[Anthropgrad] Work-in-Progress Seminar - 20 February - Gillian Whitlock

[Sharon Komidar]

The Research School of Humanities presents,
 Work-in-Progress Seminar Series 

1- 2.30 pm, Friday 20th February, Theatrette, Old Canberra House

Gorilla Girl: Remediating Dian Fossey

Professor Gillian Whitlock

Professor of English in the School of English, Media Studies and Art
History at the University of Queensland

Late in 2006 in Johannesburg I met an aid worker from Goma who gave me a
harrowing first person account of the systematic rape of women and
children in the DRC now.  She described to me a degeneration of society
beyond ordinary imagining.  She spoke of her own frustration that she
was not eloquent enough to write and do justice to what she had
witnessed, and she asked me how my interest in testimony might help
women and children who desperately needed to give witness and receive
recognition.  Most memorably Jennifer spoke of a community of women
struggling to survive near Lake Kivu, 'just across the border from where
Fossey watched the gorillas.'  What I have done since then is read about
Rwanda and the DRC, about genocide and ethnocide, and about the limits
of the human, with the women of Kivu and the history of 'the meadow'  in
mind.  This paper is about celebrities - both human and non human - the
remediations of Dian Fossey following genocide.

 

Gillian Whitlock is a Professor of English in the School of English,
Media Studies and Art History at the University of Queensland and a
graduate of Queen's University in Canada.  Her most recent book, Soft
Weapons: Autobiography in Transit, is a study of life narrative and the
'war on terror' published by Chicago UP in 2007.

 

Convenors: Ken Taylor and Stephen Foster
For general enquiries please contact: 
Phone: 6125 2434
Email: administration.rsh at anu.edu.au 
Web: http://rsh.anu.edu.au/
All Welcome