What's On at UWA

The Royal WA Historical Society is holding its annual Secondhand Book Sale in the car park on Broadway and Clark streets on Saturday 1 April & Sunday 2 April 2017 8:30am – 5:30pm. Funds raised will go towards the preservation of our Library and Museum collections and general running of the Society.

Jane Austen’s novels are celebrated for their irony and wit and their sharply observant account of the social life of gentry families in Regency England. Underlying the vivid immediacy of her fictional world is an awareness of prevailing social structures. Legal concepts and rules were important influences in shaping the ordinary understandings of life in her class. As Toronto lawyer Enid Hildebrand put it in 1982, ‘Estates, settlements, trusts, wills were the everyday stuff of life to Jane Austen.’ This lecture will explore some of the ways in which law figures in Austen’s novels and in her family.

Kieran Dolin teaches nineteenth-century English literature at The University of Western Australia. He is the author of A Critical Introduction to Law and Literature (2007).

About this Series - New Perspectives on Jane Austen: On the two-hundredth anniversary of her death, this UWA Institute of Advanced Studies - Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies Lecture Series presents new perspectives on the life and work of Jane Austen. Drawing upon the latest literary and historical research, UWA researchers tackle key themes in Austen's work and the wider social and cultural contexts in which she created her now world-famous novels.

This is a free event, but RSVPs are required:

A public lecture by Associate Professor Kieran Dolin, English and Cultural Studies, The University of Western Australia.

Jane Austen's novels are celebrated for their irony and wit and their sharply observant account of the social life of gentry families in Regency England. Underlying the vivid immediacy of her fictional world is an awareness of prevailing social structures. Legal concepts and rules were important influences in shaping the ordinary understandings of life in her class. As Toronto lawyer Enid Hildebrand put it in 1982, 'Estates, settlements, trusts, wills were the everyday stuff of life to Jane Austen.' This lecture will explore some of the ways in which law figures in Austen’s novels and in her family.

About this Series - New Perspectives on Jane Austen

On the two-hundredth anniversary of her death, this UWA Institute of Advanced Studies - Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies Lecture Series presents new perspectives on the life and work of Jane Austen. Drawing upon the latest literary and historical research, UWA researchers tackle key themes in Austen's work and the wider social and cultural contexts in which she created her now world-famous novels.

A public lecture by Jacqueline L. Weaver, the A.A. White Professor of Law, University of Houston Law Center and Terence Daintith, Professorial Fellow, University of London’s Institute of Advanced Legal Studies

Easter Sunday will mark the seventh anniversary of the incident in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico when eleven workers on the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform died and almost five million barrels of oil poured into the Gulf from the Macondo well for 87 days. Yet the worst environmental disaster in US history failed to trigger any changes by the US Congress in safety or environmental laws offshore. Drilling activity in the Gulf’s deep waters rebounded in a short time. It is time to ask: is drilling in the Gulf safer now than it was before the disaster?

Professors Weaver and Daintith will reflect on this and other questions and there will be an opportunity for the audience to ask questions on international and domestic issues about the regulation of offshore petroleum in a Questions and Answers session.

Get WACE ready with our hands-on Music Bootcamp!

This jam-packed 2 day course will give students tips and tricks to help them ace their WACE!

Suitable for all classical instrumentalists & voice students in years 10-12 the bootcamp will include sessions such as: Performance Masterclasses; Tame your nerves; Effective Practice Strategies; Working with an accompanist; Master Tricky Rhythms plus much more.

$45 for two days (or $25 per day)

https://www.trybooking.com/270885

Hear from Professor Paul Flatau, Director of the Centre for Social Impact UWA and alumni of the Graduate Certificate in Social Impact.

In short, engaging presentations, selected alumni will share stories about their social impact journeys since completing their studies. Our storytellers include Tony Hagan, Executive Manager for Philanthropy at Visability, and Rebecca Bowman, Social Impact Consultant at _SocialStarters.

Join in at any time and enjoy light refreshments and networking.

Seminar/Public Talk by Professor Shafeeq Ghabra, Kuwait University

Since the rebellions of 2011 and more so since 2012, the Arab order is actually in a state of disorder, sitting atop a time bomb made up of youth, who constitute the overwhelming majority. Today’s youth, in stable and in non-stable states, want more freedom, dignity, jobs, and security — in short, more fulfilling lives. The state’s desire for unaccountability and security cannot satisfy their aspirations and in fact pushes them in the opposite direction. If the present trends dominated by unaccountable and non-responsive security-oriented regimes continues, the next wave of Arab revolutions will be more radical in its thinking and methods.

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Shafeeq Ghabra is a Professor of Political Science at Kuwait University. He is currently Visiting Scholar at the Arab Centre, Doha, Qatar. From 1996 to 1999 he was the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the Social Sciences at Kuwait University. Dr Ghabra has been a Visiting Professor at The College of William and Mary and a Visiting Scholar at George Mason University’s Institute of Conflict Analysis and Resolution. He has also been a Visiting Scholar at the University of Denver. His most recent books include: Kuwait and the Dynamics of State and Society (2011) and Unsafe Life: The Generation of Dreams and Disappointments (2012). Professor Ghabra is visiting the Centre for Muslim States and Societies as part of ANU's Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies project sponsored by the International Speakers Program supported by the Australian Government through the Council for Australian-Arab Relations of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

Entry free, but registration via Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/cmss-seminar-series-religion-state-and-society-2017-tickets-32521886839

This talk presents original ethnographic material drawing on long-term fieldwork at the Indian Ocean coast of Northwest Australia. It highlights a particular aspect in a conflict situation over the construction of a $ 45 Billion AUD liquefied natural gas facility (LNG) on top of an Indigenous heritage site, Walmadany / James Price Point. The presentation discusses the troubles encountered by an anthropologist born and raised in Germany in his attempts to translate Indigenous knowledge and heritage into Western scientific terminology. Based on this I address the following questions: How can Western law and science be better equipped to recognize Indigenous knowledges as ontologically different but equal epistemic partners? How can collaborative works in archaeology and anthropology help to account for Indigenous world(view)s beyond the modernist rationale?

Bio: Dr. Carsten Wergin leads the Research Group “The Transcultural Heritage of Northwest Australia: Dynamics and Resistances” at Heidelberg University. His academic background is in sociocultural anthropology, media and transcultural studies with a wider thematic interest in Digital and Environmental Humanities research, and a regional focus on the Indian Ocean World, drawing on long-term fieldwork phases in the Mascarene Archipelago and Northwest Australia.

AIIA WA, together with the Perth USAsia Centre, have the pleasure to invite you to a pop-up panel event to discuss the controversy surrounding President Trump and his alleged connections to Russia. Our panel of experts on US politics, the intelligence community, and Russia will discuss the Trump administration's alleged connections with the Kremlin as well as President Trump's hostility towards the US intelligence community. They will explore how these may impact US national security and foreign policy, as well as possible implications for Australia. The panel will elaborate on the daily news and scandals associated with the Trump administration and the President's contradictory responses.

Join in a literature themed China in Conversation - a free public event with refreshments. World literature was long defined in the English speaking world as an established canon of European masterpieces, but an emerging global perspective has challenged this European focus. Now it is better understood as literature that has travelled, and been translated, from its original source. This China in Conversation teases out from an Australian and Chinese perspective the issues surrounding interpreting and reading world literature: from the classics of Chinese literature to J.M.Coetzee’s works that travel from South Africa to Australia and translate to Chinese readers; from the controversial novels of author Yu Hua to Nobel Prize recipient Mo Yan. Join in the conversation and discuss what is lost and gained in globalised literature.

Be transported from the everyday in our free lunchtime concert series, featuring the finest musical talent locally, nationally and within the School.

This week Simon Lee Foundation Artist in Residence Shaun Lee-Chen is joined by the amazing Caroline Badnall for an intimate concert of music for violin and piano.

Entry is free, no bookings required.

This paper considers the ways that the genre of American film noir was adapted in “Nikkatsu Action” crime films to capture and convey some of the faultlines of rapid socio-economic and cultural change in 1950s/1960s Japan.

The term film noir was initially used by French film critics with reference to wartime and postwar American urban crime films. These films were noted for their depictions of alienation conveyed through dark lighting, extreme camera angles and a focus on criminality; traits that have been read as a response to the disillusionment in American society in the aftermath of WWII.

During the 1960s Nikkatsu Studios released a series of noir-inspired urban crime films aimed at a teenage audience. The protagonists in these “Nikkatsu Action” films did not display loyalty to a group such as family, gang or company, but were instead depicted as entirely individualistic. In their depictions of lone outlaws that existed outside of the confinements of traditional Japanese society, the Nikkatsu films constituted “a rebellion against tradition dressed in the trappings of American film noir” (Vick, 2015, p. 23), appealing to the disillusionment felt by many young Japanese with regards to traditional social structures and their supposed obligations to it.

This paper examines how several “Nikkatsu Action” films utilised conventions of film noir in order to subvert traditional Japanese conceptions of social obligation, thereby providing an unsettling representation of postwar Japanese society.

Now in its third season, Fridays@Five is the ideal way to kick-start your weekend! Each session offers a unique musical experience to delight all music lovers, from young artist led concerts to informal musical drinks on the famous grassy knoll, behind the scenes workshops to lectures and masterclasses. Join us each week for a delightful musical surprise!

Improvisation remains the principle manner in which a great deal of musical performance around the world is brought into being. For the last two hundred years in the Western Art Music tradition, improvisation has taken something of a back seat, the focus being placed on music reading and technical accomplishment in playing compositions written by others.

A new confidence in the value of improvisation to support musical learning has developed over the last generation, influenced both by a revisiting of historical practice, and an approach to music that views it as a form of thought that can express the creative impulse of the individual.

In this session, Dr Nicholas Bannan will work with four student volunteers to illustrate some of the ways in which improvisation is becoming a part of the musical experience of all our students.

Bar Opens 5pm, Event starts 5.30pm

Free Entry - all welcome

As a highly respected political journalist, UWA graduate Peter Kennedy’s expertise makes him one of the most informed political commentators in the nation. He has observed the 2017 State Election with more than usual interest. The decline of the Barnett Liberal Government, its feisty relations with the National Party leader Brendon Grylls, the impact of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party, and the ‘fresh approach’ canvassed by the Labor Party in the face of the State’s growing debt, made the 2017 election campaign both exciting and complex. The electorate has spoken but the question remains, what does the outcome mean for Western Australia?

Additional information: $25.00 per person. Brunch will be provided. Parking: Car Park 1

The exceptional ability of young emerging artists and their passion for music will always create an extraordinary experience for concertgoers. In 2016 four outstanding orchestral and choral concerts will feature Western Australia’s finest young musicians.

Following the incredible success of our 2015 and 2016 collaborations, the UWA School of Music team up again with Mark Coughlan and the Government House Foundation to present a concert of classical favourites, plus a brand new commission by composer Joe Chindamo, featuring the amazing Shaun Lee-Chen (violin). Mozart: Serenade No. 12 for Winds Chindamo: PALIMPSEST (WORLD PREMIERE) Beethoven: Symphony No. 2

All tickets $35 tickets.perthconcerthall.com.au

Ian McEwan’s recent novel Nutshell (2016), in which Hamlet is an unborn foetus, is only the latest in a line of appropriations of Shakespeare’s plays stretching back to 1600. Hamlet itself stretches beyond the seventeenth century, drawing on sources that date back to twelfth-century Denmark, and referring within itself to relics of older drama that Shakespeare may have seen as a boy in Stratford. Hamlet looks both backwards and forwards in time. The play also covers a remarkable range of emotional states, including anger, love, hatred, grief, melancholy and despair. Indeed, Hamlet stages a plethora of emotional practices: a funeral and a marriage, a vindictive ghost in purgatory, a young woman whose mental equilibrium has been dislodged by the murder of her father by her own erstwhile lover, an inscrutable monarch under suspicion of murder, a couple of mordantly cheerful gravediggers, and a young prince back from university and grieving for his deceased father. This symposium invites new readings of the play, focusing on its emotional life in the widest sense.

This is a free event, but registration is required. See http://www.historyofemotions.org.au/events/hamlet-and-emotions-then-and-now/

Come along to a presentation about how the School of Dentistry at UWA has developed and implemented a longitudinal, competency-based clinical assessment system. Its development was supported by a Futures Observatory Scholarship and is a joint effort between the School of Dentistry and the School of Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering at UWA. This system is now utilised school-wide at the School of Dentistry.

Its development was driven by the need to have a modern and robust competency-based assessment system that improves student learning, assists teaching and provides predictive data for future clinical performance of the student. This is particularly important in dentistry as dental students can practice dentistry as independent practitioners immediately after graduation.

The system is in fact an on on-line database structured around “core” and “silo” competencies as they translate to clinical dental practice. Students’ performance in attaining these competencies is tracked throughout the duration of the course and therefore one can monitor the progress, level of performance and its repeatability as well as the spectrum of competencies covered.

Other existing clinical assessment systems use a static, number-based approach. These are based on the inherent assumption that is a task is performed a number of times then at the end of this repetitive process then the associated competencies would have been attained. It is obvious therefore that with such systems the focus is on quantity rather than quality, is time-bounded and does not give enough information to easily identify the areas needing improvement.

The system which has been developed allows for the performance to be monitored longitudinally with a bias for quality rather than quantity using specific clinical dental criterion-referenced assessment rubrics.

The collected data is available in real-time individually to the students and to the staff using a simple web browser. The student has the benefit of receiving objective feed-back that tracks their own progress and identifies precisely the core competencies that need improvement. The staff and the school can monitor more efficiently the clinical performance of the students, either on individual or as a group

Although the application has been developed for dental teaching the platform can be translated to any other course that is competency-based and uses CRA to assess the student performance. It can customised to specific needs, deployed in a variety of environments and to use it one would need just internet access and a web browser.

The Perth USAsia Centre together with the UWA Law School invite you to join us for a public lecture by the former Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia, Hon. Robert French AC. Justice French will address the significant influence the political and legal architecture of the United States has had on the Australian legal system. Introducing Justice French will be Perth USAsia Centre Director, former Foreign Affairs and Defence Minister Professor Stephen Smith. We look forward to welcoming you to this event.

In 2016, Bill Leak’s controversial cartoon generated widespread debate about free speech and racism in Australia. Following Leak’s death on March 10, and in light of proposed amendments to Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, those debates have resurfaced and intensified.

Jani McCutcheon from the UWA School of Law will speak to a number of ethical and legal issues that underpin the complex relationship between the arts, the law, and freedom of expression.

‘Talking Allowed’ is a new series of presentations offered by the UWA Institute of Advanced Studies and the Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery.

On the second Tuesday of every month, a UWA academic will give a short presentation on a topic of current relevance to the arts and culture before inviting the audience to participate in discussion and debate.

‘Talking Allowed’ is designed to be thought-provoking, challenging, stimulating and engaging. Come along and join the dialogue on matters that are of great importance to our society.

In this presentation I examine the evolution of the digital economy in China from the early 2000s to now. The key idea behind this is the integration of technological innovation (science & technology) and cultural creativity (arts and culture). The emphasis within the 13th Five Year Plan is for a digitally connected China in which young entrepreneurs now provide the driving force for the economy. Associated with this is the concept of the sharing economy, an economic model that is now taken up globally. I question if the sharing economy and grassroots innovation will deliver the scale of benefits that the industrial economy has achieved. The government’s slogan to incentivize such young entrepreneurs is ‘mass entrepreneurship, mass innovation.’ To illustrate I look at developments in Beijing (Inno Alley), Hangzhou (Dream Town, Cloud Town) and Shenzhen (Huaqiangbei Market). Noting the influence of China’s commercial digital companies such as Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent) in these cities I examine the potential of these spaces to generate digital disruption, and ultimately innovation.