The interdisciplinary conference took place at the John Curtin Gallery in Perth on the 9th and 10th of February 2009

The conference was convened by the Chinese Australian Studies Research Centre to examine the ways in which the creative self, tradition and the modern institution are bound together. It was the second of two linked conferences; the first, held in Guangzhou in 2007, examined the effects of globalisation on traditional Chinese visual practices.

The distinguished scholar Professor Raewyn Connell was the keynote speaker. Professor Connell’s book Masculinities has had a worldwide influence on the study of gender and men’s subjectivities, while her most recent book Southern Theory opens new perspectives in the debate about creating a democratic, international culture in the human sciences.

At the centre of the conference was the premise that, in what Ulrich Beck calls Second Modernity, and in the conditions of what Zygmunt Bauman calls Liquid Modernity, the need for a reflexive cosmopolitanism is paramount. How does this then impact upon the creative individual when negotiating tradition and the institutions of modernity? How important is the subjective realm as a space for creativity and how relevant is the social realm for creative engagement? The conference  discussion around these issues came from sociologists, anthropologists, educationalists, artists and writers.

Selected papers will be published  by the BrownWalker Press.

Please vist their site http://brownwalker.com/

Until then, the conference abstracts can be found here.

Conference abstracts

Dr Christopher Crouch
Director, CASRC.

For the conference committee.