Seminars

The group meets regularly during term time to discuss general theoretical issues in colonial and postcolonial studies and recent influential texts. Some seminar sessions are devoted to presentations by group members and/or visiting scholars.

Seminar Schedule: 2011-12

Term One

Tuesday 22 September 2011.
Beverley Diamond (Memorial University, Newfoundland, Canada)
“Re” Thinking: Revitalization, Return, and Reconciliation in Contemporary Indigenous Expressive Culture
Venue: Centre for International Theatre and Performance Research

Tuesday 1 November 2011, 1–3pm.
Reading Seminar: ‘Reconciliation in Postcolonial Societies’
Venue: Centre for International Theatre and Performance Research [at entrance to Boilerhouse Complex]
Articles for discussion are as follows. All welcome.

[Note: Recommended reading of Derrida is that between "The power to pardon' p. 194 (towards the end of the first §) to - 'And so forth." (end of last §) p.197]
1. Derrida, Jacques and Lawrence Venuti (2001): What Is a "Relevant" Translation?, Critical Inquiry, Vol. 27, No. 2, pp. 174-200
2. Attwood, Bain (2005): Unsettling pasts: reconciliation and history in settler Australia, Postcolonial Studies, 8:3, 243-259
3. Bharucha, Rustom (2001): Between Truth and Reconciliation: Experiments in Theatre and Public Culture, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 36, No. 39, pp. 3763-3773
 
Wednesday 9 November 2011, 4–5pm.
Te Ahukaramu Charles Royal: ‘Making the Modern Whare Tapere’
Venue: Noh Theatre

Drinks and nibbles will follow the talk. All welcome.

Whare tapere were pre-European Maori village 'houses' of storytelling, dance, games, music and other entertainments. They fell into disuse in the 19th century and new ways of performing were subsequently developed by Maori communities. Research conducted over the past decade has uncovered an amount of fragmentary information about these traditional 'houses'. This presentation discusses the ways in which  such fragmentary knowledge is being used today to inspire and influence new creations and performances.

Composer and researcher Te Ahukaramu Charles Royal is professor of Indigenous Development in the Faculty of Arts, University of Auckland and founder of the modern whare tapere, something that was first achieved in 2010 within Charles's tribal community in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Charles has an abiding interest in the creative potential of indigenous knowledges and is currently visiting fellow with the Indigeneity in the Contemporary World project team at Royal Holloway.

The programme for Term Two will be announced soon.

Seminar Schedule (Archive)

3 June 2011
‘Global Journeys’. Postgraduate Research Day at Oxford, organised jointly with Oxford Postcolonial Seminar. Plenaries by Jan Montefiore (Kent) and Stephen Morton (Bristol).

25 May 2011
Film Screening and discussion: Noirs et blancs en couleur [Black and white in colour], directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud (1976)

4 March 2011
'Ecology, Poverty, Creativity: Insights from the Anthropology of Development' workshop convened by Tina K. Ramnarine.

2 March 2011
‘Indigenous Politics, Class Struggle and Revolution’ with Alpa Shah (Goldsmiths College, London).

24 November 2010
Reading seminar: 'Gender, Body, Spaces'.

27 October 2010
Reading seminar: 'History, Policy, Feminism'.

26 May 2010
Screening and discussion of Xala (1975) directed by pioneering Sengalese film-maker Ousmane Sembéne.

5 May 2010
‘Subaltern Space’, with Dr Dan Clayton (University of St Andrews).

24 February 2010
Reading seminar: 'Thing Theory' (joint session with RHUL Victorian Studies Centre).

27 January 2010
‘Fiction and the Culture of Emigration’, with Professor Josephine McDonagh (Kings College).

25 November 2009
Reading Seminar: sections from Achille Mbembé’s On the Postcolony (joint event with Research Network South Asia).

21 October 2009
The Future of Subaltern Studies: An Afternoon with Professor David Hardiman (joint event with Research Network South Asia).

18 September 2009
‘Postcolonial Memory: Resistance, Representation and Revival’. Postgraduate Research Day organized jointly with the Centre for International Theatre and Performance Research). Keynote lecture by Professor Joseph Roach (Yale): ‘The Return of the Last of the Pequots: Disappearance as Heritage’ (podcast).

27 May 2009
Day Trip to Pitt Rivers Museum Oxford and lecture by Laura Peters.

6 May 2009
Reading seminar: Heritage and Objects.

11 February 2009
‘A Critique of Hybridity’ and ‘Indigeneity and Sovereignty’ with Peter Kulchyski (University of Manitoba).

21 January 2009
‘Postcolonialism Today’ with guest expert Stephen Howe (Bristol).

5 December 2008
‘Empire and Genocide: The work of Hannah Arendt’. One-day Conference organized in conjunction with the Holocaust Research Centre, RHUL. Speakers: Stephen Morton (Southampton), Richard King (Nottingham) and Simon Swift (Leeds).

19 November 2008
Hannah Arendt focusing on Responsibility and Judgment

22 October 2008
Hannah Arendt focusing on The Origins of Totalitarianism

28 July 2008
Postgraduate Research Day: ‘Interrogating the Postcolonial’.

6 June 2008
Film viewing of Bashu, with commentary by Laudan Nooshin (City University).

14 May 2008
The Artist as Public Intellectual, with Jane Taylor (Witwatersrand).

28 February 2008
Research workshop: 'American Tropics', with Peter Hulme (Essex).

23 January 2008
Eexcerpts from Provincialising Europe.

21 November 2007
Research workshop: ‘Volatile Worlds’, with Nigel Clark (Open University).

26 October 2007
One-day workshop: Colonial Genocide.

17 October 2007
Selections from Interventions special issue: Green Postcolonialism.

6 June 2007
Remembering Slavery; visit to British Museum.

2 May 2007
Postcolonialism and the ‘New Racism’, with Simon Gikandi (Princeton).

31 January 2007
‘Critical Whiteness’ with Vron Ware (independent scholar).

29 November 2006
‘Aesthetics and the Postcolonial City’, with Jenny Robinson (Open University).

23 November 2006
Reading by Zimbabwean writer Tsitsi Dangarembga.

4 October 2006
Postcolonialism and Postdevelopment, led by David Simon (Geography).

28 June 2006
Research workshop, ‘Postcolonialism: The Books and the -ism’, with Professor Robert Young (NYU).

14 June 2006
Theorists in Practice: Nelson Mandela. 

27 April 2006 (2.00-4.00 pm)
Research workshop: ‘Cities, Bodies and Orientalism’, with Professor Derek Gregory (UBC).

10 May 2006
Early 20th Century North American ‘Black Consciousness’: W.E.B. Du Bois and Marcus Garvie.

8 March 2006
Achille Mbembe’s ‘Necropolitics’, Public Culture 15.1 (2003), 11-40. 

18 January 2006
Excerpts from Ato Quayson's Calibrations.

30 November 2005
Excerpts from Paul Gilroy’s After Empire.

26 October 2005
Excerpts from Hart and Negri’s Multitude.

Conferences and Symposia Archive

Terror and the Postcolonial
Two day-long workshops investigating the relationship between terror, colonial history and the postcolonial world.
Dates and Venues: 28 April 2006, Royal Holloway; 30 June 2006, University of Southhampton.
Funded by the British Academy, the Canadian High Commission, the Humanities and Arts Research Committee (HARC) and the Graduate School at Royal Holloway.
Convenors: Elleke Boehmer (RHUL) and Stephen Morton (Soton).

Diaspora, Postcolonialism and Performance
One-day international conference for the British Forum for Ethnomusicology.
Date and Venue: 26 November 2005, Middlesex University.
Organiser: Tina K. Ramnarine.

Crossing Stages
Two-day international symposium on cross-cultural, intercultural and postcolonial theatre.
Date and Venue: 12-13 May 2005, Royal Holloway.
Organiser: Helen Gilbert.