Index
Assoc Professor Linda Williams
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Position |
Associate Professor |
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School / |
Art |
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Contact Details |
+(61 3) 9925 2369 |
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Location |
Building: 6 |
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College/Portfolio |
Design & Social Context |
Key activities
Linda Williams is Associate Professor in Art, Environment and Cultural Studies and Program Coordinator of the Honours Program in the School of Art. She also leads the Art and Sustainability Research Cluster at RMIT.
Along with her work as a widely published art critic, she has published in the field of the history of culture and science, philosophy and critical theory, and is an active member of the Globalization and Culture project in the Global Cities Research Institute at RMIT. She is also an international reader for the ARC.
She has a BA from the University of Melbourne with double honours in English Literature and Fine Arts with a thesis on 20th century poetics and philosophy; She completed an MA by research from Monash University with a major thesis: Duchamp’s Readymades and Their Critical Reception. Her PhD from the University of Melbourne: The Image of the Animal: Figurations Of Human-Animal Relations In Western Modernity was completed in the Ashworth Program for Social Theory in the Department of the History and Philosophy of Science.
Qualifications
BA Hons; MA; Ph.D.
Research
Williams’ research is trans-disciplinary, and includes a focus on modernity in relation to global multiple modernities and histories of the longue durée, along with cultural history and ecological critique—particularly the social history of human-animal relations and the contemporary issues of climate change and mass species extinction.
Her work on social theory, historical sociology and philosophy is focused on issues arising from materiality—such as the ontological status of the animal and the non-human world in human history, representations and theories of the human body, and the connections between cultural history, science and technology.
Supervision interests include the following: Critical theory in relation to art-based research/ Art and the non-human world including human-animal relations and concepts of nature/ The Body in Art and Thought/ Global multiple modernities and the City/ along with the history and theory of science and technology.
School of Art research cluster
Art and Environmental Sustainability
Research outputs
Research grants
Lead CI – Australian Research Council Grant: Spatial Dialogues: Public Art & Climate Change.
This project will yield both social and environmental benefits through the creative ways it combines highly innovative public art projects with electronic social network systems to initiate trans-national civic dialogues on the problem of adaptation to climate change. It extends our sense of urban space to include the regional and global ecologies upon which cities are dependent. The role of water in the city will not only be represented as a vital resource, but as an element essential to life and, as such, replete with deep cultural values frequently overlooked in the expedience of everyday urban life.
Recent publications
Williams, L (2011) 'Norbert Elias and the Question of the Non-human World' in Goodbury. A and Rigby, K (eds.) Eco- Critical Theory: New European Approaches. University of Virginia Press, Fall 2011, pp.84-97.
Williams, L (2011) ‘Shadows of the Holocene: Traditions & Transformations of the Non-Human World in Science Fiction Film’ in A Milner, S Sellars and V Burgmann A (eds.) Changing the Climate: utopia, dystopia & catastrophe Arena Publishing, pp. 196- 216.
Williams, L (2011) ‘Human-Animal Studies in the field of the Arts and Humanities’ Philosophy, Activism, Nature Issue No.8, pp. 2-4.
Williams, L. (2010) 'Visualising Subjectivity: Social Theory and the role of art as metaphor of self and habitus.' Thesis Eleven November 2010, No. 103, 35-44 (ISSN 1461-7455)
Williams, L (2009) ‘Haraway contra Deleuze and Guattari: The question of the animals’ Communications, Politics & Culture Vol. 42, No.1, pp. 42- 54.
Williams, L (2009) ‘Modernity and the Other Body: The Human contract with Mute Animality’ in Detsi-Diamante, Z.; Kitsi-Mitakou, K.; & Yiannopoulo, E. (eds)
The Future of Flesh: A Cultural Survey of the Body
Palgrave, New York, pp. 221- 239.
Williams, L (2008) ‘Reflections on Modernity, Monkeys, and Men: Edward Tyson and the Revelations of Enlightenment Science.’
Philosophy, Activism, Nature
Issue No. 5, pp. 3-11.
Williams, L (2008) (non-HERDC publication) ‘Reshaping the human self-image: Contemporary art and climate change’
HEAT: Art & Climate Change
RMIT University Gallery, Melbourne
Williams, L (2007) ‘Curve, Fold, Process: Notes toward a grounded historiography of Culture’ in North, I (Ed)
Visual Animals: Crossovers, Evolution and New Aesthetics.
Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia, Adelaide, pp 97-106.
Williams, L (2007) ‘Between Hermes, Gaia, and Apollo 8: Michel Serres and the philosophy of science as communication”
Access: Critical Perspectives on Communication, Culture and Policy Studies
VOL. 26, (2), December, pp. 33-45.
Recent conference papers
November 2011 - Invited keynote lecture New Voices in the Agora: the role of the arts and the humanities in evaluating the connections between cities and global ecologies; Transforming Auckland: Innovations for Sustainable Cities, The University of Auckland.
October 2011 - Invited lecture Contemporary Environmental Art in Australia Wakayama University, Japan
October 2011 - Invited keynote lecture Fragile Ecologies and Marking Time: Natural History in Contemporary Environmental Art Animal Ecologies in Visual Culture Roehampton University & University College London.
August 2010 Invited keynote lecture: Shadows of the Holocene: transformed creatures and the dystopian animals of the future Changing the Climate: Utopia, Dystopia and Catastrophe The Fourth Australian Conference on Utopia, Dystopia and Science Fiction. Centre for Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies, Monash University.
July 2010 The sixth world extinction event and the civilising process XVII World Congress of Sociology Conference 2010, The University of Gothenburg, Sweden.
July 2009 Invited paper: Visible Contradictions: the role of animals in human self-images of scientific discourse. Minding Animals Conference, University of Newcastle (Australia).
June 2009 Invited paper: Derrida and Darwin on human and animal emotions: the question of shame as ontological difference. Department of Humanities, Arts and Languages, London Metropolitan University.
June 2009 Human territories of shame: Derrida and Darwin on human-animal relations. The International Association for Philosophy and Literature, Brunel University, London.
December 2008 Visualising Complexity: the role of imagery and art as metaphor in recent social and critical theory. The Australian Sociological Association (TASA) Annual National Conference, The University of Melbourne.
November 2008 Invited keynote lecture: Companion& Non-Companion Animals in the Age of Extinction. Close Encounters of the Animal kind, University of the Arts, The Tate Britain, London.
September 2008 Plenary paper: Companion and Non-Companion Species in the Age of Extinction, Cultures of Sustainability Symposium, RMIT University.
January 2008 Invited paper: Social Theory and the Question of the Non-Human WorldDepartment of Sociology University College Dublin Ireland.
January 2008 Invited keynote lecture: A fateful comparison: Early modern science as a process of ontological destabilisation. Renaissance Dualisms and Distinctions Queen’s University, Belfast Ireland.
October 2007 Invited Paper: The Social theory of Norbert Elias and the Question of the Non-Human World’ Contemporary Societies and Cultures: Anthropology, Social Theory and Gender Studies Seminar Series. The University of Melbourne.
July 2007 Invited paper: Historiography and Human-Animal Relations: the importance of the longue durée. Animals and Society II: Considering Animals The University of Tasmania, Hobart.
April 2007 Invited paper: Curve, Fold, Process: Notes toward a grounded historiography of culture” Visual Animals Symposium Contemporary Art Centre of SA and Art Gallery of SA, Adelaide.
Recent exhibitions: Curator
September 2008 HEAT: Art and Climate Change. International Exhibition, RMIT Gallery.
October 2006 The Idea of the Animal. International Exhibition. RMIT Gallery.
Current research supervision
Jen Rae PhD – Principal supervisor. Transforming Ecologies: Sustainability through Public Art and Intervention.
Harry Nankin PhD – Principal supervisor. Gathering Shadows: landscape, photography and the ecological gaze.
Sam Leach PhD – Principal supervisor. Between Science and Sentiment: An aesthetic investigation of the legacies of the early Enlightenment.
Ernesto Rios PhD – Principal supervisor. Reconfiguring the Labyrinth: an exploration of traditional forms of the labyrinth and the maze through contemporary art practice.
Yi-Fang Lu DFA – Principal supervisor. The Domesticated Animal: Reconfiguring Human-Animal Relations through Contemporary Art.
Lucy Turnbull MA – Principal supervisor. Throw Like a Girl - a tomboy project.
Jazmina Cininas PhD – Second supervisor. The Girlie Werewolf Hall of Fame: historical and contemporary portraits of female werewolves.
Bruce Russell PhD – Second supervisor. What true project has been lost? Towards a social ontology of improvised sound work.
Recent doctoral completions
Gloria Marco Manuera: PhD (2011): Cryptographic Identity: the construction of photographic images based on biometric indexical information.
Simon Currell: DFA (2010): Assimilation and Appropriation. A worker’s response to the call centre environment
John Barbour: PhD (2007): Interiority & Interior Space in Contemporary International & Australian Sculpture &Installation Art
Frank Vigneron: DFA (2005): Le SongeCreux- writing within the blanks
Ruth Johnston: PhD (2004): Revisiting the Print Room