Sydney Ideas

Many of those who engage with the Chinese world encounter the stories that are told about China–there is the monolithic narrative of the party-state, the multiple stories of individuals, companies, communities, and then there are the array of accounts told about China, some that try to deepen understand others that evoke. Geremie R Barmé considers how some of these stories have come to be told, by whom and for whom, and what this may mean for those who pay attention. This lecture will also introduce The China Story, a publishing and Internet project being launched by the Australian Centre on China in the World. For speaker's biography see: tinyurl.com/jma6l5o

Les Malezer is from the Butchulla/Gubbi Gubbi peoples in southeast Queensland. He has extensive experience in campaigning for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander rights. On the occasion of International Human Rights Day, his presentation discusses how Aboriginal Peoples and Torres Strait Islander Peoples have greater capacity to take advantage of the legal opportunities and build social capital through ‘Indigenous Knowledges’, increasingly recognised in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. For more info and speaker's biography see this page: http://sydney.edu.au/sydney_ideas/lectures/2011/les_malezer.shtml

Pablo Picasso painted his large scale Guernica (1937) in response to the bombing of the Spanish town by German and Italian forces during the Spanish Civil War. Art historian T J Clark discussed Guernica, examining how a work of such enduring political resonance emerged. He looked at the step-by-step creation of Guernica, taking advantage of the set of photographs of the work in progress taken by Dora Maar. For more info and speaker's biography see this page: http://sydney.edu.au/sydney_ideas/lectures/2011/professor_t_j_clark.shtml

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner Mick Gooda charts an agenda of hope that can guide us towards a reconciled Australia. Commissioner Gooda argued that effective engagement with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples should drive the work in the three key areas identified. His central thesis being, that without effective engagement the reconciliation agenda will stall. For more info and speaker's biography see this page: http://sydney.edu.au/sydney_ideas/lectures/2011/mick_gooda.shtml

What do we learn when we revisit scientists' past worlds? How might one write a life as famous as Charles Darwin's? Why is biography the best-selling genre of all? Pre-eminent Darwin scholar and Harvard Professor of the History of Science Janet Browne, talks with University of Sydney historian Professor Iain McCalman, about the challenges and delights of the biographical genre for historians. In conversation with Alison Bashford, this is an evening that probes the intellectual life of these keen observers and interpreters of the world of Victorian science. For more info and speaker's biography see this page:http://sydney.edu.au/sydney_ideas/lectures/2010/why_biography_matters.shtml

Astronomical interests prompted a series of entries by European travellers into the Pacific. In studies of the complex motives and effects of these expeditions, it has been common to treat astronomical interests either as rationales for more profound political and economic enterprise, or as of a strictly utilitarian character. Simon Schaffer, professor in the history of science at the University of Cambridge, looks at the cosmologies on which certain forms of European astronomy depended, and how the Pacific encounters changed and reoriented their meanings. For further info and speaker's biography see this page: http://sydney.edu.au/sydney_ideas/lectures/2010/professor_simon_schaffer.shtml

Do we need our history to be global? Work, leisure, war and peace, these are some of the themes that historians are now mapping onto a global past. Join historians David Armitage, Joyce E. Chaplin and Erez Manela from Harvard University, along with Sunil Amrith from Birkbeck College, University of London, in a conversation led by Glenda Sluga from the University of Sydney, as they talk about how they approach the past globally, and hear the stories that they have to tell about our round world. For more info and speaker's biography see this page: http://sydney.edu.au/sydney_ideas/lectures/2010/why_history_matters_forum_2010.shtml

The award-winning author and University of Sydney Alumna Kate Jennings, with her brother, Mambo founder Dare Jennings, discuss how they combine their creative passions and imaginations with a unique entrepreneurial spirit. Dare might be the most obvious entrepreneur but writers are entrepreneurial: every day the blank page, every day an act of invention. Anyone can try out an idea and throw it into the ether. But what does it take to make an idea work? ABC Radio broadcaster, writer and musician James Valentine hosts the discussion. For more info and speaker's biography see this page: http://sydney.edu.au/sydney_ideas/lectures/2010/kate_jennings.shtml

How to modernise art for a modern China? What ideas and practices should China adapt from the West? Such questions figured prominently in intellectual debate about modernisation at the start of the twentieth century. Within a few decades, art in China had undergone dramatic change, from conception through production to reception. This public lecture will look at Chinese art practice and art debate at the time with a focus on the first Chinese national art exhibition in Shanghai in 1929. SPEAKER: Dr Yiyan Wang, Chair of Chinese Studies, the University of Sydney For speaker's biography see: tinyurl.com/jyxabv3

This forum and open discussion with Australia’s leading China commentators was hosted by Dr James Reilly, Department of Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney. Participants included: Professor Michael Wesley, Executive Director of the Lowy Institute for International Policy Dr Richard Rigby, Executive Director of the ANU China Institute Dr John Garnaut, China correspondent, Sydney Morning Herald and The Age Chaired by Professor David Goodman, Chinese Politics, University of Sydney.

Confucius (traditional dates 551-479 BCE) lived during the waning years of the Zhou dynasty. He was deeply troubled by the disorder of his age and took it upon himself to teach others about Zhou virtues as well as to instruct them on how to cultivate such virtue in themselves. Confucius’s efforts mark the beginning of the traditional Chinese emphasis on education and the crucial role of self-improvement and self-cultivation in any ethical system. Some of his followers refined his teachings on the importance of education while philosophers from competing schools of thought rejected Confucian ideas as outmoded and ineffective. First Emperor of Qin (239-210 BCE) assumed the throne as king at a young age and was aided and tutored by a brilliant minister named Lü Buwei. The young king eventually outgrew his minister and aggressively took over the reins of government himself. He conquered his enemies and created an empire in 221 BCE. The First Emperor appointed as his chief minister an accomplished legalist thinke

In 2004, construction began in Jerusalem on the local branch of the Los Angeles-based Museum of Tolerance, designed by the leading American architect, Frank Gehry. The museum is now being built over the remains of what had been the largest and most important Muslim cemetery in Palestine, which had been in continual use from the time of the Crusades up until 1948. Professor Saree Makdisi examines the clash between the two competing claims to the same site, and offers a paradigmatic case to explore and rethink the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, since all of the elements of the larger conflict are also in play in the struggle over this specific site. For more info and speaker's biography see this page: http://sydney.edu.au/sydney_ideas/lectures/2009/excavating_memory_jerusalem.shtml

SPEAKER: Professor David Goodman, Professor of Chinese Politics, and Director, Institute of Social Sciences Mao Zedong (1893-1976) is best known as the founder of the People’s Republic of China. He led the Chinese Communist Party from 1935 until his death, and brought it to political power in 1949. Mao is well known as a revolutionary, a guerrilla leader, a political and military strategist and icon for post-modern art. During the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution that started in the mid-1960s he attacked the establishment of the new party state in China for “succumbing to the sugar coated bullets of the bourgeoisie”, though his motives have always been a matter of controversy inside as well as outside the People’s Republic of China. Mao himself was always anxious to be seen as an ideologist, as well as an active revolutionary. The lecture will introduce the different and often competing strands in his ideology, which remain an important legacy for China today.

How does the past shape the present? Should history play a role in shaping politics today? Should we be held accountable for the wrongs of the past? Does history divide or unite us? Join prominent Australian and American scholars for an open discussion of these and other issues. Panellists will also explore how and what we remember collectively, and how this contributes to our sense of patriotism, nationalism, or indeed, alienation. With: Bob Carr, former Premier of New South Wales; Professor David Blight, Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale University; Professor W. Fitzhugh Brundage, University of North Carolina; Profesor James T. Campbell, Stanford University; Professor Jonathan Hansen, Harvard University; and Professor Glenda Sluga, the University of Sydney, For more info and speaker's biography see this page: http://sydney.edu.au/sydney_ideas/lectures/2009/why_history_matters.shtml

Artist, curator and producer Fiona Winning discusses the often problematic relationship between the hard and soft infrastructure - of arts buildings and the artists and organisations that work in them. This lecture was the 2009 Rex Cramphorn Lecture. For more info and speaker's biography see this page: http://sydney.edu.au/sydney_ideas/lectures/2009/rex_cramphorn.shtml

Dr Sara Roy, a senior research scholar at the Centre for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University, explained how the "stunning" economic and social changes of the past decade in Israel and the Occupied Territories have undermined the possibility of peace in the region. Dr Roy was in Australia to deliver the University of Adelaide's Edward Said Memorial Lecture. For more info and speaker's biography see this page: http://sydney.edu.au/sydney_ideas/lectures/2008/beyond_occupation.shtml

Prominent Palestinian-British author and academic, Dr Ghada Karmi, had just released her book - Married to Another Man: Israel's Dilemma in Palestine, when she spoke at Sydney Ideas in 2007 to say the two-sate solution promoted by the West is no longer viable. Dr Karmi was in Australia as the presenter of the 2007 Edward Said Memorial Lecture at the University of Adelaide. For more info and speaker's biography see this page: http://sydney.edu.au/news/84.html?newsstoryid=1974

UK activist, historian and author Tariq Ali took the Sydney Ideas audience through a world divided between privilege and poverty and demonstrated the situation in Latin America could not be more different to the Arab world. Both Latin America and the Arab world have sparked intense hostility from the West by challenging neoliberalism, but according to Ali, the resistance in the Middle East is divided and without the social vision to unite people. For more info and speaker's biography see this page: http://sydney.edu.au/news/84.html?newsstoryid=1795

In Australia to deliver the University of Adelaide's Edward Said Memorial Lecture, eminent Israeli academic, author and linguist Tanya Reinhart argued that speaking out against Israel's handling of the Palestinian conflict is the best act of solidarity one can show towards Israelis and the Jewish people. "When I think of Edward Said, I not only think about a voice of reason and justice, but also a life in exile, losing the landscape of your childhood," she said. For more info and speaker's biography see this page: http://sydney.edu.au/news/84.html?newsstoryid=1333

Dr Jordi Bonet, the Spanish architect who is completing the Sagrada Família Church, Gaudí's unfinished masterpiece in Barcelona, shares his incredible knowledge of the ongoing renovation project. For more info and speaker's biography see this page: http://sydney.edu.au/news/84.html?newsstoryid=1083