Lectures at Sydney

Amy is now well immersed in her conference at Melbourne, so I write this report today on hehalf of us both, but with a focus still on my activities in Sydney.

Monday morning was spent figuring out Powerpoint and I report success in the endeavor to translate my presentation for the Sydney U Sociology seminar into an organized seminar paper on developments in feminist theory over the last twenty years. Not for the faint-hearted!

I wandered up George Street in the opposite direction to the one I usually take and there was the University on the hill only five minutes ahead. Crossing a green park, complete with pond and bridge, I approaced the main building where I was to meet my colleague Vras Karalis for lunch and a stroll around the adjacent area.

Back to Vras's office for a while with time to go over my notes and hope that the computer worked for the presentation. (It did!) I then went to the RC Mills Hall and met a group of about a dozen sociologists and other social scientists (including Catherine Waldby, Katriona Elder, Danielle Celermajer, David Marsh and others) most of whom began to break into wide smiles as I launched into the development of the new approach to theorizing gender and politics that Anna Jonasdottir and I have been working on for the last few years. Actually a combination of several strands of what has developed in the field over the last twenty years, we offer what we hope is a way forward, past endless and dead-ending debates and...well, not to bore you with that. Let's just say the seminar went very well, the group raised wonderful questions and I enjoyed a fabulous meal at a Thai restaurant in the New Town part of Syndey not far for the University.

Exhausted, I slept later than usual and will soon meet again with Vras for a trip to the Museum of Contemporary Art to learn something about the development of Australian art. Vras is a genuine Renaissance scholar with amazingly eclectic interests and the language skills to match--Greek, French, German, English....to name the most prominent--and an embracing humanity. And, he has an amazing sense of humor, actually of a very impish sort, if I may say.

Tonight it will be the Sydney Theatre's performance of The Art of War by Stephen Jeffreys and a dinner at the Wharf, with reports later, and then my Arendt seminar tomorrow. Thursday will be preparation for flight to Melbourne later that evening.

I will be sad to leave this wonderful city and great group of colleagues, but with every intention of returning and invitations to do so, the separation will only be temporary.