ANU Humanities Research Centre

Culture And Science

Early in July the Humanities Research Centre will host and co-sponsor the Tenth David Nicol Smith Conference on Eighteenth-Century Studies, convened by Dr Gillian Russell and Dr Ian Higgins of the English Department, Faculty of Arts, ANU. The theme 'Margins and Metropolis: Literature, Culture and Science, 1660-1830' takes its inspiration from John Brewer's recent contention that whilst the effects of the core on the periphery or of metropole on empire are much discussed, we know little of how imperial and other cultural 'margins' influenced 'the formation of identities and the ways in which the national, regional, linguistic, ethnic and religious allegiances came to clash or converge.' Science, as well as literature, was a key site of this cultural interaction.

This will be followed later in July by a conference in honour of Bernard Smith, Australia's most distinguished art critic and theorist, whose work has been fundamentally concerned with the dialogue between art and anthropology, particularly in relation to Antipodean settler colonialism and the history of representations of non-European peoples in the Pacific. Entitled 'Beyond Colonialism: a seminar on art history and anthropology in honour of Bernard Smith', this conference will focus on ideas, representations and traditions of art and anthropology in colonial, postcolonial (especially southeast Asian and Pacific) and indigenous Pacific contexts. The conference will work in co-operation with the National Gallery of Australia and will be convened by Dr Nicholas Thomas, Anthropology, ANU.

In late August/early September a third conference entitled 'Science and Other Indigenous Knowledge Traditions' will be held jointly with James Cook University and Deakin University's Sciences in Society Centre. This conference (which also incorporates the Sixth Comparative Scientific Traditions Conference), will be based at the Cairns Campus of James Cook University; it aims to bring together scholars in the humanities and custodians/practitioners/analysts of indigenous sciences to reflect upon relations between indigenous and western cognitive traditions. Its themes will include the fortunes of indigenous knowledges and technologies in the wake of southern hemisphere colonialism (in the Antipodes, the Pacific, Africa and Asia) and the ways in which these knowledges have influenced western intellectual products and practices since the seventeenth century. The conveners are particularly interested in papers which address the uses and understandings of flora, fauna, land, intellectual and cultural property and bio-technologies. It is anticipated that experts in traditional knowledges from northern Aboriginal and Islander communities will be participating. Dr Paul Turnbull, History, James Cook University, Townsville, Ms Henrietta Fourmile, Aboriginal Studies, James Cook University, Cairns, and Dr David Turnbull, Sciences in Society Centre, Deakin University, will convene the conference.

Our final conference, 'The Natural Sciences and the Social Sciences', will be held at the HRC in Canberra around mid-September. Here the focus is on the connections, conflicts and/or interactions between natural and social knowledges, cosmologies and belief systems. The conveners, Professor Roy Porter of the Wellcome Institute for the Study of Medicine and Dr Dorothy Porter of Birkbeck College, London, envisage a broad and inclusive definition of social sciences so as to encompass scholars working on such subjects as the relations between science and religion, science and gender, and science and history.

Further enquiries about Visiting Fellowships, and about the year as a whole, should be made to the Director or Associate Director, Humanities Research Centre, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 0200, Australia, Fax +61 6 2480054.

Visiting Fellowships 1996

Applications from scholars working in any area of the humanities are welcomed as a proportion of each year's Fellowships is reserved for those without special interest in the year's theme; the majority of Fellowships, however, will be awarded to those whose work is relevant to the annual theme and its conferences. Fellows are expected to work at the Centre, but are encouraged also to visit other Australian universities. Grants usually include a travel component and a weekly living allowance.

Prospective applicants must obtain further particulars and application forms from the Centre Administrator, Humanities Research Centre, The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, 0200, Australia. Fax (06)248 0054. Applications should reach the Registrar, ANU, by 31 October 1994.