Thursday 23rd September 2021, 10:30am-12:30pm
Online
Please join us for the next C3P research seminar on Thursday 23rd September, 10:30AM-12:30PM. As usual, the seminar is designed to encourage C3P members to share materials around their current work so we can familiarise ourselves with each other’s research and facilitate discussion around the work. This seminar will contain discussion around works by Paul Knight and Guy Freer, Philip Bewley and Christine Howe.
Paul Knight (CEO, Illawarra Local Aboriginal Lands Council) and Guy Freer (Deputy Head, School of the Arts, English and Media)
The Dharawal Project
Respondent: Lucas Ihlein
The Dharawal Project is creative research partnership between the Illawarra Local Aboriginal Lands Council and the University of Wollongong that seeks to elevate traditional cultural knowledge through the use of digital technologies. Drawing on an archaeological archive of over 4000 sites located in the Illawarra, the Dharawal Project is bringing together traditional narrative and transmedia storytelling techniques with 3D scanning, GIS mapping and VR/AR technologies to create immersive environments as active sites of contemporary and future cultural practice. The ultimate aim of this project is to establish an immersive centre showcasing First Nations cultural knowledge, technology and research in the Illawarra.
Philip Bewley (PhD candidate, TAEM)
Henri Nouwen and Same-Sex Attraction: The Therapeutic Turn in Dutch Catholicism
Respondent: Ika Willis
Henri Nouwen (1932-1996), a Catholic priest and one of the most prolific Christian spiritual writers of the twentieth century, studied psychology at the Catholic University of Nijmegen in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Nouwen’s interest in psychology was representative of a trend which arose in postwar western society towards a psychotherapeutic discourse in order to solve the many problems its citizens faced. Scholars refer to this phenomenon as the ‘therapeutic turn,’ promoted in The Netherlands of the 1950s and 1960s by a group of Dutch Catholic Intellectuals. They turned to a psychoanalytical understanding of the human psyche, believing that the concept of innerlijke disponibiliteit (translated as inner availability or self-availability) was an essential quality needed for mental health. This is a philosophical term which finds its origins in the writings of French existentialist Gabriel Marcel. It was within this new paradigm that Nouwen, a same-sex attracted person himself, situated his research and pastoral response to homosexuality. Nouwen’s exposure to this therapeutic turn made him suspicious of those who buried their sexuality deep within themselves, keeping it hidden and suppressed. This theme was explored by Nouwen in his published 1971 essay, ‘The Self-availability of the Homosexual,’ where the therapeutic concept of ‘self-availability’is offered as a way for someone to relate meaningfully to one’s sexual orientation. Although Nouwen was writing five decades ago, this issue is as relevant today as it was back then, especially among same-sex attracted Catholics. An unchanged church teaching that describes a homosexual orientation as ‘instrinsically disordered’ and the physical expression of that orientation as ‘acts of grave depravity’ remains deeply troubling to many.
Christine Howe
Fluctuations in Landscape/Language/Lasagne
Respondent: Leah Gibbs
In November 2019, a group of writers, artists and other scholars connected with the University of Wollongong’s Material Ecologies network (MECO) met at Riversdale, on Yuin Country, to discuss how we might respond creatively to the impact of coastal change in our communities. When this gathering took place, none of us knew that within a few months the Currowan fire would jump the Shoalhaven River and burn through the bush we had recently walked and talked in, sat alongside, and listened to. This lyric essay draws together some of the personal, political, ecological, cultural, and relational threads that link the MECO gathering with the Currowan fire – the drought that preceded it, the fire itself, and its aftermath.
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Philip Bewley is a Melbourne resident, originally from Adelaide, where he shares his home with his husband Andrew and their adopted Jack Russell rescue, Tippi. He began his PhD research in 2018, having completed a Bachelor of Theology and two Master’s Degrees, one at the University of Divinity, and another at the Nan Tien Institute. Now a retired Anglican Priest, his academic interests are varied, but as a same-sex attracted person himself, he is interested in tackling the often vexed and controversial issue of same-sex attraction in religious circles, believing that LGBTIQ+ persons of faith have a voice which can longer be ignored.
Christine Howe is a writer and academic who teaches at the University of Wollongong. Her first novel, Song in the Dark, was published by Penguin, and her poetry, essays and other short works have appeared in journals such as Griffith Review, Island, Cordite, TEXT, and in various Spineless Wonders anthologies.