[csaa-forum] 2025 CSAA Conference Keynote 1: Professor Irene Watson in conversation with Professor Mary Graham

Mon Apr 28 13:25:38 ACST 2025

CSAA 2025 Keynote 1: Professor Irene Watson in conversation with Professor Mary Graham

So hot right now: Cultures in rising temperatures

Cultural Studies Association of Australasia conference<https://csaa.asn.au/csaa-conference-2025/>

26-28 November 2025

University of Melbourne campus as part of the Congress of HASS

(Conveners: Rebecca Olive, Gilbert Caluya, Holly Randell-Moon, Andrew Hutcheon)

The 2025 CSAA Conference is pleased to announce the first keynote for the conference, Professor Irene Watson in conversation with Professor Mary Graham.

Further keynotes will be announced over the comming months.

Irene Watson belongs to her grandmothers Country and Peoples the Tanganekald, Meintangk, Bunganditj and Potaruwutj First Nations Peoples, of Wepulprap that is, the South East of South Australia and also to her grandfather’s People the Wotjabuluk. Irene is Distinguished Research Professor of Law with Justice and Society, at the University of South Australia. Her work focus is about Indigenous Peoples, colonialism and international law. Professor Watson has provided independent advice and opinions to First Nations Peoples across Australia for more than 40 years. She has served on numerous Aboriginal bodies across Australia, primarily concerned with advancing Aboriginal rights. Irene has written extensively about colonialism and Aboriginal Peoples,  including  Aboriginal Peoples, Colonialism, and International Law: Raw Law (Routledge 2015), and Indigenous Peoples as Subjects in International Law (Routledge 2017).
Mary is a Kombumerri person (Gold Coast) through her father’s heritage and affiliated with Wakka Wakka (South Burnett) through her mother’s people. Mary has worked across several government agencies, community organisations and universities including:  Department of Community Services, Aboriginal and Islander Childcare Agency, the University of Queensland and the Foundation for Aboriginal and Islander Research Action. Mary has also worked extensively for the Foundation for Aboriginal and Islander Research Action, as a Native Title Researcher and was also a Regional Counsellor for the former Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission. Mary has been a  lecturer with The University of Queensland, teaching Aboriginal history, politics and comparative philosophy.  She has also lectured nationally on these subjects, and developed and implemented ‘Aboriginal Perspective’s’, ‘Aboriginal Approaches to Knowledge’ and at the post-graduation level ‘Aboriginal Politics’ into university curricula.

CSAA 2025 aims to look at intersections, divergences, conflicts, and convergences of ‘heat’ in cultures, practices, media, environments, and forms of governance. Together, we will explore how our relations to each other are heating up across political, environmental and cultural challenges and to explore what rising temperatures might help us imagine or foreclose into the future.

To help spark some ideas, submissions for panels or presentations could include topics such as:

  *   Cultures of Heat: representing heat/fire in everyday cultures; the rhetoric of fire/heat/temperatures and its effects on culture, politics, society, identity, practice or praxis; theorising ‘slow burn’ in literature and film.
  *   Hot as Hell: heat/fire in religious and spiritual cultures; the cultural politics of hell.
  *   Heated media: revisiting McLuhan’s hot and cool media theory; fiery social media communities and cultures; the media of outrage and panic; reporting on/in hot conflict zones; mediated hate speech against women and minorities; toxic fandom in entertainment media.
  *   Hot bodies: the body politics of heat; screen representations of sex; the gendered and racialised politics of attractiveness; cooling off dating; hot flashes/hot flushes; heatstroke.
  *   Taking the temperature of technological developments: technological contributions to carbon emissions; AI and climate change; technology’s connections to social and political conflicts.
  *   Fiery emotions: affects of ‘passion’; passionate debates; the uses and abuses of anger; lust and desire; the politics of passionate ‘races’; the gendered politics of passion.
  *   Geographies of heat: the geopolitics of climate change; the urban politics of overheating; access to heating/coolness as a right; heat in rural and regional studies; ‘race’, empire and heat vulnerability
  *   Managing fire: governance and governmentality of heat/climate change/fires; Indigenous approaches to using fire as an environmental management tool; cladding and the cultural politics of building codes; managing fires in the culture of construction industries
  *   Cultural politics of climate change: the effects of global warming on leisure and recreation industries and cultures; non-humans and more-than-human worlds in climate change; movement, physical activities and sport under global warming; rethinking health and wellness in the context of climate change.
  *   Critical reflections on ‘the Anthropocene’: the theory of ‘climate change’ or ‘the Anthropocene’; new methodologies for the Anthropocene; the connections between humans, non- humans, and more-than-human worlds in the Anthropocene.
  *   Creative Arts in heat: creative artist responses to climate change; the role of the arts and craft in climate change politics; sustainability in arts and craft practices.
  *   Theories, ethics and practices of care in global warming: what are our responsibilities under climate change? What kind of care does the planet need? And how do we enact such care under global warming?
  *
Colonialities of heat: the geopolitics of race and coloniality in rising temperatures; environmental racism; Indigenous sovereignties and sciences

These are just some provocations to ignite your own ideas with this year’s theme. As always, the CSAA annual conference is open to any hot topics in cultural studies. We’re excited to hear your ideas so fire away!

Email submissions to csaaconference2025 at gmail.com<mailto:csaaconference2025 at gmail.com> by 25 July 2025.

  Associate Professor Holly Randell-Moon

School of Indigenous Australian Studies

Faculty of Arts and Education

Charles Sturt University

Wiradyuri
Locked Bag 49
Dubbo NSW 2830
Australia

https://researchoutput.csu.edu.au/en/persons/holly-randell-moon

 I acknowledge the sovereignty of Wiradyuri, Ngunawal, Gundungurra and Birpai peoples

of Australia who are the traditional owners and custodians of the lands on which CSU’s campuses are situated. I pay my respects to all First Nations Elders and I honour them for maintaining the cultural and intellectual foundations that ensure these traditions continue in perpetuity.

"You don't have to be great to be successful. Look at Phil Collins." - Noel Gallagher

Security, Race, Biopower<https://link.springer.com/book/10.1057/978-1-137-55408-6>

Somatechnics: Journal of Bodies - Technology - Power<https://www.euppublishing.com/loi/soma>

  *   Randell-Moon, H. (2025). 'So, are you Indigenous?’ Settler responsibilities when teaching Indigenous Australian Studies. In B. Lythberg, C. Woods & S. Nemec (eds.), Settler Responsibility for Decolonisation: Stories from the Field<https://www.routledge.com/Settler-Responsibility-for-Decolonisation-Stories-from-the-Field/Lythberg-Woods-Nemec/p/book/9781032736631#:~:text=Drawing%20from%20experiences%20in%20the,reconcile%20their%20place%20in%20colonialism.>. Routledge.

  *
Randell-Moon, H. (2024). Seeing like a settler: place-making, settler heritage, and tourism in Dubbo, Australia. Tourism GeoGraphies, 26(6), 993–1011. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616688.2024.2380321

[cid:126c8792-aeb7-4093-a015-3bfd2e0f8d10]<https://csaa.asn.au/csaa-conference-2025/>

[Charles Sturt]<https://www.csu.edu.au/>

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