Noted film and cultural studies critic Meaghan Morris will give a seminar on the theme of “parochial blockbusters”. The seminar will center on a discussion of her essay, “Transnational Glamour, National Allure: Community, Change and Cliché in Baz Luhrmann’s Australia”, which is available for downloading at http://ihr.ucsc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Morris-Transnational-Glamour-final.pdf, and which should be read before the seminar. Professor Morris will also discuss examples of other films of this type from elsewhere in the world. For those interested, there will be a screening of Australia on Tuesday night, May 13, at 7:30 PM in Humanities 620 (viewing the film is not a prerequisite for the seminar).

Meaghan Morris is Professor of Gender and Cultural Studies at the University of Sydney, Australia, and Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Cultural Studies at Lingnan University, Hong Kong. She works on history in popular culture, especially on popular thinking about social and historical change. Her books include Too Soon, Too Late: History in Popular Culture (1998); Hong Kong Connections: Transnational Imagination in Action Cinema (co-ed. 2005); Identity Anecdotes: Translation and Media Culture (2006) and Creativity and Academic Activism: Instituting Cultural Studies (co-ed. 2012). A former Chair of the international Association for Cultural Studies, Professor Morris is currently Chair of the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Society.
 

This event is sponsored by the Crisis in the Cultures of Capitalism Research Cluster with generous support from the Literature Department.