How is a sense of belonging on the personal, regional, national, and transnational level narrativized and dramatized by various groups in contemporary Australia? How have recent Indigenous-led political interventions, such as the Uluru Statement from the Heart, calls for constitutional recognition and treaty talk, altered debates about (un)belonging? What role(s) do global warming, Australia’s climate paradox and/or Anthropocene perspectives play in shaping ideas of (un)belonging? What about renewed concern for lands, rivers, seas, and flora and fauna in the face of mining destruction, deforestation, ferocious droughts, and floods? Do these environmental disasters prompt new considerations about belonging?
Through posing and contemplating these questions, this symposium aims to intervene in the complex discussions of contested belongings in Australia by extending and updating these debates, drawing attention to the multiple and multi-layered ways in which claims and contestations to belong, or not, are represented, negotiated, and entangled in Australia today.
The symposium will be held from 19-21 November 2021. Fully online, smaller in size and without parallel sessions, its aim will be to promote a thread of discussions and conversations about ideas of (un)belonging. Keynote speeches delivered by the Wirlomin Noongar writer Claire G. Coleman and scholars Christine Nicholls (ANU) and Emily Potter (Deakin University) will be complemented by regular papers and a discussion forum.We welcome proposals for papers of 15 minutes in length, sent tobelonging@phil.muni.cz by 31 August 2021. Please attach a 250-word abstract and a short bio in one document.
ORGANIZERS: Martina Horakova (Masaryk University, Czech Republic), Iva Polak (University of Zagreb, Croatia), and Geoff Rodoreda (University of Stuttgart, Germany).
This event is supported by EASA (European Association for Studies of Australia) and the Czech Science Foundation (GAČR).