AustLit

'This special section of the Australian Humanities Review emerged from the Literary Studies Convention at the Australian National University from 3-7 July 2018. As a conference which brought together Australia’s four major literary studies associations, it showcased a range of approaches to literary scholarship to discuss ‘the literary as an interface between different forms of knowledge and processes of knowledge formation, looking at questions of how and through what means the literary is communicated, represented, negotiated, and remade’. One of the approaches prompted by this theme was the ways in which literature can translate, communicate, or re-imagine scientific knowledge. This seemed particularly apt given that one of the definitions of ‘interface’ is ‘an apparatus designed to connect two scientific instruments so that they can be operated jointly’ (Oxford English Dictionary), for example, two different computer operating systems. In other words, the interface is the meeting place which allows translation to occur.' (Introduction)