16 FEBRUARY 2001
SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA
AsiaPacifiQueer
AsiaPacifiQueer is an on-going collaboration between scholars from Australia, New Zealand, and elsewhere who are researching queer cultures and peoples in post-colonial societies of the Asia-Pacific. A growing number of academics and honours as well as postgraduate students working in Asian Studies, cultural studies, history, anthropology, health, epidemiology, and other disciplines are undertaking pioneering research in this field.
* By PETER JACKSON
However, professional networking is often inhibited by disciplinary and discursive divides that isolate scholars from each other, as well as by a continuing marginalisation of queer research within an academy in which the humanities and social sciences have suffered savage funding cuts in the name of neo-liberal economics. AsiaPacifiQueer was in August 2000, founded by Dr Peter Jackson (Australian National University) and Dr Mark McLelland (University of Queensland), as a response to this complex of issues. Its aim lies in organizing a regular series of conferences to provide a cross-disciplinary and post-disciplinary forum for researchers working on transgender and same-sex issues with an Asia-Pacific focus.
The first AsiaPacifiQueer Conference on the theme of 'Gender and Sexual Difference in the Asia/Pacific: Paradigms and Approaches' was held at the University of Technology Sydney on 16 February 2001. The event was co-sponsored by the Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies at the University of Queensland, the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies at Australian National University, the Institute for Cultural Research (University of Technology Sydney and University of Western Sydney), the Cultural Studies Association of Australia, and the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Cultural Development Fund.
A second AsiaPacifiQueer Conference on the theme of 'Media, Technology and Queer Cultures' will be held at the University of Queensland on 3 and 4 December 2001. The conference will focus on how media and communications technologies in post-colonial Asia-Pacific and other societies produce, govern, market, distribute, enable or exclude minority genders and sexualities in both the public and private spheres. Papers from all academic disciplines will be welcome. Proposals for papers are being accepted until 1 July 2001 and can be sent to Dr Mark McLelland at the Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies, the University of Queensland. Full details on the AsiaPacifiQueer II Conference are available on the website. *
An AsiaPacifiQueer website has been set up, providing a full report of the conference and abstracts of all papers presented: Http://www.sshe.murdoch.edu.au/intersections/apq/apqhomepage.html
Dr Peter A. Jackson is a fellow in Thai history at the Division of Pacific and Asian History, RSPAS at the Australian National University, Canberra.
E-mail: peterj@coombs.anu.edu.au