Telling Pacific Lives
Old Canberra House
The Australian National University
5th-7th December 2005
Provisional Program
Monday 5th December
9.15-9.30 Welcome - Brij V Lal
9.30- 10.30 Telling Pacific lives - Niel Gunson, ANU (Chair: Brij V Lal, ANU)
Morning Tea
11.00-11.45 The Kila Wari Stories: framing a life and preserving a cosmology - Deborah van Heekeren
11.45-12.30 From 'my story' to 'story of myself' - colonial transformations of personal narratives among the Motu-Koita of PNG - Michael Goddard, University of Newcastle (Chair: Hank Nelson, ANU)
Lunch
1.30-2.15 Mobility, modernisation and agency: the life history of John Kikang from Papua New Guinea - Wolfgang Kempf, University of G$-1 ñttingen
2.15-3.00 Gender, power and life history narratives: reflections on the ethics of ethnography - Pauline McKenzie Aucoin, University of Toronto (Chair: Clive Moore, UQ)
Afternoon Tea
3.30-4.15 Mariquita: a hybrid biography from Guam - Paul Sharrad, University of Wollongong
4.15-5.00 'It's written all over your face': theory and method of narrating the coloniser with the colonised; self-portraits of 'kai loma' Fijians - Lucy de Bruce, University of Technology Sydney (Chair: Ashwin Raj, ANU)
Tuesday 6th December
9.00-9.45 Connecting lives: locating Southeast Asian diaspora writers across Australia - Jose Capili, ANU
9.45.10.30.1.1.1Surrogate desires in Heian Japanese women's writing - Christina Houen, Curtin University of Technology (Chair: Sarah Krose, University of Auckland)
Morning Tea
11.00-11.45 'You did what, Mr President?' Trying to do a biography of Tosiwo - David Hanlon, University of Hawai'i
11.45-12.30 Biography of a nation: plans for an historical dictionary of the Solomon Islands - Clive Moore, University of Queensland (Chair: Alastair MacLachlan, ANU)
Lunch
1.30.2.15'Chin': EWP Chinnery, a colonial life$-1òó Geoff Gray, AIATSIS
2.15-3.00 Truth of fact and truth of myth: telling the story of the Illins, a Russian-Aboriginal family, for book and television$-1òó Elena Govor (Chair: Frances Steel, ANU)
Afternoon Tea
3.20-5.30 Screening of documentary: Koriam's Law$-1ó¦ and the dead who govern (First Prize, 9th RAI International Film Festival Oxford Sept 2005). Introduced by filmmaker Gary Kildea; (Chair: Keiko Tamura, ANU)
Evening BBQ, University House, ANU
Wednesday 7th December
9.00-9.45 Researching, (w)Riting, Releasing, and Responses to biography of Queen Salote - Elizabeth Wood-Ellem, University of Melbourne
9.45-10.30 "I will be master at Bau": exposing the ambitions of a reticent chief$-1òó John Spurway, ANU (Chair: Bronwen Douglas, ANU)
Morning Tea
11.00-11.45 Shared lives, recorded and unrecorded: seeking the invisible woman - Margaret Reeson
11.45-12.30 An accidental biographer? : on encountering, yet again, the ideas and actions of J. W. Burton - Christine Weir (Chair: Susan Woodburn, National Library)
Lunchtime film screening: Screening of Maire (Documentary about HIV/AIDS campaigner Maire Bopp), introduced by Vicki Luker
1.30-2.15 Memories of Bravo and nuclear fallout - 'Paijin, but they tell us we are not sick' - Nancy Pollock
2.15-3.00 'Looking for Evelyn Cheesman (1881-1969): Pacific,author and elusive self publicist'$-1òó Hugh Laracy, University of Auckland (Chair: Christine Weir)
Afternoon Tea
330-4.00 Lives told: Australians in Papua New Guinea - Hank Nelson, ANU
4.00-5.30 Pacific Lives: Retrospect and Prospect - Peter Hempenstall, University of Canterbury (Chair: Brij V Lal, ANU)
Papers that may be circulated in absentia:
The last Roi Mata? The biography of a chiefly title in Central Vanuatu - Chris Ballard, ANU
Papua New Guinea Dictionary of Contemporary Biography - Sam Kaima, UPNG
One Life, Three Worlds - Brij V Lal, ANU
Contending credibilities: narratives of murder and politics in West Ambai - Mike Morgan, ANU
In search of J.W. Davidson - Doug Munro, Wellington, NZ
On writing a biography of Pritchard - Andrew E. Robson, University of Wisconsin Oshkosh
Hosted by the Division of Pacific and Asian History, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, ANU. If you have any queries, please contact: vicki.luker@anu.edu.au