Jill Bennett

University of New South Wales, Paddington, Australia

February–June 2009

Jill Bennett is associate dean and director of the Centre for Contemporary Art and Politics in the College of Fine Arts at the University of New South Wales. Her latest book, Empathic Vision: Affect, Trauma and Contemporary Art (Stanford, 2005), is a theoretical analysis of art dealing with trauma and conflict from places such as Northern Ireland, South Africa, Colombia, and indigenous Australia. She has cocurated several exhibitions at the centre, including African Marketplace (2002) and Prepossession (2005). Her Clark project is "practical aesthetics" through a study of art’s relationship to real events. She will analyze the event as an aesthetic entity, focusing on perceptual and affective relationships, to demonstrate the practical value of aesthetic inquiry.