School of Political Science, Criminology & Sociology POSTGRADUATE BULLETIN 7 April 2004 1. Department and Faculty committee positions available for postgraduates 2. PhD Scholarship in Forestry and/or Fisheries Certification - University of Tasmania 3. Call for papers: "Excess: Rapture and Revolution" 4. Nominations open for 'Fresh Innovators 2004' 5. The Australian Consortium for Social and Political Research Incorporated (ACSPRI) Winter Program 6. Political Science Seminar 19 April: A-secular atheism and religious cultural war 7. Feminist Forum 27 April: Objectified, empowered or predatory? The "Sex and the City" generation 8. CERC Seminar 27 April: Skilled Migration to Europe: Policy Issues in the Context of Demographic Decline Issues of this bulletin are archived on the web at: http://www.politics.unimelb.edu.au/courses/postgraduate/bulletin.html *********************************************** 1. Department and Faculty committee positions available for postgraduates From Kay Cook, the Department's Postgraduate Representative: Students are sought from the School of Political Science, Criminology & Sociology to represent postgraduates at the Department and Faculty levels on issues related to research and graduate studies. Positions are available on the following committees, which meet approximately once every 2 months (or once a semester for FAPRG): 1. Department Research and Graduate Studies (DRAGS) committee: 1-2 representatives - contact Ben Harper polpgrad-info@unimelb.edu.au 2. Faculty of Arts Research and Graduate Studies (RAGS) committee: 1 representative - contact Catherine Scoutas c.scoutas@unimelb.edu.au 3. Faculty of Arts Postgraduate Reference Group (FAPRG): 1 representative - contact Catherine Scoutas c.scoutas@unimelb.edu.au No experience in departmental/faculty/student association representation is required. Just email the appropriate person saying that you would like to be the next Politics Department rep on the associated committee. They'll add you to the mailing list, and send you the agenda/minutes for the next meeting. Students from any post-graduate degree in the department and any year level can serve on these committees. As a current member of DRAGS and FAPRG, these committees enable me to meet academics and post-grads in this and other departments, provide me with information about funding, space allocation, and other issues relevant to post-graduates, and help me to manage my degree as I more fully understand the departmental and University post-graduate system. There is not a lot of work involved in serving on these committees and they are great for your CV. If anyone would like to contact me about what is involved or my experience, please feel free to email me kay@unimelb.edu.au Kay Cook Department Postgraduate Representative *********************************************** 2. PhD Scholarship in Forestry and/or Fisheries Certification - University of Tasmania Students with a background in political science, political economy, public policy, institutional economics or another relevant social science discipline are invited to apply for a PhD Research Scholarship to work on the project Supporting or Sabotaging Sustainable Development? State Policy Responses to Environmental Certification Schemes. The scholarship is valued at $18,484 per annum, non-taxable for three years, commencing July 2004. Applications close 30 April 2004. The application form and conditions of the award can be downloaded from http://www.research.utas.edu.au/rhd/schol_forms.htm or contact the Research Higher Degrees Unit by phone 03 6336 7495, fax 03 6336 7497 or email scholarships@research.utas.edu.au. For further information contact Dr. Fred Gale, School of Government, University of Tasmania, Launceston, Phone: 03 6324 3376; email: Fred.Gale@utas.edu.au. *********************************************** 3. Call for papers: "Excess: Rapture and Revolution" An Interdisciplinary Postgraduate Symposium Friday 11 June, 2004 Graduate Centre, University of Melbourne "Excess: Rapture and Revolution" is a one-day symposium organised by the editors of antiTHESIS and postgraduates in the Department of English with Cultural Studies at the University of Melbourne. The symposium will bring together postgraduate scholars and creative writers from across Australia and overseas for a day of interdisciplinary debate and academic exchange. We invite papers which consider the momentum of excess, as a stimulus for subjective transformation and political upheaval, as a spur to rapture and revolution. Excess suggests the limits of knowledge, experience, language, production, consumption and power, and simultaneously the rejection and dissolution of such limits. Scholars and creative writers are invited to direct their contribution to one of the following themes: * bodies and pleasure * hedonism, decadence, the sublime * the spectacle of excess * censorship, discipline and regulation * the subjective experience of excess as creative and destructive * excess as a thematic and stylistic feature of literary production * cultural forms of excess (for example, carnival, consumerism, fetishism, and technologies) * political revolutions as the scene of real or imagined excess * revolutions in the history of ideas (based on the concept of excess) Proposals of no more than 250 words are sought for twenty-minute papers addressing the theme of "Excess: Rapture and Revolution". Please send abstracts in the text of an email (not as an attachment) to antithesis@adhocalypse.arts.unimelb.edu.au by 26 April 2004. All proposals will be considered and responded to by 3 May 2004. "Excess: Rapture and Revolution" is the theme of volume 15 of antiTHESIS, Australia's longest-running interdisciplinary postgraduate journal. Presenters at the symposium will be encouraged to submit their work for publication in the fully-refereed 2005 edition of antiTHESIS. *********************************************** 4. Nominations open for 'Fresh Innovators 2004' Postgraduates are encouraged to nominate to join the 'Fresh Innovators' National Program. Nominations close Tuesday 13 April 2004. The Program will give 16 early career innovators national and international media exposure and a 'crash course' in presenting their work to the media, the public and business. The Organisers are, in their words, 'looking for people who have had an idea, made a discovery, invented a device and who are on the way to ensuring that their ideas will make difference', and with potential to 'make a difference at the business/commercial edge.' Fresh Innovators will be held in Sydney from 9-12 May 2004. Following a day of media and presentation training, the finalists will present to the media, students, the general public and relevant business and government groups. The Program covers travel and accommodation costs. The University will provide an additional $1,500 to any staff or student who takes part in the Program. Nominations close Tuesday 13 April 2004. For more information, selection criteria and the nomination form please visit: http://www.freshinnovators.org/. If students need assistance with their Nomination, the Melbourne Research and Innovation Office and the Melbourne Ventures and the Media Unit will be pleased to assist. *********************************************** 5. The Australian Consortium for Social and Political Research Incorporated (ACSPRI) Winter Program Enrolments are open for the ACSPRI Winter Program 2004 which will be held at the University of Queensland (St Lucia Campus) in Brisbane from 28 June - 2 July 2004. The ACSPRI Winter Program in social research and research technology comprises a number of 5-day courses over one week. Attendees may only attend one course during the week. Information about courses available, and an on-line booking facility, are available at: http://acspri.anu.edu.au/courses/winter/ For more information, please contact Ms Barbara Trewin, Executive Officer, ACSPRI Centre for Social Research, Australian National University. Phone: 02 6125 2200, Email: barbara.trewin@anu.edu.au *********************************************** 6. Political Science Seminar 19 April: A-secular atheism and religious cultural war You are invited to the seminar presented by Dr Jeffrey Minson (Centre for Governance and Public Policy, Griffith University) "A-secular atheism and religious cultural war: William Connolly's ethos of radical civility" Monday 19 April, 1.00 pm Room 519, Fifth floor, West Tower, John Medley Building William Connolly's unabashedly metaphysical "ethos of pluralization" has made an influential contribution to debate in American political theory over cultural difference. Jeffrey Minson examines its bearing on the American religious cultural wars, redescribing Connolly's two-handed engagement with both Christian self-culture and politics, and the toleration theory and regime Connolly terms the liberal-secularist modus vivendi. Minson also pursues Connolly's hypothesis that his "a-secular atheist" metaphysic is at the service of an ethic of "civil insurgency" linked to an alternative modelling of modus vivendi. The value and limits of Connolly's ethos, in particular its Nietzsche-and-Deleuze-inspired elements, are assessed in four ways. What are its implications for the intellectual practice of political theory itself? Can atheism possibly bear the political weight placed on it here, especially in America? How telling is his critique of the liberal-secularist modus vivendi, in light of evidence of a non-liberal (yet also non-conservative) prudential ethic of state ingredient in the constitutional governance of religion in the US? And why does Connolly's ethos of pluralization make no provision for the pluralization of moral and political agency itself? Jeffrey Minson teaches and researches on the ethical contours of politics and government. He has published work on and using Michel Foucault to that end, especially Genealogies of Morals (Macmillan, 1985). Research on questions arising at the intersection of citizenship, gender, cultural policy and government was published as Questions of Conduct (NY, 1993); and also issued in an edited collection (with Denise Meredyth), Citizenship and Cultural Policy (NY, 2002, also published in 2001 as a special issue of American Behavioral Scientist). He is currently working on two books, one on relations between civility, democracy and state sovereignty, the other on relations between state sovereignty, criminal justice, and civil liberties. All welcome. Presented with the Ashworth Program in Social Theory. *********************************************** 7. Feminist Forum 27 April: Objectified, empowered or predatory? The "Sex and the City" generation The latest in a series of sessions presented by the School of Political Science, Criminology & Sociology, in which feminist staff and postgraduate students from across the Arts Faculty can present and discuss their work in progress. Venue: Room 519, Fifth floor, John Medley Building, Gate 10, Grattan St., University of Melbourne. Tuesday 27 April, 5.30 to 7.00 pm. Belinda Morris (School of Political Science, Criminology & Sociology, University of Melbourne): "Objectified, empowered or predatory? The "Sex and the City" generation". All staff and postgraduate students interested in feminist ideas and research are welcome. *********************************************** 8. CERC Seminar 27 April: Skilled Migration to Europe: Policy Issues in the Context of Demographic Decline A/Prof Lesleyanne Hawthorne (Assistant Dean (International), Director: Faculty International Unit, Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences, University of Melbourne) Tuesday 27th April 1:00-2:00pm CERC, Room 212, Level 2, 234 Queensberry St, Carlton All welcome. Enquiries: 8344 9502; cerc@cerc.unimelb.edu.au