• Aqua Spinach, Luke Beesley (Giramondo)
• Beautiful Revolutionary, Laura Elizabeth Woollett (Scribe)
• click here for what we do, Pam Brown (Vagabond)
• False Claims of Colonial Thieves, Charmaine Papertalk-Green and John Kinsella (Magabala)
• Pink Mountain on Locust Island, Jamie Marina Lau (Brow)
• The Death of Noah Glass, Gail Jones (Text)

 
Judging Panel: Michael Farrell (Chair), Kate Noske, Megan Mooney Taylor

20–23 May 2020, UNSW, Sydney.

Young writers have found inspiration and example in the everyday context of their writing practice—in a materiality related to their physical, social and cultural worlds and in the material conditions of their play, learning, imitation and critique. This conference will explore the material culture of juvenilia (youthful writing up to the age of twenty): the relationship between ‘things’ and literary imagination and practice.

The call for papers is now open until 30 September 2019 
Early Bird Registration closes 31 October 2019
 
Click here to go direct to the Juvenilia Conference website:
https://sam.arts.unsw.edu.au/isljc2020/
 

Bridget Grogan, Reading Corporeality in Patrick White’s Fiction: An Abject Dictatorship of the Flesh, Brill, 2018.
 
Geoff Rodoreda, The Mabo Turn in Australian Fiction, Peter Lang, 2018.
 
Xu Daozhi, Indigenous Cultural Capital: Postcolonial Narratives in Australian Children's Literature, Peter Lang, 2018.
 
 
 
Maggie Nolan
Brigitta Olubas
Elizabeth Webby, Chair
 
 

Katherine Bode, A World of Fiction: Digital Collections and the Future of Literary History, University of Michigan Press, 2018. 
 
David Carter and Roger Osborne, Australian Books and Authors in the American Marketplace, 1840-1940s, Sydney University Press, 2018.
 
Ken Gelder and Rachel Weaver, Colonial Australian Fiction, Sydney University Press, 2017.
 
Jessica Gildersleeve, Christos Tsiolkas: The Utopian Vision, Cambria Press, 2017.
 
Sneja Gunew, Post-Multicultural Writers as Neo-cosmopolitan Mediators, Anthem Press, 2017.
 
Tony Hughes-d’Aeth, Like Nothing on the Earth: A Literary History of the Wheatbelt, UWA Press, 2017.
 
Simone Murray, The Digital Literary Sphere, Johns Hopkins Press, 2018.
 
Brigid Rooney, Suburban Space, the Novel and Australian Modernity, Anthem Press, 2018.
 

Congratulations to all who have made it to the 2019 Longlist for the ALS Gold Medal
 
Note: The ALS Gold Medal is awarded annually for an outstanding literary work in the preceding calendar year. The Medal was inaugurated by the Australian Literature Society, founded in Melbourne in 1899 and incorporated into ASAL in 1982.

 

• Aqua Spinach, Luke Beesley (Giramondo)
• Beautiful Revolutionary, Laura Elizabeth Woollett (Scribe)
• Blakwork, Alison Whittaker (Magabala)
• click here for what we do, Pam Brown (Vagabond)
• False Claims of Colonial Thieves, Charmaine Papertalk-Green and John Kinsella (Magabala)
• Flames, Robbie Arnott (Text)
• Newcastle Sonnets, Keri Glastonbury (Giramondo)
• Pink Mountain on Locust Island, Jamie Marina Lau (Brow)
• The Children's House, Alice Nelson (Vintage)
• The Death of Noah Glass, Gail Jones (Text)
• The Everlasting Sunday, Robert Lukins (UQP)
• Zanzibar Light, Philip Mead (Vagabond)

 
For more information about the ALS Gold Medal and the judging panel see https://www.austlit.edu.au/austlit/page/7819114

Thursday 21 November to Saturday 23 November at the Wheeler Centre, Melbourne.
 
Independent Publishing Conference 2019
Industry Research Day 21 November 2019
Deadline for abstracts: Friday 28 June 2019
 
Scholarly engagement with the contemporary publishing industry has long grappled with the systems, regulations and institutions that shape the production and reception of books.
 
Place, space and publishing are intrinsically interlinked. Paradigms such as ‘imagined communities’ (Andersen) and the ‘world republic of letters’ (Casanova) have played major roles in shaping contemporary research into publishing. Bourdieu’s literary field—another key influence—uses spatial relation as a conceptual organiser for relations of cultural power. And despite the supposedly stateless, disembodied nature of digital interactions with culture, national boundaries persist as both pragmatic jurisdictional demarcations of the industry, and as intellectual organisers for scholarly studies, in the instance of collections such as A History of the Book in America, The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, and The Edinburgh History of the Book in Scotland.
 
We seek papers that engage with the sites of publishing: that identify the places where publishing activities occur and the role of these places on practice. In what ways do the sites of publishing, and publishing’s myriad associated activities, influence the creation, discussion and celebration of literary texts? Is the dual temporality of local and global that defines post-digital publishing practice changing the way that we, as researchers and practitioners, understand the traditional sites of publishing?
 
Although our preference is for papers that focus on independent publishing, presentations on all aspects of publishing are welcome. We are also interested in papers from related disciplines, such as literary studies, creative writing, and media and communication studies. Graduate students and early-career researchers are encouraged to submit. We also strongly encourage papers that engage playfully or creatively with the conference theme.
 
Possible topics might include:
 
•          Localised production in a globalised context
•          The role of place in the editing and publishing of translated texts
•          Digital spaces and the cultivation of book culture
•          The relationship between space and power at a writers festival
•          The sites of national and international book business
•          International regulations in national contexts
•          Publishing in remote locations
 
The 2019 Independent Publishing Conference will run from Thursday 21 November to Saturday 23 November at the Wheeler Centre, Melbourne. Academic panels will be held on Thursday 21 November.
 
We invite proposals by Friday 28 June 2019. Proposals should contain an abstract of 200–300 words. Please include your paper title, institutional affiliation, bio-note, contact details, and any social media handles in the abstract.

Conveners: Dr Alexandra Dane and Dr Millicent Weber

Please contact Dr Alexandra Dane (alexandra.dane@unimelb.edu.au) with any enquiries.
 
 

Abstracts are due by 30 April 2019

Prof David Carter (UQ) and Associate Prof Simone Murray (Monash) are co-convening the stream 'Literary and Cultural Studies I: Transformations in the Digital Literary Sphere' for the Cultural Studies Association of Australasia (CSAA) conference at the University of Queensland, Brisbane between 4-6 Dec. 2019.

Essentially the stream is open to all papers with an interest in the interface of the book (conceived broadly) and digital technology:

'The world of print and the book has been radically transformed by digital technologies, whether in the creation of books, their circulation, or their reception.  This stream seeks contributions that freely transverse the boundaries of literary, cultural, and media studies to consider phenomena as diverse as fan fiction, self-publishing, celebrity authorship, born-digital literature, viral book publicity, online retailing, blog-books, internet-hosted reading groups, celebrity book clubs, and social-media bibilo-communities of all stripes (bookstagrammers, booktubers, litTwitter...).  Who’s writing, who’s reading and who’s critiquing have fused in fascinating ways.  The theme of this stream is that books and writing are far from dead — only digitally atomised.'

The overarching conference theme is 'Cultural Transformations'.  Full details of the conference are available here: https://csaaconference2019.wordpress.com/
 
Please email all abstract and panel submissions to csaaconf2019@gmail.com with the stream title in the subject line. For example – Abstract Submission: Literary and Cultural Studies 1.
 

The International Australian Studies Association (InASA) ECR Publication Subsidy Scheme is now accepting submissions. Submission are due on 30 June 2019 (5pm AEST) and should be sent to Andonis.Piperoglou@acu.edu.au
 
See guidelines here http://inasa.org/ecr-publication-subsidy-scheme/
 
 

29 July 2019, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne

Norman Lindsay was well-known in Australia as an artist, sculptor, writer, philosopher and cultural commentator, but in the fifty years since his death his most enduring work has been his illustrated children’s story The Magic Pudding. His creative and cultural contribution has become synonymous with the most controversial of his writings, paintings, and lifestyle; his more subtle, considered and nuanced projects have become elided. This symposium will use the anniversary of Lindsay’s passing to reconsider his influence on the progress of post-colonial Australian literary and artistic culture, utilising new theoretical understandings and perspectives to inform a contemporary awareness of his significance.

We welcome abstracts of 250 words on any facet of Lindsay’s contributions to post-colonial Australian culture. Please send abstracts, with a short bio, to Megan Mooney Taylor (mmooneytaylor@swin.edu.au) by 1 May 2019.

Registration can be completed at the following link: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/reconsidering-norman-lindsay-new-perspectives-new-understandings-tickets-59209103021

The organisers of the 2019 ASAL Annual Conference in Perth would like to announce an extension of the deadline for the submission of abstracts to 1 March 2019.

Please send your abstracts to Tony Hughes-d’Aeth (tony.hda@uwa.edu.au) by 1 March and follow the instructions in the Call for Papers below.

http://www.asal2019.com.au/downloads/CFPASAL2019.pdf

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines ‘wandering’ as ‘going about from place to place; an aimless, slow, or pointless movement; and a shift away from the proper, normal, or usual course’. Wandering, as both a physical movement and a conceptual metaphor, can transcend the boundaries between past and present, the real and imagined, the centre and the periphery, the virtual and the actual, the human and the non-human, the private and the public, and the finite and the boundless. Wandering, by its nature, signals a shift away from linear modes of operating to a more colourful vista of experimentation, repetition, spontaneity, play, and general misrule. Historically, wanderers have been transgressive subjects who at different times have been both revered and feared, appreciated and misunderstood, and rewarded and punished for their alleged risk-taking, vagrancy, and aimlessness. Like the exile, the wanderer represents the ghost of modernity who is uprooted from home and perpetually displaced in space and time. However, not all experiences of wandering are the same.
 
The experience of a refugee who wanders in search of a safe place to call home is different to the experience of a traveller who elects to wander while on holiday. Therefore, wandering is both an alternative mode of subjectivity and an apt metaphor for different ways of thinking, knowing, and being. Ingrid Horrocks, in her recent book, Women Wanderers and the Writing of Mobility(2017), explains: “To be a wanderer is not quite the same as being a traveller: wandering assumes neither destination nor homecoming. The wanderer’s narrative tends to work by digression and detour rather than by a direct route. Wanderers, and their narratives, are always in danger of becoming lost. A wanderer is also someone who moves from place to place encountering a series of different people, making her a natural vehicle for explorations of sympathy and sociability, social exclusion, and loneliness.”
 
Wandering, as Horrocks notes, is not always voluntary. People with dementia can be prone to wandering, as can children with autism. The expression ‘to have a wandering eye’ is an idiom that highlights the intersection between gendered mobility and morality. In Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798), wandering is a curse that haunts the Mariner and takes it shape as a longing that he can never satisfy or fulfil. Wandering refuses to assign meaning to a single locus and instead encourages us to consider ideas and practices that are fluid, pluralistic, and intuitive. This special issue on ‘wandering’ will explore current and emerging research on wandering practices and behaviours, methodologies, texts, and technologies.
 
Areas of investigation may include but are not limited to:
 

• Wandering and the body
• Wandering and the environment
• Wandering and new/emerging technologies
• Wandering and tourist cultures, images, and identities
• Wandering and migration, immigration, and refugeeism
• Wandering and mobility
• Wandering and diaspora
• Wandering and concepts of home and homelessness
• Wandering and urban spaces
• Wandering and philosophy, including morality
• Wandering and cartography, psychogeography, and affective geography
• Wandering in art, literature, and film
• Wandering in indigenous cultures and contexts
• Wandering in time
• Wandering between genres
• Wandering as a literal, textual, physical, or imaginative phenomenon
• Wandering as a form of protest, resistance, or ‘promiscuous’ behaviour
• Wandering problems and stereotypes

 
Prospective contributors should email an abstract of 100-250 words and a brief biography to the issue editors. Abstracts should include the article title and should describe your research question, approach, and argument.
 
Biographies should be about three sentences (maximum 75 words) and should include your institutional affiliation and research interests. Articles should be 3000 words (plus bibliography). All articles will be refereed and must adhere to MLA style (6th edition).
 
Please send any enquiries to wandering@journal.media-culture.org.au.
 
 

2 – 4 April 2020, University of Cambridge
 
Paper proposals are invited for “Re-Orientating E.M. Forster”, an international conference to be held at the University of Cambridge. Confirmed speakers include Paul Armstrong (Brown), Stefan Collini (Cambridge), Santanu Das (Oxford), Leela Gandhi (Brown), Jane Goldman (Glasgow), Stefania Michelucci (Genoa), Rachel Potter (East Anglia), and David Trotter (Cambridge).

Proposals of 250-300 words for 20-minute papers, together with a brief CV of no more than 100 words, should be submitted by email attachment to E.M.Forster2020@gmail.com by no later than Friday 10 May 2019. We also invite proposals of 100-150 words for ‘lightning talks’ of 5-7 minutes, to be submitted by the same date; this may be of particular interest to graduate students.
 
Anyone who wishes to have a longer proposal considered either for a 20-minute paper or for a lightning talk should please indicate this in the submission. Notification of acceptance or otherwise may be expected before the end of June. For further information, visit https://emforster2020.home.blog/
 

The situation of colonized and settled lands poses pointed questions about “being human,” starting from who gets to decide who is human, and continuing through questions of what qualifies as humane, humanitarian, human being or being human; and also the opposite: whose voice can cry out against the inhumane, dispute what is considered humanitarian, and offer alternative perspectives on what it means to “be human.”

The American Association of Australasian Literary Studies welcomes 250-word abstracts for papers that rigorously engage with these questions through art, culture, media, and literature (generously considered).
Please note that AAALS is requesting to be included under the MLA theme.

For a more detailed description from the MLA President, see: 
https://www.mla.org/Convention/MLA-2020/2020-Presidential-Theme
Submit 250-word abstracts by 10 March to:  machosky@hawaii.edu

This call is for a proposed collaborative session between the Southeast Asia/Southeast Asia Diasporic Forum of the Modern Language Association (MLA) and the American Association for Australasian Literary Studies (AAALS) at the January 2020 MLA conference in Seattle. Given the geographical proximity and intertwined histories of several Southeast Asian countries and Australia, we envision a session that explores existing and emerging literary and cultural connections between them across a range of writing, media, and languages.

Although there are numerous monographs and essay anthologies in the social sciences on the ties between Southeast Asia and Australia (and the wider region of Oceania), with one exception there has not been a recent substantive study of literary and cultural productions that arise because of such connections. In Tseen Khoo’s Banana-Bending: Asian-Australian and Asian-Canadian Literatures (2003), Alice Pung’s edited anthology Growing Up Asian in Australia (2008), Amerasia journal’s 2010 special issue comparing Asian Australia and Asian America, and more recently the Journal of Postcolonial Writing’s 2016 special issue on Asian Australian writing, most of the works discussed are by authors of East Asian and South Asian descent, although there is some attention given to writing by a few authors of Southeast Asian ancestry.

We take our lead for this collaborative session from José Wendell Capili’s recent literary history, Migrations and Mediation (2016), which traces the emergence and growth of Southeast Asian diasporic writing in Australia from the 1970s to the present day. Thus, we welcome papers on authors such as Hsu-ming Teo, Lau Siew Mei, Simone Lazaroo, Julie Koh, Dewi Anggraeni, Nam Le, Hoa Pham, Merlinda Bobis, Arlene Chai, and others. We also invite papers that focus on exchanges and collaborations between Southeast Asian and Indigenous authors and artists. Topics of interest include (but are not limited to): colonialism and race/multiculturalism, nationalism and national culture, migration and diaspora, critical refugee studies, transnationalism and globalization.

Please send 250-word abstracts and 100-word speaker bios, as well as any questions, to Weihsin Gui (weihsing@ucr.edu) and Brenda Machosky (machosky@hawaii.edu) by 15 March, 2019. Please note that speakers whose papers are accepted for this session will need to become members of the Modern Language Association by 7 April, 2019 in order to participate in the conference itself.
 

6pm for 6.30pm, Thursday 1 November 2018, Gleebooks, 49 Glebe Point Road, Glebe
 
You are invited to the launch of Richard Flanagan: Critical Essays edited by Robert Dixon. The book will be launched by Stephen Romei, Literary Editor, The Australian. Written by twelve leading critics from Australia, Europe and North America, these richly varied essays offer new ways of understanding Flanagan’s contribution to Tasmanian, Australian and world literature. Richard Flanagan: Critical Essays is the first book to be published about the life and work of this major world author.
 
Free event. Please RSVP at the website:
https://gleebooks.worldsecuresystems.com/BookingRetrieve.aspx?ID=307791
or call 02 9660 2333

2-4pm, Saturday 25 August, Willoughby Library Chatswood, NSW 
 
This is a free event, all welcome. It's a five minute walk from Chatswood train station. The library asks that you RSVP for numbers, so please use the following link for this and to see the list of readers: 
https://www.willoughby.nsw.gov.au/EventDetails.aspx?PageID=1892&eventid=5595
 
There will also be a display of books from Webb's personal collection, plus tea, coffee and biscuits at the end. Please email MC Toby Davidson for any further queries (toby.davidson@mq.edu.au).

 

Harvard University is seeking to appoint a distinguished scholar to the Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser Chair in Australian Studies for the 2020–2021 academic year. The Chair was established through a gift of the Australian Government to Harvard University, in recognition of the American Bicentennial, to further understanding of Australia in the United States. Over the past 35 years, the Chair has been occupied by some of Australia’s most outstanding intellectuals. In 2010, the Chair was renamed in recognition of the two prime ministers who, from opposite sides of politics, brought to fruition this important initiative. Incumbents of the Chair will ordinarily hold the title of Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser Visiting Professor of Australian Studies, teach two courses, and be expected to reside at Harvard for the full academic year.
 
The Australian Nominating Committee seeks expressions of interest from persons wishing to be considered for appointment in the 2020-2021 academic year. The Committee encourages applications from outstanding Australians in mid-career as well as those further advanced. It also strongly encourages applications from women and under-represented groups. Shortlisted candidates will be identified by the Australian Nominating Committee for internal review by the Harvard Committee on Australian Studies.
 
The Committee is keen to encourage an Australia-wide interest in the Chair. Candidates must exhibit intellectual leadership and impact in a field of study and teaching relevant to Australian Studies. Candidates who are qualified to teach in a department, degree program or field of study offered in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences are particularly encouraged. (For a list of departments, see http://www.fas.harvard.edu/pages/departments-and-areas). A doctorate or terminal degree is required.
 
Persons wishing to be considered should submit an application, including a cover letter, curriculum vitae, and summary outline of a course to be offered at Harvard, using the following link: http://academicpositions.harvard.edu/postings/8362. Applications will be accepted until October 19, 2018. Final notification will be made by March 2019.
 
Questions about the position or the application process should be addressed to Johannah Park, Manager of Academic Programs, at jkpark@fas.harvard.edu.
For further information about the Chair and the Harvard Committee on Australian Studies see: http://harvaus.fas.harvard.edu.
 
Harvard University is an equal opportunity employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law.
 
 

12 October 2018, National Museum of Australia
 
Conversations Across the Creek is an initiative by the Humanities ResearchCentre (HRC) and the Research School of Chemistry (RSC) to provide a space for continuing dialogue among scientists, social scientists, and humanities scholars. Meetings are held monthly, with the aim of stimulating and unearthing research and teaching collaborations across the university.

Join us for the fourth Conversation for 2018, where three diverse scholars 'cross' Sullivan's Creek, presenting on their latest research. The topic of this event is Creators of Culture: Scientists in Australian Fiction.

What makes a scientist in Australian fiction? How are fictional Australian scientists depicted in the relationship to the land? What aesthetic nattative techniques does literature use to represent, (re)configure and stage these?

Special guest: Peter Goldsworthy

Speakers include:

Dr Rebecca Hendershott
School of Archaeology and Anthropology, ANU

Associate Professor Elizabeth Leane
Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, University of Tasmania
http://www.utas.edu.au/profiles/staff/english/elizabeth-leane
 
Please register, light lunch provided. Click here for more information about the CatC Series, or to access recordings of past events.

You are welcome to send proposals for 20 minute papers, including a title, 250­‐word abstract, and brief author biography, to Dr Anna-Sophie Jürgens
(anna-sophie.jurgens@anu.edu.au). The deadline for proposals is 13 August 2018.

For further details please see the website:
http://hrc.cass.anu.edu.au/events/conversations-across-creek-creators-culture-scientists-australian-fiction
 

Submission deadline: 30 December 2018 

The Gothic is undergoing a pronounced resurgence in academic and popular cultures. Propelled by fears associated with massive social transformations produced by globalization, the neoliberal order, networked technologies, post-truth and environmental uncertainty – tropes of ‘the gothic’ resonate. The gothic allows us to delve into the unknown, the liminal, the unseen; into hidden histories and feelings. It calls up unspoken truths and secret desires.

In the tropics, the gothic manifests in specific ways according to spaces and places, and in relation to cultures and their encounters, crossings and interminglings. We invite papers engaging with the tropics of South, Southeast and East Asia, northern Australia, Latin America, the Caribbean, tropical Africa, Indian Ocean Islands, the Pacific, and the deep south of America.

Gothic studies that provide particularly interesting arenas of analysis include: culture, ritual, mythology, film, architecture, literature, fashion, art, landscapes, places, nature, spaces, histories and spectral cities. Within the fraught geographies and histories of colonialism, ‘tropical gothic’ may include subgenres such as: imperial gothic, orientalism in gothic literature, colonial and postcolonial gothic. In contemporary society neoliberal connections with the tropics and gothic may be investigated. While in popular culture, tropical aspects of gothic film, cybergoth, gothic-steampunk, gothic sci-fi, goth graphic novels, and gothic music may be explored.

The eTropic ‘Tropical Gothic’ special issue will be published in two parts: one on arts and social sciences; the other on literature and creative works. Publication is in 2019.

About eTropic:
eTropic disseminates new research from Arts, Humanities, Social Sciences and allied fields on the variety and interrelatedness of nature, culture, and society in the tropics. The journal is indexed in Scopus, Ulrich's and DOAJ. It is archived in Pandora and Sherpa/Romeo. ISSN:1448-2940
 
Visit eTropic for submission instructions: https://journals.jcu.edu.au/etropic
For enquiries or pitching ideas email: etropic@jcu.edu.au
 
‘Tropical Gothic’ Special Issue editors:

Associate Professor Anita Lundberg, James Cook University, Singapore
Dr Agnieszka Stasiewicz-Bieńkowska, Jagellonian University, Poland
Dr Katarzyna Ancuta, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand
Dr Roger Osborne, James Cook University, Australia
 

 

Learning Communities: International Journal of Learning in Social Contexts

The Learning Communities: International Journal of Learning in Social Contexts aims to publish articles which advance our knowledge and understanding of social contexts in Australia and internationally with an emphasis on the socio-cultural dimensions of learning in these different contexts and configurations.

This journal occupies a unique place in international publications by reporting research, makes research-to-practice connections, and examines the intersection of learning with the social contexts in which the learning occurs. Learning communities can be large or small groups of people, who learn together, often in pursuit of a common purpose. All research articles in this journal undergoes rigorous peer review, based on initial editor screening and anonymous double-blind refereeing by at least two referees.

This is a call for completed papers for a special literary studies edition. We encourage articles in various fields of research relating to the objective of the theme Desert Lines: Interventions in the Borderlands of Australian Literaturewhich may include, but are not confined to the
the analysis of works that occur at the margins of Australian literature, pointing to newer areas of scholarly investigation.  Examples of essays will include:
 

• Representations of the Northern Territory
• Analysis of writing from the “outback” regions
• Concerns of marginal identity in literature
• Debates among avante-garde movements
• Parameters of publishing and promoting
• Themes of urbanisation and immigration
• The teaching of creative writing beyond borderlands

 
Please submit your articles by 1 August, 2018 to the guest editors Adelle Sefton-Rowston at adelle.sefton-rowston@cdu.edu.au and Ben van Gelderen ben.vangelderen@cdu.edu.au. Please remove your name and any indications of your authorship from the text but include your name, affiliation, keywords (max 8) and a 150 word bio in a separate document. Submissions must follow these guidelines: articles should be between 4000-8000 words long, line spacing 1.15 for whole document, Arial 10 point, justified, 6pt spacing after, APA referencing. Other formats (interviews, reflections, narrative prose etc) are to be consulted with the guest editors. More details on the journal and a detailed style-sheet is available at the journal’s website: http://www.cdu.edu.au/northern-institute/lcj 
 
 

17-19 September, 2018, Charles Darwin University, Darwin, NT.
 

Professor of Philosophy, Daniel Dennett, has been selected as the 2018 Charles Darwin Scholar, and he is visiting Charles Darwin University in Darwin, Australia from September 8 - 21, during which time he is going to present the “Charles Darwin Scholar Oration.” To coincide with this visit by Daniel Dennett, the ArtLab at Charles Darwin University is staging a conference. This event is going to be themed around the Charles Darwin Scholar Award, with a priority placed on research interests of Dennett in the topics of human consciousness and evolutionary biology, particularly as these topics relate to adaptation, both cultural and biological.

The Charles Darwin Scholar Program was established in 2013 to enhance the work and legacy of its namesake, Charles Darwin. This link provides more information on the Scholar Program and the role of the Charles Darwin Scholar (http://www.cdu.edu.au/newsroom/Professor-Dennett). Daniel Dennett is the author of many books, including Breaking the Spell (Viking, 2006), Darwin's Dangerous Idea (Simon and Schuster, 1995), and recently From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds (Norton, 2017). Dennett is the Director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University. He has delivered many talks, including not only the John Locke Lectures at Oxford in 1983, but also the Young Lectures at Adelaide in 1985. He has received two Guggenheim Fellowships, two Fulbright Fellowships, and five honorary doctorates. He has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Science, and he has been awarded the Erasmus Prize (the highest, academic honour in the Netherlands—an honour bequeathed by Queen Beatrice in Amsterdam).
 
Keynote Addresses and Special Events: 
Daniel Dennett will deliver a key-note address to open the conference. We expect to include other invited speakers, one of whom is Professor Stephen Mumford [Durham University]. 
 
Panel Session on Consciousness: 
Daniel Dennett, Stephen Mumford and other invited speakers will also take part in a conference special event, a panel session on the topic of consciousness.

Call for Papers:
The organisers invite contributors to submit, in the first instance, abstracts for papers. Topics for papers may include the following themes:
 

• Consciousness and Naturalism
• Cultural Change and Evolutionary Theory
• Innovating for Adaptation
• Indigenous Futures and Cultural Responses
• Cultural Change and Creativity in Science and the Arts

 
Please submit an abstract of 200 words (max), accompanied by a bio of 50 words (max). Deadline for submission of abstracts:  Wednesday 9 May, 2018.  

Please send abstracts (with biography) via email to Dr Sharon Ford (Subject Heading: Conference: Evolving minds 2018): sharon.ford@cdu.edu.au

More information will follow shortly about the program for the conference, including information about registration, participation, and accommodation, as well as other events pertaining to the proceedings.

Conference Organisation and Contact: 
Lead organiser and contact person: Dr Sharon Ford (sharon.ford@cdu.edu.au)

General organisation committee: members of ArtLab, College of Indigenous Futures, Arts and Society, CDU:

Dr Sharon Ford
Dr Nicolas Bullot
Dr Adelle Sefton-Rowston
Dr Christian Bok
 

ASAL members with publications in the AustLit Database are strongly encouraged to check that your profile and entries are up-to-date. Providing biographical details, photos and updated records will help elevate AustLit in google rankings and consequently drive more traffic to your scholarship. The email address for updates and questions is: info-austlit@austlit.edu.au

 

3-5 December 2018, The University of Queensland 
 
Australia, the oldest continental landmass on Earth, has had a relatively stable geographical history and, situated in the middle of a tectonic plate, it currently has no active volcanism. However the advent of colonisation led to massive upheavals in Australia’s extant cultures, history and environment. Prior to this, Indigenous peoples too dramatically impacted the environment.
 
Two hundred and thirty years later, these ruptures are being experienced more intensely than ever. Politics has seen the rise of populism; climate change is destabilising human and non-human populations; and discrimination remains entrenched despite feminism, social justice, and human rights movements and legislation. Technology has disrupted the traditional media landscape while creating new global networks. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have survived enormous hardship and displacement, yet respond strategically to assert a national voice, to call for agreement-making between governments and First Nations, and to insist on truth-telling about history.
 
These timely issues create a sense of urgency, a need to make sense of and to react in intelligent and creative ways. While this is a time of great unsettlement, it is also an opportunity: as scholars, we have the capacity to interrogate, contextualise and disseminate innovative responses to these issues. The 2018 InASA conference, Unsettling Australia, seeks to create an environment in which ideas and answers can be articulated, discussed and debated. We welcome papers which address any of the following eight streams:
 
 

• Unsettling the Transnational Turn
• Unsettling the Environment
•  Unsettling Colonial Networks
• Unsettling Resource Extraction
• Unsettling Intimacies in the Pacific Rim
• Unsettling Gender, Sexualities, Bodies
•  Unsettling Race and Sovereignty
• Unsettling Class
   

Please submit your abstract of no more than 250 words via the 2018 InASA Conference website at https://iash.uq.edu.au/inasa-18 
 
Select the conference stream that best fits your proposed contribution, then use the “Submit” button to generate an email that will be directed to the relevant stream convenor. Abstracts are due by 1 March 2018. General inquiries can be sent to inasa2018@uq.edu.au.

The Grattan Street Press is a university teaching press at the University of Melbourne.  Its Colonial Australian Popular Fiction series has now published two novels, John Lang’s The Forger’s Wife (1853, 1855) and Ellen Davitt’s Force and Fraud (1865):  https://grattanstreetpress.com/titles/

Ken Gelder is general editor of the series, which aims to publish two colonial novels each year across different genres: crime fiction for 2017, colonial romance – J.D. Hennessey’s An Australian Bush Track (1896) and Louise Mack’s An Australian Girl in London (1902) – for 2018. These novels are reprinted from first editions or original magazine serialisation. They are each given an informed scholarly introduction, a note on the text, and explanatory footnotes where appropriate, following the Oxford World’s Classics model. The overall aim is to produce colonial novels for contemporary readers that are a pleasure to read, but also suitable as teaching texts at universities and upper level secondary schools.

The series would welcome expressions of interest, and publishing suggestions, from potential future editors: especially RHD students working on colonial Australian literary projects. Introductions are usually around 2500 words and formats are now established. Send an email to Ken Gelder: kdgelder@unimelb.edu.au
 
 

AustLit collects information about the teaching of Australian literature texts at universities and tertiary institutions around Australia and internationally, and links to this information from the work and author records.

At a glance, AustLit tells you:

• how, where, and in what context, a particular text is taught

• what degree or course the text is part of

• which Australian texts are taught with non-Australian texts in thematically driven courses, such as nineteenth century women’s writing, popular fictions, eco-criticism, drama, life writing, etc.

So, if you’re teaching Australian texts in your university class, please send AustLit the:

• titles of set works

• course code and course title

• contact details

to info@austlit.edu.au or k.kilner@up.edu.au