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Most recent event listed first:
Conference on Postcolonial Victorians at University
of Oxford
Date: 2 - 3 June 2006
Dr Sandip Hazareesingh presented his paper 'World history,
spatial processes, and postcolonial theory' at this conference.
Details can be found on the conference Website
Book Launch: Moving
the Maasai A Colonial Misadventure.
Date: 02 March 2006
Dr Lotte Hughes launched her book Moving the Maasai A Colonial
Misadventure, at St Anthonys College, Oxford. For more details
please see the attached.
Flyer
(PDF file 189 kb)
OU Staff only:
"Postcolonial spaces: politics, representation, hybridity"
Date: Wednesday 16 November 2005
Geography Seminar Series joint seminar with The Ferguson Centre.
Info:
Poster Word file (85 kb)
Globalization, Identity
Politics, and Social Conflict (GIPSC) workshop - Tehran
Globalization and Religion: Identity and Power
Date: 17-18 November 2005
This workshop was held in collaboration with the Centre for Globalization
Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Tehran, Iran.
For more information and details of the call for proposals, please
follow the link below to the GIPSC Website
Info:
Website: GIPSC
website, go to "Workshops", "Tehran".
"Self and Subject: African and Asian Perspectives"
Date: 20 - 23 September 2005
An international conference organised by The Ferguson Centre for
African and Asian Studies.
There are few areas of research that have attracted so much interest
in the arts and humanities as the constitution and representation
of the self, whether as a unit of literary and philosophical reflection,
or as embodied entity or as product and producer of cultural life.
Yet with the increasing movement of people, goods and ideas within
and beyond national boundaries, it is not only the identity and
status of the individual subject that has been called into question
but also many of the assumptions and methodologies that once characterised
different disciplinary approaches to the self.
This conference invited a double questioning of the subject. It
sought to foreground recent innovative reflections on the status
of the individual subject through a questioning of different disciplinary
approaches. It asked how the recognition that individual lives are
formed in increasingly complex “multi-cultural” and
“trans-national” contexts demands new methodologies
for re-thinking the subject within and across disciplinary boundaries.
There were papers from literary theorists, historians, anthropologists,
philosophers, art historians and other specialists of Africa and
Asia who have an interest in such domains as life histories, post-colonial
literature, autobiography, visual representation, material culture,
aesthetics, the media, ethnicity, ethnography, migration and diaspora
studies, and the politics of identity.
Info:
Programme
Word file (456 kb)
Programme
PDF file (99 kb)
Abstracts
Word file (504 kb)
Abstracts
PDF file (290 kb)
Globalization, Identity Politics, and Social
Conflict (GIPSC) workshop - Beijing:
Perceptions/Constructions of the West from 'Outside' in Contemporary
Cultural Texts and Discourses
Date: 20-22 August 2005
This workshop was held in collaboration with the Centre for
Cross-Cultural Studies and the Institute for World Literature of
Peking University, Beijing, P.R. China. For more information please
follow the link below to the GIPSC Website
Website: GIPSC
website, go to "Workshops", "Beijing".
Paper: Nishida’s Zen Aesthetic
Date: 15 - 20 July 2005
Location: ISUD Sixth World Congress, Helsinki
Dr Bob Wilkinson gave the above paper at the ISUD SIxth World Congress
conference. For more details, please go to their website below.
Info:
Website:
International Society for Universal Dialogue (ISUD)
Focus on Africa presented by The Open University
African Art: Ancestors and Moderns
Date: 22 May 2005 at the British Museum
The Open University hosted an Open Day at the British
Museum, with a programme of free talks and tours. Leading experts
from the University discussed a range of topics including the Enlightenment,
visions and partnerships in Africa, and African Art.
African Art: Ancestors and Moderns, talk by
Centre Director
With reference to works in the British Museum’s
collection, this talk explored the importance of ancestral images
in African art. "From archaic masks to modern coffins, from
images of gods and kings to masquerade costumes and everyday objects,
the ancestors are a constant source of inspiration and authority.
At least, that is often how African Art is seen in the West –
as past, pagan, and primitive. But recent exposure to contemporary
art from Africa – most notably during Africa 05 – allows
us to reassess this image of African cultural expression and to
look again at African ancestral art, and perhaps to see that Africa
has always been ‘modern’, and has adapted to and absorbed
change with vitality and invention."
Website: British Museum website
Globalization, Identity Politics, and Social
Conflict (GIPSC) workshop - Plovdiv:
Clash of Civilizations?: Migration, Modern Nationalism
and Nostalgia for Homeland in the Age of Globalization.
Date: 5-7 April 2005
This workshop was held in collaboration with the Faculty of Philology,
Paisiy Hilendarski University of Plovdiv, Bulgaria. For more information
please go to the GIPSC
website
"Identities in Sri Lanka: Tamil and Sinhala
Ethnicity", BASAS Annual Conference 2005
Date: Wednesday 30 March - Friday 01 April 2005
Dr Alan Bullion chaired the above panel at the BASAS Annual Conference
2005. This was to be held at the University of Leeds.
Nation on Film: Make Yourself At Home
Date: 2005
This new BBC/Open University series delved into Britain’s
social past to look at the country’s history as captured on
film over the last 100 years. Episode 6 (below) focusesd on how
film captured the emergence of Britain’s Asian communities.
"Make Yourself At Home:
This is the story of how film captured the emergence of Britain’s
Asian communities. We start in the 1950s, when people from the Commonwealth
were encouraged to come to Britain. Social change was recorded -
by chance - when a Bradford mill owner hired commercial photographers
to record working conditions in a textile factory. The newcomers
were labelled as Asian immigrants, but they came from different
countries, with different languages and different faiths.
Attitudes were hardening among some of the white people who lived
near the new communities and, in the West Midlands, TV documentary
makers encountered open expressions of prejudice. By the time the
BBC covered a heated election campaign in Smethwick in 1964, it
was clear that the issue of race would have to be handled carefully
on camera. A new approach was needed by broadcasters, and ‘integration’
was the goal.
Mahendra Kaul was brought in to present a series of films, aimed
at helping the new arrivals to settle and integrate. It was considered
such an urgent need that the Postmaster General had to force through
an emergency measure to allow television transmitters to operate
on Sunday mornings for these programmes.
By the 70s, many of the ‘first generation’ immigrants
were worried that further immigration would make all Asians more
vulnerable to racist attack. Following the explusion of Asians from
Uganda, more established communities in Leicester used film to pass
on a message of their own: we don’t want you here.
For many British Asians, it was cinema that helped them escape
from western culture and retain their own identity. They queued
every week to watch films made in India, turning the cinemas into
social centres. Asian families by now were getting access to their
own film-making equipment. Their films are a record of a moment
in history, showing young Asians growing up in a multicultural environment."
For more information please go to the Nation on Film website below.
Main website: Nation
on Film
Open Door Seminar series "Violences remembered"
2004-05
Colonial and postcolonial conflicts in the twentieth
century
Location: British Empire & Commonwealth Museum,
Clock Tower Yard,
Temple Meads, Bristol, BS1 6QH
Some aspects of the global history of the last century:
Urban violence. Conflicts in the Third World. The break up of countries.
The suspension of democracy. Terror. Oil…
How are all these events linked together? And are
they at all connected to the British Empire? The second of our seminar
series Entitled Colonialism and Violence, sought to engage with
these questions. The programme included talks by renowned imperial
historian, Terence Ranger, on urban Rhodesia in the twentieth century;
Peter Carey on Indonesian intervention in East Timor; Joya Chatterji
on Bengal during India’s Partition; Valerie Johnson on the
Anglo-Persian Oil Company in Iran and more…
All seminars were held at the British Empire &
Commonwealth Museum and were jointly organised by the Ferguson Centre
for African and Asian Studies at the Open University and the Museum.
Programme - Colonial
and postcolonial conflicts in the twentieth century
May 25:
The Colonial past in contemporary Alergia.
Martin Evans, Portsmouth University
May 11:
Constructions of French decolonisation, 1944-54.
Martin Thomas, Exeter
April 27:
Colonial violences: The French Army and torture during the
Algerian War.
Raphaelle Branche, Institute of Political Studies, Paris
April 13:
Knowledge and Power in the Rubber industries of Malaya, Ceylon,
and Singapore in the early 20th century.
Emma Reisz, Jesus College, University of Oxford
February 23:
Civil unrest in a Colony at war. The Gold Coast in World
War I.
Elizabeth Wrangham, Surrey Roehampton
February 9:
French and British colonial administrations: comparisons
revisited.
Veronique Dimier, Universite Libre de Bruxelles
January 26:
Imperial ‘transfer’: the case of the Anglo-Persian
Oil Company in Iran during the first half of the 20th century.
Valerie Johnson, Cambridge
January 12:
Conflicting Institutions: The Sugarcane Industry and Rice Improvement
in Colonial Indonesia, ca. 1920s
Harro Maat
December 15:
The Emergency Remembered: Tales of sterilisation, displacement and
betrayal from India's urban poor.
Dr Emma Tarlo, The Open University
November 17:
Terror and/of Empire: the colonial experience in the 20th
century.
Dibyesh Anand, Bath
November 3:
Third World Colonialism? Indonesian intervention in East
Timor.
Peter Carey, Trinity, Oxford
October 20:
Urban violence and colonial experience: Bulawayo, Rhodesia
in the twentieth century.
Terence Ranger, St-Antony’s, Oxford
South Asia Research Day
Date: 17 February 2005
Location: CMR15, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes.
The idea of this workshop was to bring together researchers dispersed
through different departments of the OU who have an interest in
South Asia and related diaspora communities.
The aims of the day were:
- to raise the profile of research on South Asia within the OU
- to discover potential research links and areas of common interest
amongst OU researchers from different disciplines with a view to
exploring the potential for collaborative research initiatives in
the future
- to communicate the research work of The Ferguson Centre
- to consider the benefits of opening up Arts courses in the OU
to extra-European perspectives.
We would like to keep the day as informal as possible,
with each participant giving a brief resume of their work to date
and a short presentation of their current and future research interests.
The aim is to leave plenty of time for discussion.
If you are interested in learning more, please contact
Dr Emma Tarlo.
Post colonial artists
Jacky Puzey 'Postcolonial Dream coats'
A part of the Visual Arts Programme - Black History Month - Identity
Follow
this link for more information and photo's
Paper: " Hijab in London: metamorphosis, agency, resonance"
Date: 4.15pm Friday 3rd December 2004
Dr Emma Tarlo gave the above paper at the Anthropology Seminar,
University of Oxford, 51 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 6PE.
Paper: "India's Emergency of 1975-7 Revisited: An
Archaeological Ethnography of the Political Present"
Date: Friday 12 - Saturday 13 November 2004
Dr Emma Tarlo gave the above paper at the conference, Ethnographies
of the Political in South Asia. At the Southern Asian Institute,
School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University,
420 West 118th Street, New York NY 10027.
Paper: "Looking Islamic: the transformation of personal
appearances in London"
Date: Tuesday 19th October 2004
Dr Emma Tarlo gave the above paper at the Seminar, "Les
frontieres du sujet", at Centre IRD d'ile-de-France, 32 avenue
Henri Varagnat 93140, Bondy, Paris, on 18th - 20th October.
"Urban generations: Post-colonial cities"
Date: 1-3 October 2004
Location: Mohammed V University, Rabat, Morocco
This international conference, which explored the
concept of the Post-colonial city, was jointly organised by The
Ferguson Centre, OU, GIPSC Project, OU, Faculte des Lettres et des
Sciences Humaines, Mohammed V University Rabat and the British Council
in Morocco.
Conference abstracts
Weblink
Photo's from conference
Weblink
Collaborators' website:
Mohammed
V University and GIPSC
Project
AHRB CentreCATH Seminar 2 "Ibadan 1960 – Art,
History and Literature"
Date: 23-24 September 2004
Location: University of Leeds, Leeds
This seminar was organised by the AHRB CentreCATH at the University
of Leeds. The aim of the Seminar was to review a moment in the postcolonial,
situated in the city space of Ibadan, Nigeria. It reviewed the work
of that moment in art, history and literature, but also interrogated
why a particular post-colonial moment operates to bring forth particular
forms of cultural productivity, and analyse those forms. Dr David
Richards from the Ferguson Centre presented a paper.
Collaborator's website: CentreCath
website
"Imperial globalisation? Trade, technologies,
and transnationalities within the British Empire from the 18th to
the 20th century"
Date: Friday 10 - Saturday 11th September 2004
Location: British Empire and Commonwealth Museum, Bristol
This interdisciplinary conference, which explored
for the first time the concept of globalisation in a historical
context, was organised by The Ferguson Centre for African and Asian
Studies at The Open University and the British Empire & Commonwealth
Museum.
Sound bites and a summary of the conference will be
available here soon.
Conference Abstracts Weblink
"The new orders of difference: The Cultural Discourses
& Texts of Economic Migration"
Date: 14-16 July 2004
Location: Roehampton University of Surrey, Froebel College
This International Conference was organised by the
Globalization, Identity Politics and Social Conflict (GIPSC) Project
in collaboration with The Ferguson Centre for African and Asian
Studies. Contributions to this workshop approached the theme of
economic migration with a particular focus on cultural texts and
discourses focusing on specific migrant groups in specific contexts
or on particular aspects of the migration process in specific contexts.
Sound bites and a summary of the conference will
be available here soon.
Conference Abstracts Weblink
"About the Ferguson Centre" A presentation by
the Director
Date: 15 June 2004, 2.30pm CMR15
This event was for OU staff only
The Ferguson Centre's Director, Dr David Richards,
did a presentation to OU staff on The Ferguson Centre. He spoke
on The Ferguson Centre's mission, ethos and goals.
If you would like to meet with the Director to discuss
Collaboration, please contact Heather Scott .
Powerpoint
Presentation Image file PDF (3,262 kb)
Text
only file PDF (63 kb)
"Classics in Post-Colonial Worlds - an
international, interdisciplinary conference"
Date: 19-20 May 2004
Location: The Open University, Harborne, Birmingham
This interdisciplinary conference was organised by
the Department of Classical Studies and The Ferguson Centre for
African and Asian Studies to mark the increasing importance of research
on the reception of classical texts and images in the varied histories
of colonial and post-colonial societies. The conference, through
its plenary and work-in-progress sessions, promoted debate on current
work and sought to advance further cross-disciplinary contacts and
collaborations in the study of relevant aspects of material or literary
culture: literary and theatre studies, art history, translation
studies, architectural history, cultural studies, and the history
of education.
Sound bites and a summary of the conference will be
available here soon.
Abstracts
Paper: Rapacious Ministers versus Masked Saviours:
Bombay Cinema in Princely Gujarat in the 1920s
At the Gujarat Day Workshop
Date: 14 May 2004
Dr Bhaumik presented his paper Rapacious Ministers versus Masked
Saviours: Bombay Cinema in Princely Gujarat in the 1920s at
the Gujarat Day workshop at the School of Oriental African Studies,
London.
Launch of The Ferguson Centre for African
and Asian Studies
Date: 30 April 2004
The October Gallery, Bloomsbury, London
The Ferguson Centre was officially launched at a reception
held amidst the Victorian splendours of the October Gallery in Bloomsbury
on Friday 30th April. The gallery was a particularly apt location
for the Centre’s launch as it has been actively engaged in
the promotion and dissemination of African and Asian artworks in
the UK for over twenty-five years. The launch was attended by approximately
100 guests who were were addressed by Mrs Elnora Ferguson, Dr Richard
Allen (Dean of Arts), and Dr David Richards (Director of the Ferguson
Centre), who offered three perspectives on the role of African and
Asian cultural studies in The Open University's history. The guest
list included writers, critics, academics from numerous universities,
and the Open University’s Pro-Vice Chancellors, Prof David
Vincent and Prof Linda Jones, and Professor Ian Steadman, Director
of Development Office. The launch was a resounding success and the
Centre hopes to maintain contact with all who attended and expressed
their good wishes for the Centre’s future development.
For photo's from the launch please go to our Online
Gallery
Article
on the Launch
Paper: From Glasgow to Bombay: cotton, steamships,
and the conquest of distance
At workshop "Urbanity, Governance & Empire 1850-1950"
Date: 13 March 2004
Dr Sandip Hazareesingh presented his paper From Glasgow
to Bombay: cotton, steamships, and the conquest of distance, at
a one day workshop held in Leeds, organised by the International
Centre for Comparative Criminological Research, Open University
and School of Historical Studies, Leicester University.
Paper: Dress, Imagination and the Global
Islamic Community
At Seminar Series: "Seminar Series in Material Anthropology
and Museum Ethnography"
Date: Friday 12 March 2004
Dr Emma Tarlo presented her paper Dress, Imagination and
the Global Islamic Community at the Pitt Rivers Museum Seminar
Series in Oxford.
Open Door Seminar series "Conquests,
commodities, and cultures" 2003/4
Date: October 2003 to June 2004
Location: British Empire & Commonwealth Museum, Clock Tower
Yard,
Temple Meads, Bristol, BS1 6QH
This seminar series was jointly organised by The Ferguson
Centre for African and Asian Studies and the British Empire and
Commonwealth Museum, Bristol. The theme for the first series was
'Conquests, Commodities, and Cultures' and the seminars were hosted
by the Museum from October 2003 to June 2004.
June 2, 2004:
"Colonial and Postcolonial Wales."
Dr Kirsti Bohata, University of Swansea.
May 19, 2004:
"Post-imperial legacies."
Dr Andrew Thompson, University of Leeds
May 5, 2004:
"Conquering health challenges: The Government of India,
International Health Organisations, and smallpox eradication in
India."
Dr Sanjoy Bhattacharya, University College London.
April 21, 2004:
"An Orchestra for China? Imperialism and Music in Shanghai's
International Settlement, 1879-1949."
Dr Robert Bickers, University of Bristol.
March 24, 2004:
"Humanitarians and Colonial Settlers: Contests and
Identities in New South Wales, New Zealand and the Cape Colony,
1830-1860."
Dr Alan Lester, University of Sussex.
March 10, 2004:
"Domicile and Diaspora: Anglo-Indian women and the
spatial politics of home."
Dr Alison Blunt, Queen Mary College, University of London.
February 25, 2004:
"A unitary field of knowledge: the construction of
London and India for the British reading public."
Dr John Marriott, Raphael Samuel History Centre, University of East
London.
February 11, 2004:
"From Glasgow to Bombay. Cotton, steamships, and the
identification of a new trade route."
Dr Sandip Hazareesingh, The Ferguson Research Centre, the Open University.
January 28, 2004:
"How imperialist were the British? Advertising and
popular culture in the era of empire."
Professor John MacKenzie, University of Lancaster.
January 14, 2004:
"The British Empire Museum as a centre for historical
research."
Dr Gareth Griffiths, British Empire and Commonwealth Museum.
December 10, 2003:
"Global commodity chains and economic development"
Professor William Gervase Clarence-Smith, School of Oriental and
African Studies
November 26, 2003:
"The cusp between conquest and culture: Southern Rhodesia
1890-1930"
Dr Diana Jeater, University of the West of England
November 12, 2003:
"Distance and Disturbance: Travel, Exploration, and
Knowledge in the 19th Century"
Professor Felix Driver, Royal Holloway College, University of London
October 27, 2003:
"Writing travels: Power, Knowledge, and Ritual on the
East India Company's early voyages"
Dr Miles Ogborn, Queen Mary College, University of London
October 15, 2003:
"New directions in research on Bristol and the slave
trade"
Dr Madge Dresser, University of the West of England.
Workshop: Globalisation, Identity Politics and Social Conflict:
Ethnic, Literary and Sociolinguistic Perspectives
GIPSC Workshop: Nigeria 14-16 April 2003
This took place in collaboration
with the Centre for Black and African Arts and Civilisation, Lagos;
Director: Dr. Duro Oni.
Workshop: Social Discourses and Cultural Texts (Identity
Politics, Globalisation, and Social Conflict: Social Discourses
and Cultural Texts
GIPSC Workshop: Delhi March 26-28, 2002
Held in collaboration with the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library,
New Delhi; Director: Dr. O.P.Kejariwal.
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