Hard-of-Hearing, and Hearing-Impaired Community that their experience is equally important to us. Transcripts of the Real is Not Real Enough podcast are readily available online (https://bit.ly/3Rc6Zp6). We also recognise that sound can be experienced in various ways, including but not limited to vibrations, visual cues, and tactile feedback. We are committed to ensuring our content remains accessible and inclusive, providing an experience of sound regardless of how it is perceived.

Acoustic access to knowledge | Spoken article from In Many Voices magazine (Iss. 47, 2023)

Gangalidda political leader Clarence Walden gave a short address at the launch of the documentary ‘Clarence Walden: Gangalidda man from Queensland's Gulf of Carpentaria’ at the World Literatures and the Global South Conference at the University of Sydney on 23 August 2019. 

A compelling and powerful storyteller who never deviates from his role as a story maker and story keeper in pursuit of justice for his people, Clarence Walden shared about the Indigenous people in the Gulf of Carpentaria and his relationship with Country. His story is about survival, cultural resilience in his traditional homelands, and sheer political determination which includes locking a government minister out of his community.  

Along with friend and author Alexis Wright, Clarence’s story was followed by an audience Q&A.

00:01 | Clarence Walden tells his story about growing up in the 1950s and 60s on the remote Doomadgee Mission in the Gulf of Carpentaria
14:31 | Audience Q&A
19:48 | Alexis Wright on the importance of Clarence Walden’s story and the oral storytelling tradition for the world's cultures

Learn more about the documentary: http://formsofworldliterature.com/clarence-walden

Recorded by Jacob Craig (FASS Media Room, University of Sydney)
Photo by Nicola Bailey

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The third international congress of the World Literature Association was proudly hosted by the School of Languages and Cultures at the University of Sydney on 23–25 August 2019. 

More info: https://sydney.edu.au/world-literatures-global-south

Address and Q&A | Clarence Walden – Gangalidda man from Queensland’s Gulf of Carpentaria

Alexis Wright delivered her keynote for the World Literatures and the Global South Conference at the University of Sydney on 23 August 2019.  She shared about the tradition of telling stories in Aboriginal Australian society, and the South-North division.

“Our people talk about following the footsteps of elders, of walking on Country, of knowing every place in storyland. They say: we are all one mob, one tribe, to keep the olds’ knowledge strong.” 

Alexis Wright is a member of the Waanyi nation of the Gulf of Carpentaria. She is an author and essayist writing in fiction and non-fiction. 

Recorded by Jacob Craig (FASS Media Room, University of Sydney)

Photo: © Nicola Bailey

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The third international congress of the World Literature Association was proudly hosted by the School of Languages and Cultures at the University of Sydney on 23–25 August 2019. 

More info: https://sydney.edu.au/world-literatures-global-south

Keynote | Alexis Wright – A Self-Governing Literature: Who Owns the Map of the World?

Gauri Viswanathan delivered her keynote for the World Literatures and the Global South Conference at the University of Sydney on 23 August 2019. She shared about the formations of literature and the novel in a global network.

Gauri Viswanathan is Class of 1933 Professor in the Humanities and Director of the South Asia Institute at Columbia University. She has published widely on education, religion and culture; 19th-century British and colonial cultural studies; and the history of modern disciplines.

Recorded by Jacob Craig (FASS Media Room, University of Sydney)
Photo by Nicola Bailey

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The third international congress of the World Literature Association was proudly hosted by the School of Languages and Cultures at the University of Sydney on 23–25 August 2019.

More info: sydney.edu.au/world-literatures-global-south

Keynote | Gauri Viswanathan – Brokered Sites of Exchange Colonial Education & the Postcolonial Novel

Mascara Literary Review presented a public reading performance on 24 August 2019 as part of the World Literatures and the Global South Conference at the University of Sydney.

This reading is a creative submersion into the colloquium themes from diaspora writers and translators who live and work in Sydney, and whose ancestries trace to the Global South. 

They have lived in the United Kingdom, United States, Germany, Africa, Mexico and Australia. They share resistant imaginaries.

Convened by Dr Toby Fitch, Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Sydney and poetry editor of Overland Journal, with a brief introduction by award-winning poet, Dimitra Harvey.

The writers:
- Mario Licón Cabrera
- Anupama Pilbrow
- Lachlan Brown
- Debbie Lim
- Michelle Cahill
- Christopher Cyrill

Learn more about Mascara Literary Review: http://mascarareview.com
Recording and audio post-production: Cayleigh Gerber, Microhire Australia

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The third international congress of the World Literature Association was proudly hosted by the School of Languages and Cultures at the University of Sydney on 23–25 August 2019.

More info: sydney.edu.au/world-literatures-global-south

Mascara's Global South Salon: A Reading and Performance - World Literature and the Global South 2019

Creative submersion | Mascara's Global South Salon: A Reading and Performance

Gamilaraay, or Kamilaroi (other spellings also exist), is a Pama-Nyungan language found mostly in Central Northern NSW in Australia. The language was near total extinction only a few years ago. That was before language and culture activists such as Tracey Cameron and Priscilla Strasek, a Gamilaraay/Yuwaalaraay/Yuwaalayaay Language and Culture Nest Project Officer for NSW, emerged to bring it back — to re-awaken it.

00:00 | Introduction by Professor Adrian Vickers, Acting Head of School of Languages and Cultures
04:19 | Tracey Cameron on the Gamilaraay revival and her family story
43:08 | Priscilla Strasek joins the conversation from Lightning Ridge, NSW via Zoom video conferencing
59:30 | Q&A with audience

The School of Languages and Cultures hosted Gamilaraay woman and language teacher Tracey Cameron (Indigenous Studies, School of Literature, Art and Media, University of Sydney) and Priscilla Strasek (NSW Aboriginal Education Consultative Group Inc.) at the University of Sydney on 14 November 2019 to share about the importance of the Gamilaraay language.

More info: https://bit.ly/traceycamerontalk

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Image credit: © Mawu-gi Gamilaraay Aboriginal Art by Brent Emerson (https://mawu-gi.com.au). Used with permission for the University of Sydney's School of Languages and Cultures.

Reviving The Gamilaraay Language – Tracey Cameron and Priscilla Strasek

Professor Adrian Vickers shares some reflections on Asian Studies in Australia at the most auspicious occasion on The Oriental Society’s calendar held at the University of Sydney on 17 October 2019.

This lecture examines the wider issues governing Asian Studies in Australia, moving from colonial Orientalism to Inter-Asia Referencing and the Cold War underpinnings of the field. Drawing on ‘Asia as Method’ and the writings of Chua Beng Huat, Professor Vickers asks what might constitute an Asian-oriented understanding of Asia.

More info: bit.ly/2019ardavislecture
Photo and recording by The Oriental Society of Australia
 
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Founded in 1956 by Professor A.R. Davis, then-Head of Department of Oriental Studies at the University of Sydney, The Oriental Society of Australia was established to promote the knowledge of Asia in Australia as well as to provide a venue for scholars to present their work to their peers and others interested in Asia and Asia-related matters.
 
For more information, visit The Journal of the Oriental Society of Australia’s website: https://bit.ly/usydosa

From Orientalism to Inter-Asia Referencing – Adrian Vickers | 2019 AR Davis Lecture

Dr Lucia Sorbera (Chair of Department of Arabic Language and Cultures) interviews Visiting Professor Nicola Pratt (Reader in International Relations at Warwick University) about the shifting approaches within feminist Middle East scholarship.

The relationship between feminist/women’s studies and Middle East studies has been as much promising and challenging since its first inceptions. It is certainly true that the use of feminist lenses to understand the history of Islam, the Arab world and the Middle East has enormously contributed to the post-orientalist revolution in the field. 

Feminist post-colonial scholars have not only questioned and challenged orientalist myths about Muslim and Middle Eastern women, but through their scholarship they advocated for a broader epistemic shift in the ways Islam, Muslims, the Arab World and the Middle East have been studied and understood by both indigenous and international scholars. 

As the scholarship is shifting from post-colonial to decolonial epistemes, trying to embed indigenous epistemologies in the discourse, we are experiencing a new turn. How does a decolonial approach differ from a post-colonial or post-orientalist approach to Middle East women’s and gender studies? How are scholars of the Middle East decolonising women and gender studies?
    
Note: Views and opinions expressed in episodes of ArabSouth are the participants’ own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the University of Sydney or the Department of Arabic Language and Cultures.

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Track edited by Jacob Craig (FASS Media Room, University of Sydney)

For more information, visit: https://sydney.edu.au/arts/arabic

Decolonising Women and Gender in Middle East Studies – Nicola Pratt | ArabSouth

Dr Emma Barlow (University of Sydney) examines the reception of Dantean conceptions of suicide in the later medieval and early modern Italian literary tradition. 

She analyses literary depictions of suicide in the works of authors ranging from Petrarch and Boccaccio, who were writing in the time immediately following Dante’s death, to authors such as Bandello and Tasso, whose works share features of both later Renaissance and counter-reformation literature. She argues that the scope of the implementation of Dante’s portrayal of suicide in the later Italian tradition is testament to his unorthodox decision to explore in great detail and nuance a subject ordinarily dominated by taboo.

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Dr Emma Louise Barlow recently completed a PhD in Italian Studies at the University of Sydney. She has a BA (Langs) (Hons) also from the University of Sydney and an MSt in Modern Languages (Medieval and Early Modern Italian) from the University of Oxford. She has an article in press for Cerae vol. 7 (2020) on ‘Emotional Minds and Bodies in the Suicide Narratives of Dante’s Inferno’, and an article titled ‘punto / per compassion: The Violent Rhetoric of Compassion in Dante’s Commedia’ that has been accepted for publication in a special issue of Parergon on early modern discourses of compassion (2022), and her co-authored chapter (with Dr Alice Loda, UTS) titled ‘Neville Longbottom and the Multifarious Learning Environment: Inclusivity and Reciprocity at Hogwarts’ was published this year in Lessons from Hogwarts: Essays on the Pedagogy of Harry Potter (McFarland, 2020). She has presented her work at conferences in Australia, the UK, the USA, and Italy. Her research interests include medieval and early modern Italian literature, lyric poetry, the history of emotions, intellectual history, palaeography and codicology, digital humanities, and pedagogical practices.

This is part of the University of Sydney's Department of Italian Studies Research Seminar Series held and recorded on 15 October 2020, and was co-hosted by the Medieval and Early Modern Centre.

For more information, visit: https://sydney.edu.au/arts/italian

Liminal Narratives of Self-Destruction in Dante’s Commedia and Beyond – Dr Emma Barlow

Professor Devleena Ghosh delivered the 2020 AR Davis Memorial Lecture on “The bones of our mothers”: Coal, climate and resistance in a Chhattisgarh District” at a special virtual event on 29 October 2020.

TIMESTAMPS
00:00 Welcome by Prof Jon Eugene von Kowallis (President of OSA, Chair of Chinese Studies, UNSW)
01:51 Introduction by Dr Mabel Lee (Honorary Associate, Chinese Studies, University of Sydney)
09:18 Prof Devleena Ghosh presents her talk
50:20 Q&A
1:08:21 Thanks and close by Dr Josh Stenberg (Lecturer, Chinese Studies, University of Sydney)

In recent years, Adivasis in Chhattisgarh have been resisting the encroachment of their lands and forests by various mining corporations. Such developments have subsumed forest dwellers’ rights to the necessities of resource extraction and caused the displacement and loss of land and livelihoods. 

This presentation examines the historical status of forest dwelling Adivasis and the appropriation of their lands, first by colonial rulers in the 19th century and then by postcolonial governments. It discusses their resistance to these events in the context of the status of Adivasis in the Indian Constitution and the two Acts that attempted to clarify their rights (The Panchayat Extension to Scheduled Areas Act 1996 and the Forest Rights Act 2006).

Devleena Ghosh is Professor of Social and Political Sciences at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Technology Sydney. She is the author of Beyond the Coal Rush: A Turning Point for Global Energy and Climate Policy (with Goodman et al, Cambridge University Press 2020), Teacher for Justice: Lucy Woodcock’s Transnational Life (with Goodall et al, ANU Press 2019) and Colonialism and Modernity (with Paul Gillen, UNSW Press, 2007). She has researched and publishes in the areas of environmental and gender studies in South Asia and is working on a project involving land, indigenous people and renewable energy in India.

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Founded in 1956 by Professor A.R. Davis, then-Head of Department of Oriental Studies at the University of Sydney, The Oriental Society of Australia was established to promote the knowledge of Asia in Australia as well as to provide a venue for scholars to present their work to their peers and others interested in Asia and Asia-related matters.

For more information, visit the Oriental Society of Australia’s website: bit.ly/usydosa

Coal, climate & resistance in a Chhattisgarh District – Devleena Ghosh | 2020 AR Davis Lecture

Associate Professor Antonia Rubino presents some findings of a project exploring trilingualism (English, Italian and dialect) of Australian-Italian youth aged 18 to 30.

TIMESTAMPS
0:00 Introduction and welcome
00:01:10 Trilingualism project and findings
01:08:00 Audience Q&A
01:15:00 Closing and thanks

The Italo-Australians are the second largest non-English speaking ethnic group present today in Australia, with over one million people reporting Italian ancestry in the latest (2016) Census and over 271,000 home speakers, representing the fifth most spoken home language in Australia. The Italo-Australian context is characterised by high vitality and a relatively high intergenerational language transmission, as 44% of those reporting home usage of Italian were born in Australia. Since much research has focused on post-war Italian migrants or their children, this project fills a notable gap by investigating Australian-Italians (i.e. those with parents born in Australia), a crucial cohort in terms of language maintenance. 
The data was gathered through an online survey and conversational interviews exploring language experiences and perceptions of language use, amongst other issues. 

In this presentation Associate Professor Rubino focuses on the findings from the survey (224 respondents) which, in addition to detailed sociodemographic and sociocultural information, elicited the respondents’ self-assessed competence in each of the three languages: English, Italian and dialect; their attitudes towards the languages; and self-reported language use with a range of interlocutors and in a wide selection of communicative situations. It discusses findings from some open-ended questions of the survey, where respondents were asked to give examples of Italian or dialect words that they particularly like; to report and exemplify language mixing practices; and to attribute specific meanings to Italian and dialect. The responses to these open questions were particularly detailed and greatly enriched the quantitative findings, yielding some precious insights into the linguistic practices of these young Italo-Australians, particularly within the extended family.

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Associate Professor Antonia Rubino lectures in the Department of Italian Studies at the University of Sydney. Her main research interests are in multilingualism, with a focus on exploring the linguistic practices of Italo-Australians in various sites, the relationships between different migrant cohorts, and language maintenance/shift amongst different migrant generations. Amongst her recent publications, Trilingual talk in Sicilian-Australian migrant families: Playing out identities through language alternation (Palgrave, 2014), “Authenticity, agency and mobility in the discourse of Italian migrants in Australia” (in Multilingualism, (im)mobilities and spaces of belonging, Multilingual Matters, 2020), “Language competence, choice and attitudes amongst Italo-Australian youth (Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 2019), “Multilingualism in the Sydney landscape: The Italian impact” (in Multilingual Sydney, Routledge, 2019) and “Constructing pseudo-intimacy in an Italo-Australian phone-in radio program” (Journal of Pragmatics, 2016).

This is part of the University of Sydney's Department of Italian Studies Research Seminar Series held and recorded on 9 November 2020.

For more information, visit: sydney.edu.au/arts/italian

Multilingualism and Identity amongst Australian-Italian Youth – Antonia Rubino

The University of Sydney School of Languages and Cultures offers a wide range of studies with research expertise in the non-English speaking world and multilingual Australia.

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