[TimorLesteStudies] ASAA Quarterly Newsletter, Oct-Dec 2007

[Jennifer Drysdale]

Friends,

I am forwarding this newsletter as it contains a 
welcome to us, the Timor-Leste Studies 
Association as an affiliate organisation.

I encourage you to join the Asian Studies 
Association of Australia, visit their website - 
<http://asaa.asn.au>http://asaa.asn.au - and note 
the dates of the ASAA conference in July next 
year, to be held in Melbourne. We are planning a 
Timor-Leste panel at the conference so stay tuned for the details!

Cheers
Jen Drysdale

>From: "Michele Ford" <michele.ford at usyd.edu.au>
>
>Welcome to the ASAA Newsletter for 
>October-December 2007. The Newsletter is an 
>informal quarterly report about the workings of 
>the ASAA Council and other issues of interest to 
>our members. If you have something you'd like to 
>be considered for inclusion in future 
>newsletters, please contact the Association's 
>Secretary, Michele Ford 
>(<mailto:michele.ford at usyd.edu.au>michele.ford at usyd.edu.au).
>
> From the President
>
>The looming federal election raises critical 
>questions for Asian Studies in Australia. Would 
>a change of government lead to a change in the 
>level of support -- rhetorical and financial -- 
>for Asian Studies in Australian universities? Or 
>are current structures so embedded that change 
>will be limited to narrowly-focussed high 
>profile projects?  Would a return of the 
>coalition, chastened by poll difficulties prior 
>to the election and possibly with a new leader, 
>lead to a rethinking of Asia policies on the conservative side?
>
>For once, though, the key governance issue in 
>Asian Studies in Australia is not funding, but 
>rather the RQF. In focussing its assessment on 
>broad RFCD codes (the system used to classify 
>disciplines and sub-disciplines), the RQF 
>process has made practitioners of Asian Studies 
>a minority group within each of the disciplines. 
> From several disciplines, we hear reports of 
>the difficulty that Asian Studies scholars are 
>facing in getting journals and publishers 
>recognized at appropriate levels and in having 
>excellence in the study of a particular region 
>or country in Asia acknowledged in the same way 
>as excellence in some aspect of Western studies. 
>The ASAA is acting vigorously on several fronts 
>to defend the interests of Asian Studies within 
>the RQF, and we may well be calling for specific 
>support from members over the coming weeks and months.
>
>On another more happy matter, the ASAA welcomes 
>the new Timor-Leste Studies Association of 
>Australia as an affiliate national organization. 
>Se their website at <http://www.etstudies-aust.org>www.etstudies-aust.org.
>
>ARC Grants in Asian Studies, 2007 for 2008
>
>The ASAA Council congratulates the following 
>scholars for their success in the 2008 ARC round:
>
>GR Barme, Reconfiguring ideology: embodying 
>China's new concepts of heritage in 
>commemorative rituals (The Australian National University)
>
>AV Betts; VN Yagodin; FJ Kidd, A study of a 
>newly discovered corpus of early Central Asian 
>wall paintings (APD Kidd: The University of Sydney)
>
>JG Butcher; Prof RE Elson, Contesting the sea: 
>maritime territoriality in the Indonesian 
>archipelago since 1850 (Griffith University)
>
>AR Brumm, A reassessment of early human stone 
>technology from a Southeast Asian perspective (APD: University of Wollongong)
>
>C Cameron; Dr PJ Nicholson, Testing Court Reform 
>Projects in Cambodia and Vietnam (The University of Melbourne)
>JA Cameron, Indian Textile Technology as 
>archaeological evidence for population movements 
>in Early Southeast Asia (ARF, The Australian National University)
>
>JA Clark, The Asian Modern (APF: The University of Sydney)
>DK Curnoe; PS Tacon; SD Mooney; DA Penny; J 
>Xueping; R Pan; D Fink; AI Herries, The Late 
>Pleistocene Peopling of East Asia and Associated 
>Climate­Environment History (ARF Herries: The University of New South Wales)
>
>SE Davies, Containing H5N1: the role of the 
>World Health Organisation (WHO) and East Asian 
>states (APD: Queensland University of Technology)
>
>SJ Donald; H Evans, Posters of the Cultural 
>Revolution: Contemporary Chinese perspectives on 
>an era of propaganda (University of Technology, Sydney)
>
>PA Eckersall, Revolution and the everyday: 
>performative interactions in art, theatre and 
>politics in 1960s Japan (The University of Melbourne
>
>GF Egan; S Usui; Z Cho; LA Johnston, eResearch 
>in the Neurosciences: Building collaborations in 
>Asia (Linkage International: The University of Melbourne)
>
>DH Evans, Hydraulic Systems and State 
>Development in Early Cambodia: Mapping the 
>Engineered Landscapes of the Khmer Using Remote 
>Sensing (APD: The University of Sydney)
>
>JJ Fitzgerald, The transnational history of the 
>Chinese Nationalist Party (La Trobe University)
>MT Ford, From Migrant to Worker: New 
>Transnational Responses to Temporary Labour 
>Migration in East and Southeast Asia (The University of Sydney)
>
>D Ghosh; H Goodall; S Muecke; MN Pearson, 
>Intercolonial networks of the Indian Ocean (University of Technology, Sydney)
>DS Goodman; Y Lu, Colonial Cosmopolitanism and 
>Chinese Modernity: German Economic and Cultural 
>Adventurers in China 1870­1937 (University of Technology, Sydney)
>
>DT Hill (Murdoch University), Indonesia in 
>exile: The Indonesian Left abroad during the late Cold War
>TH Hull; GW Jones, Indonesian young adults 
>facing the future (The Australian National University)
>MA Keane; X Zhang, Governance, human capital and 
>regional investment in China's new creative 
>clusters (Queensland University of Technology)
>
>JM Lo; T Khoo; D Chan, Being Asian in Australia 
>and the United States: Analysing Ethnic 
>Representations in Visual Arts, Popular Culture, 
>Academia and Community Festivals (The Australian National University)
>
>LT Lyons; MT Ford; H Cunningham; J Heyman; TM 
>Wilson, Comparative Border Studies (Linkage 
>International: University of Wollongong)
>
>LH Manderson; P Liamputtong; EA Hoban, 
>Immigration and parenting among Cambodian and 
>Iraqi women in Australia (APD Hoban: Monash University)
>
>MJ McLelland, Global/Local Intersections: 
>History, Identity and Community in a Tokyo 
>Subculture (University of Wollongong)
>
>CT Nyland; CE Hartel; G Standing; JC Zhu, 
>Enterprise Labour Flexibility, Worker Security 
>and Wellbeing: China and India Compared (Monash University)
>
>SL O'Connor; AR McWilliam, Cultural and 
>Environmental Shifts in Late Holocene East 
>Timor: Evidence for Climate Change? (The Australian National University)
>
>W Ommundsen; P Sharrad; AE Broinowski, 
>Globalising Australian literature: 
>Asian­Australian writing, Asian perspectives on 
>Australian literature (University of Wollongong)
>
>TA Reuter; GL Acciaioli, Revitalisation 
>Movements in Contemporary Indonesia: Nativist 
>Reworkings of Custom and Religion in Reaction to 
>Decentralisation, Islamisation and Globalisation (Monash University)
>
>RG Roberts; AR Chivas; MD Petraglia, Monsoons 
>and migrations: Quaternary climates, landscapes 
>and human prehistory of the Arabian peninsula 
>and the Indian subcontinent (University of Wollongong)
>
>KM Robinson; AR McWilliam; Dr NI Idrus, Being 
>Muslim in Eastern Indonesia: practice, politics 
>and cultural diversity (The Australian National University)
>
>AW Selth, Burma's Role in Shaping the 
>Asia­Pacific Strategic Environment (APD: Griffith University)
>JH Simpson; I Arka; AD Andrews; ME Dalrymple, 
>Understanding Indonesian: developing a 
>machine­usable grammar, dictionary and corpus (The University of Sydney)
>
>FC Teiwes; WW Sun, The Post­Mao Transition in 
>China: From the Ashes of Revolution toward 
>Reform, 1976­1978 (The University of Sydney)
>
>AJ Walker; CJ Reynolds, Handbooks and 
>Environmental Knowledge in Thailand (The Australian National University)
>M  Wang; MJ Webber, The geography of labour 
>market dynamics: Competition between new 
>migrants and laid­off workers in China's urban 
>labour markets (The University of Melbourne)
>
>C Warren; JF McCarthy; GL Acciaioli; AE Lucas; J 
>Schiller; L Visser, Social Capital, Natural 
>Resources and Local Governance in Indonesia (Murdoch University)
>
>SG Wheatcroft; SL Morgan; C O Grada, The causes 
>and consequences of the great famines of the 
>last two centuries in Russia, China, Ireland and 
>elsewhere (The University of Melbourne)
>
>Y Xu, Nuclear Giants? Prospects for Nuclear 
>Energy in China and India (Griffith University)
>
>New Website: A Wonderful Facelift for ASAA  (by Li Narangoa)
>
>The ASAA council has been working on creating a 
>facelift for the ASAA website. As the result of 
>their hard work – especially thee President 
>Robert Cribb and the secretary Michele Ford – 
>and with the help of IT-designer Shane Silva, 
>the ASAA now has a bright and cheerful looking 
>web-face with a lot of interesting and 
>unexpected photos from all over Asia. It is very 
>user friendly: sidebars make it easy to navigate 
>around the site and it is informative without 
>being crowded. There are links to 60 overseas 
>Asian Studies associations, as well as links to 
>Australian centres of Asian Studies. A new 
>feature of the web-site is a register of experts 
>which allows ASAA members to upload information 
>about their qualifications and areas of 
>expertise. This is a searchable database that 
>should be very useful to members of the 
>community looking for Asia expertise. Another 
>interesting link is to useful map sites which is 
>valuable for our teaching. Most members probably 
>know, too, that it is possible to renew 
>membership online from the website. The council 
>is working on a postgraduate page to provide a 
>dedicated forum for research students. See the 
>new website at <http://asaa.asn.au>http://asaa.asn.au and enjoy yourself.
>
>Membership Drive
>
>Thanks to all those new and renewing members who 
>responded to our membership drive. We did manage 
>to achieve a substantial increase in net member 
>numbers, but need still more members to bring 
>the association back to full strength. Please do 
>encourage your colleagues and students to 
>examine our new website and consider joining.
>
>E-FLT
>
>Jane Orton writes: I am seeking good quality 
>articles for the ASAA supplementary issue of the 
>electronic Foreign Language Teaching Journal 
>(e-FLT) that ASAA co-publishes with the Centre 
>for Language Studies at NUS. The journal is 
>registered on Ulrich's list as fully 
>peer-reviewed. All contribution details are 
>given on the Journal's website 
><http://e-flt.nus.edu.sg/>http://e-flt.nus.edu.sg/ 
>E-FLT offers academics whose primary focus is on 
>foreign languages an excellent opportunity to 
>add a quality journal article to their CV.
>
>ASAA prizes
>
>The ASAA Prize for Excellence in Asian Studies 
>is awarded biennially by the Asian Studies 
>Association of Australia (ASAA) to a mid-career 
>researcher (or researchers) for research on an 
>Asian subject, as represented in a book or a 
>portfolio of articles. Applications must be 
>submitted by 30 October 2007. Details are 
>available at 
><http://www.asaa.asn.au/prizes/prize_mid.php>http://www.asaa.asn.au/prizes/prize_mid.php
>
>Applications for the ASAA Presidents’ Prize 
>and DK Award have now closed. The ASAA 
>Presidents’ Prize and DK Award is awarded each 
>year to the best PhD thesis in Asian Studies at 
>an Australian university. Each university has 
>been asked to nominate a single thesis for 
>consideration by the committee and letters to 
>this effect have been sent to all the 
>vice-chancellors. For information for future 
>submissions see 
><http://www.asaa.asn.au/prizes.php>http://www.asaa.asn.au/prizes.php.
>
>Conference Reports
>
>Brett Hough, Paul Thomas and the team at Monash 
>hosted the extremely successful 2007 Indonesia 
>Council Open Conference in Melbourne on 24-25 
>September. The biennial conference, which is a 
>key event in the Indonesian Studies calendar, 
>attracted around 70 papers, presented by 
>academics and postgraduates working on Indonesia-related topics.
>
>The European Southeast Asian Studies Conference 
>(EUROSEAS conference) was held last 12-14 
>September 2007 at the University of Naples 
>“L’Orientale”. There was a strong presence 
>of scholars from Australia who delivered papers 
>across a number of panels (with some of them 
>presenting more than once). In addition, due to 
>generous funding from the conference organizers 
>there were large numbers of scholars from 
>Southeast Asian universities also giving papers 
>making the conference truly a global one. Some 
>of the panels organized by ASAA members 
>included: “Transnational Activism in Southeast 
>Asia”, “Women’s Movements in Southeast 
>Asia” and “The State and Illegality in Indonesia”.
>
>We still don't know how to pronounce it 
>(eye-cass? or ee-cass?), but ICAS, the 
>International Convention of Asia Scholars, has 
>achieved a secure place in the Asian Studies 
>conference calendar.  ICAS-5, the third to be 
>held in Asia, took place in Kuala Lumpur in the 
>shadow of the Petronas Towers from 2 to 5 August 
>2007.  It was a massive affair in a massive 
>venue, with about 1500 registrations and up to 
>23 parallel panels at any one time.  More than 
>100 participants from Australia were 
>listed.  The overall no-show rate for listed 
>presenters was perhaps higher than is normal for 
>conferences in Australia, but there was still a 
>rich offering of panels on Southeast Asian 
>topics and a fairly strong selection for China, 
>with individual presentations varying, as 
>usual, from inspiring to insipid and from 
>sharply fresh to old and slightly warmed.  With 
>lunch served in a broad walkway just outside the 
>panel rooms and book display, and with the Surya 
>KLCC shopping centre just too far away to be 
>convenient, ICAS was an excellent conference for 
>renewing old contacts and making new ones.  And 
>those who chose the right panels, as always, 
>came away enthused.  ICAS 6 will be held in Daejeon in Korea in August 2009.
>
>Attitudes towards the Study of Languages in Australian Schools
>
>On 12 July 2007 ACSSO and APC jointly launched 
>the final report setting out the findings and 
>recommendations of their National Survey of 
>Attitudes to the Study of Languages in 
>Australian Schools in 2006. Read more at: 
><http://www.languageseducation.com/attitudes.pdf 
>  Â 
>Â>http://www.languageseducation.com/attitudes.pdf<http://www.languageseducation.com/attitudes.pdf 
>Â Â>Â Â Â
>
>Thoughts about ‘Particular Scholarship’
>
>In a posting on H-Asia, Frank Conlan posed a 
>question about the value (or lack thereof) 
>prescribed to area studies in the US and Europe. 
>While perhaps this dilemma is less keenly-felt 
>in Australia, it is nevertheless an important 
>issue for Australian Asianists and the ASAA.
>
>Frank wrote: ‘It [strikes] me that many 
>scholars face a critical dilemma. Particularly 
>in Europe and North America, academics face 
>critical appraisal of their works by colleagues 
>from fields centered on "the modern West" –“and 
>thereby their work is grasped to a degree by how 
>they have used--or at least invoked –critical 
>new concepts, theories and terminologies arising 
>from study of that "West." This can make for 
>exciting comparative thinking, but if our 
>audience includes those whom we study
we may 
>find misundeerstandings or worse… Outside of 
>our published work, I know of a number of 
>instances where discussions, and decisions, of 
>faculty appointments have been determined by the 
>appreciation (or not) of aspects of the 
>candidate's work that reflects little upon the 
>candidate's command of her or his subject, and 
>more upon the candidate's ability to say the 
>"magic words." Among some of my colleagues this 
>has been a source of curiosity and, sometimes 
>despair. I raise it here not to provoke a 
>slanging match between practitioners of various 
>epistomological perspectives, but to discover if 
>the question has any potential for Asianists –< inside and outside Asia –


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Jenny Drysdale
Moderator, Timor-Leste Studies Association List
Mobile 0407 230 772
Email Jennifer.Drysdale at anu.edu.au
Personal Website http://cres.anu.edu.au/~jenster
East Timor Studies www.etstudies-aust.org