Suvendi Perera 
La Trobe University English Program 

• Title: Dr Suvendi Perera (B.A: University of Sri Lanka, Kelaniya; Ph.D: Columbia University, New York) 
• School: Communication, Arts and Critical Enquiry 
• Office Location: Humanities 2, Rm 507 
• Campus: Bundoora 
• Phone: 9479 2401
• Email: S.Perera@latrobe.edu.au

   

  Teaching and Research Interests 

  cultural and critical theory, esp. race, ethnicity and gender Australian multiculturalism Australian-Asian connections Aboriginal writing colonial discourse, decolonisation and anticolonial theory third world and first world feminisms cultural studies North American and Caribbean literatures nineteenth and twentieth century British fiction lifewriting/ testimonio/ autobiography

  Keynote and Plenary Addresses

  • "Spectatorshop, Diaspora, Identity" Asian-Australian  Identities, ANU September 1999
  • "Whiteness and its Discontents," Alternative Dialogues, UWS  July 1999
  • "Futures Imperfect: Time, space and Austral-Asian Identities", Alter-Asians Conference, February 1999
  • "Are we being postcolonial Yet?" Keynote address, Writing Postcolonial Literary History Conference, ASPCLS Melbourne, July 1995
  • "The Poetics and Politics of Ravishment," Freedom and Modernity: Early Modern Studies in the Pacific, Victoria University, Wellington, New Zealand, August 1994
  • "Recalcitrant Subalterns (and Other Multicultural Monsters)"  Austral Constellations, University of  Hong Kong, June 1994

  Major Publications

  Books:

  • Reaches of Empire (Columbia UP, 1991)  Ed. Asian and Pacific Inscriptions (Meridian 1995)

  Some Recent Essays:

  1999 forthcoming

  • "Whiteness and its Discontents" Journal of Intercultural Studies
  • "Unmaking the Present: Sri Lankan Histories and a Politics of Coexistence" Race & Class
  • "Futures Imperfect" in I. Ang et al ed. Alter/Asians

  1998

  • "The Level Playing Field: Globalisation, Hansonism, Racism" Race & Class 40.2 (1998): 199-208.
  • "A School for Racism: Pedagogy in the Face of Ethnicity" (with Joseph Pugliese) Discourse, 19. 2 (1998). 
  • "'Native Title is Inside us' Jabiluka and the Politics of Intercultural Negotiation: interview with Jacqui Katona" (with Joseph Pugliese) Australian Feminist Law Journal 10 (March 1998): 1-31. 
  • "Wogface, Anglo-Drag, Contested Aboriginalities: Making and Unmaking Identities in Australia" (with Joseph Pugliese) Social Identities 4. 1 (1988): 39-72.
  • "Detoxifying Australia?" (with Joseph Pugliese) Migration Action 20.2 (1988): 4-18.

  1997

  • "'Racial Suicide': The Relicensing of Racism in Australia" (with Joseph Pugliese) Race & Class 39. 2 (1997) 1-20. 
  • "Representation Wars" reprinted in Charlotte Brunsdon, Julie D'Acci and Lynne Spigel ed. Feminist Television Criticism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997, 337- 350). 

  1996

  • "Claiming Truganini: National Narratives in the Year of Indigenous Peoples" Cultural Studies 10.3(1996): 393-412.

   Journals published in include: 

  Arena Australian Feminist Law Journal Australian Women's Review of Books Cultural Studies Communal/Plural Discourse Hecate Journal of Postcolonial Studies Law/Text/Culture Meanjin Meridian Race & Class Social Identities Refractory Girl Victorian Studies

  Editorial Board memberships:

  Journal of Intercultural Studies Law/Text/Culture UTS Review X Text

  Conferences organised:

  Identities / Ethnicities / Nationalities (1993) Speaking Positions (1993) Eraced Bodies (1994) Urban Koori Identities (1996) Made in Australia: Black Australian Life Stories (1998)

Back to English Home Page