Festival sponsorships focus on literary achievement
Professor Greer at the book signing after her address at the Melbourne Town Hall.
La Trobe University sponsored the opening session of the recent Melbourne Writers' Festival at the Melbourne Town Hall. The session featured controversial writer and academic, Germaine Greer. She spoke to a packed audience about her latest book which deals with the destructive nature of rage and has generated wide–spread community and media debate.
In her keynote address, Professor Greer — who late last year addressed an international conference co–organised by La Trobe's English Program on the less contentious issue of Jane Austen — reflected on the usefulness of rage when it is focused on achieving social change, and how it becomes destructive when misdirected.
The well–known academic, writer, literary critic, commentator and feminist was born Melbourne and now spends four months a year in Australia where she runs a rainforest rehabilitation project in Queensland. The latest of her twenty books are On Rage and Shakespeare's Wife, a reconstruction of Ann Hathaway's life, and the daily lives of Elizabethan women.
A regular sponsor of the Melbourne Writers' Festival for many years, La Trobe University has for the past three years also sponsored the Festival's keynote opening address. Previous speakers were cultural critic Clive James and conservationist Tim Flannery, who also gave this year's Kerferd Oration on the University's Beechworth campus.
La Trobe academics participating in this year's festival were historians Professor Marilyn Lake, (see also Historians scoop national awards) and Dr Clare Wright; Convenor of Politics Professor Dennis Altman and colleague Dr Judith Brett; Head of Philosophy, Professor Andrew Brennan and colleague Dr Jack Reynolds; and Dr Sue Turnbull, Media Studies.