Macgeorge Public Lecture

“A Feeling for Life: Biosemiotics, Autopoiesis and the Orders of Discourse”, Professor Wendy Wheeler (London Metropolitan University)

Date: Thursday June 26, 2014
Time: 6:30-7:30 pm
Venue: Old Arts, Theatre D | University of Melbourne | map

This lecture will discuss some of the theoretical implications of using biosemiotics as a way of approaching art and culture, and especially literature. In order to do that, it will look at the rather surprising connections between semiotic theories of culture and art, the roots of structuralism in the work of Roman Jakobson, and biology. The structuralist, and hence post-structuralist, legacy has been long, but now it seems that this history, at least in part, needs rewriting with its proto-biosemiotic aspects taken into account. The lecture will focus on structuration as an organic process of growth in living systems, including that made up of both human and non-human systems as comprised of autopoietic readers, and upon the role of a feeling for life as affect constrained by form.

Wendy Wheeler is Professor Emeritus of English Literature and Cultural Inquiry at London Metropolitan University. She is also a Visiting Professor at Goldsmiths, University of London and RMIT in Melbourne, Australia. She has been a Visiting Professor on the Literature and the Environment programme at the University of Oregon, and a Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Study in the Humanities at the University of Edinburgh where she also collaborated on the Environmental Values project between 2008 and 2010. She is the author of four books, two on biosemiotics, and many essays on the topic in journals and edited collections. She is currently completing her fifth book The Flame and Its Shadow: Reflections on Nature and Culture from a Biosemiotic Perspective.

This free public lecture is supported through the Norman Macgeorge Bequest. All welcome.

ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions Public Lecture
“Parents and Children in Early Modern England”, Professor Linda Pollock (Tulane University)

Date: Monday 7 July 2014
Time: 10:00am
Venue: University of Queensland Anthropology Museum, Level 1, Michie Building (9), UQ St Lucia
RSVP: Please RSVP by 30 June to Penny Boys, Outreach and Education Office, UQ Node Centre for the History of Emotions, uqche@uq.edu.au or (07) 3365-4913.

The original historiographical debate over whether or not there was a concept of childhood in the past, whether or not children were severely disciplined, and whether or not parents were bonded to their children now seems overly narrow, and rather unimaginative. New research has moved the field beyond the categorization of the history of parenting in terms of domination or affection, and has tackled neglected facets of the history of childhood. The original focus on parents, especially mothers, parental authority, and on the wealthier sectors of society provided a limited picture of parents and children in the past. The history of childhood, for example, was reduced to the history of parenting, or the history of ideas about children rather than the history of children. Fatherhood in concept and practice was virtually ignored.

Scholars have only recently begun to explore the complexities involved in bringing up children who could successfully navigate their cultural milieus. Masculinity in early modern England, for example, was based
on personal autonomy, independent judgement and self command. These qualities could be acquired and practised only by knowing the world. Keeping sons in a state of domestic dependence would stunt the development of proper masculine values, but sending young men out into the world with all its temptations could easily endanger a family’s dynastic and financial security. Submission to duty and male authority was one of the most important lessons imparted to girls, yet at the same time, girls had to be capable of independent thought and action.

The sibling relationship is one of the most durable of family ties but it is only now beginning to attract scholarly attention. The emotional and financial interactions of siblings, positioned as they were somewhere between hierarchy and equality, offer a new way to look at family. The material circumstances of family life also mattered. The parenting practices of the poor need to be understood on their own terms. Bringing up a child involved financial costs and immense physical labor and poverty could prevent poorer parents from realizing even the basics of father providing and mother nurturing. All of this new work on such topics as the child’s perspective, fatherhood, gender socialization, sibling interaction and poor families has greatly enriched the field.

Linda Pollock is a historian of early modern England. She specializes in social history topics such as childhood, the family, religion and medicine. Her current research is on the history of emotions 1550 to 1700. She is Professor of History at Tulane University and author of A Lasting Relationship: Parents and Children over Three Centuries (University Press of New England, 1987) and Forgotten Childhood: Parent-child relations from 1500 to 1900 (University of Cambridge Press, 1983). Professor Pollock will be conducting a masterclass entitled “Interpreting Early Modern Affect”, at the Australian Historical Association (AHA) “Conflict in History” Conference in Brisbane, July 7-11. For more information: www.theaha.org.au/conferences.html