Meilleurs voeux / Best Wishes!

Le projet Patrick WHITE pour CERCLES

CALL FOR PAPERS: PATRICK WHITE’S CENTENARY

The year 2012 marks the centenary of the birth of Australia’s Nobel-prize winning author Patrick White who died just over twenty years ago. Since his death, White’s critical reputation has suffered somewhat, although there are signs now of renewed interest in his work. Cercles, the major French online journal for academic work in the field of Anglophone studies, will dedicate a special issue to Patrick White in 2012 in order to celebrate the centenary of the author.

Submissions for papers to be included in this issue are called for, especially, but not only, from non-Australia based scholars.

Papers can address any major aspect of White’s fiction including, for example, transnational perspectives, regional aspects, metaphysics, myth-making, recognition (including a discussion of the Patrick White award), aesthetics or representations of Indigenous Australians. Papers that address and theorise gender, sexuality and queer readings of White’s work are also welcome.

Proposals of book reviews on Patrick White scholarship are also solicited.

Please submit an abstract of up to 200 words simultaneously to both Editors (details provided below) as soon as possible. Full length essays will be expected by the end of March 2012. The Chicago Manual of Style is the guide for referencing.

Besides publishing several essays on contemporary Australian fiction, Jean-François Vernay is the Co-Editor of a special issue of Antipodes entitled Fear in Australian Literature and Film 23: 1. He is the author of three monographs: Water from the Moon: Illusion and Reality in the Works of Australian Novelist Christopher Koch (Cambria Press, 2007) and Panorama du roman australien des origines à nos jours (Paris: Hermann, 2009) translated as The Great Australian Novel– A Panorama (Brolga, 2010) and a forthcoming essay on fiction, literary theory and criticism that will be published in May 2012 by Editions Pascal. Blog: http://jean-francoisvernay.blogspot.com/ Contact: vernayj@yahoo.com

David Coad is a Lecturer at the University of Valenciennes, in France. After a doctorate on the religious metaphysics of Patrick White, obtained at the University of Paris III – Nouvelle Sorbonne, he published a collection of essays on Patrick White in 1997. Other publications include Gender Trouble Down Under: Australian Masculinities (Valenciennes: PUV, 2002) and The Metrosexual: Gender, Sexuality, and Sport (New York: SUNY, 2008). Contact: coad@neuf.fr

Le projet Patrick White avance et en attendant je vous laisse lire l’article de Anne Le Guellec-Minel publié dans la revue LISA consultable ici:

http://lisa.revues.org/1142

Voss, du roman de Patrick White au livret de David Malouf : simple adaptation ou transformation de l’imaginaire national ?

Voss, from Patrick White’ s novel to David Malouf’s libretto: a faithful adaptation or a betrayal of White’s imagining of the nation ?

Abstract

When a couple of years before Australia’s Bicentenary celebrations, David Malouf accepted the commission from Opera Australia, the Sydney Opera company, to adapt Patrick White’s novel Voss for the operatic stage, he was certainly aware that this meant participating in the Establishment’s efforts to promote a culturally exalted Australian identity on the European model. When the opera was premiered in 1986, the libretto was praised both by the critics and the public for its success in making use of the dramatic potential of the novel and, beyond that, in bringing out the musical possibilities of a style which had often been described as difficult and obscure. This article first undertakes to analyse a few aspects of Malouf’s generic rewriting of the source text, which suggest that insofar as the opera was designed as a monumental celebration to Australian achievement, the libretto does seem to betray, to a certain extent, the novel’s criticism of heroic posturing and complacent patriotism, and to collaborate in the institutional recuperation of what remains a controversial work. However, a closer study of the way in which Malouf writes his own homoerotic poetry into White’s narrative reveals that it subtly contributes to maintaining a truly “post-colonial” ambivalence within the apparent conventionality of the national celebration.

Call for papers: Southerly 2012

Southerly is calling for papers and expressions of interest for two of its issues for 2012.

The first issue focuses on women's writing after World War Two, particularly Elizabeth Harrower, Jessica Anderson and Shirley Hazzard, where scholarship has been limited, but we will also consider other writers. In the first instance send an abstract to Elizabeth McMahon at e.mcmahon@unsw.edu.au. We would need completed essays by May.

The second issue is titled "Islands and Archipelagoes" and we welcome work on and around this theme. Again, in the first instance please send an abstract to Elizabeth McMahon at e.mcmahon@unsw.edu.au. We would need completed essays by October.

Thanks and regards,
Elizabeth McMahon
Co-editor, Southerly

Call for Papers: The Taboo Conference

Università di Bologna at Forlì (Italy)
25-27 October 2012

http://taco2012.sitlec.unibo.it


In a world that seems continuously to be pushing the envelope of what is acceptable to the inhabitants of specific linguistic and cultural contexts, this interdisciplinary conference acknowledges the importance of investigating taboos and their reinforcement/breaking in various areas of language, culture and society, and across different cultures. We propose to explore the delicate balance and subtle boundaries between the need for inclusion and respect for different ethnic, religious, sexual, etc. backgrounds – which seems to be at the basis of modern multicultural societies – and a (un)conscious push towards the breaking of existing taboos, for example for shock value, as in the case of humour. In such context, investigation of the linguistic, cultural, social, institutional and personal implications of taboo reinforcement/breaking appears of extreme value. The Conference organizers welcome individual proposals or pre-organized panels from different disciplines pertaining – but by no means limited – to the following thematic areas: sex and sexuality, nudity, death and the afterlife, sickness and disability, scatology/bodily fluids, deformity/otherness, blasphemy, altered states/drug culture, body modifications, fat, prostitution etc.

The working language for The Taboo Conference is English. Each paper presentation should be scheduled for 20 minutes followed by 10 minutes for questions. Abstracts should be submitted through the conference website http://taco2012.sitlec.unibo.it by 15 February 2012. If you are interested in submitting a panel, please contact us by the same deadline at Department of Interdisciplinary Studies in Translation, Languages and Cultures (SITLEC), University of Bologna, C.so Diaz 64, 47100 Forlì, Italy.
Email: dipsitlec.taco2012@unibo.it

Notification of acceptance for both abstracts and panels will be given by 15 March 2012.

Conference: Border Crossings

Dear Colleagues,

In keeping with our long-standing and successful tradition the Flinders Institute for Research in the Humanities, Flinders University will be hosting a conference at Penneshaw, Kangaroo Island, South Australia. The Conference will be held in the Seafront Hotel from Monday 10 to Wednesday 12 December 2012.

The conference theme is: Border Crossings

The organising committee invites you to submit an abstract for consideration. In the broad field of Humanities, including Literary Studies, Cultural Studies, Language Studies, History, Archaeology, Philosophy, Tourism and the Creative and Performing Arts, proposals should be for papers within the general theme of Border Crossings, including such topics as:
crossing borders of times (e.g. historical novels)
crossing borders of places
crossing borders of languages (e.g. translation)
crossing borders of genres
crossing borders of countries
crossing borders of identities (e.g. migrant narratives)
crossing borders of media (e.g. books into film)

or any other crossing of borders

We look forward to receiving your expressions of interest by 28 February and a 300-word abstract by 30 March 2012.

Given our experience of organising twelve highly successful international/national conferences in the past eleven years, including those held in Kangaroo Island, of which the most recent is Shadow of the Precursor, 7–9 December 2009, we can confidently predict that our conference will attract a select but lively group of participants, including a significant number of postgraduate students from Flinders and elsewhere.

We also plan to referee, select and edit papers for book publication (as is our custom). Previous Kangaroo Island conferences have resulted in the following books:

Alas, for the Pelicans! Flinders, Baudin and Beyond (2002); The Regenerative Spirit (2 vols, 2003 and 2004); London was Full of Rooms (2006); Something Rich and Strange (2009); Journeying and Journalling (2011), and Shadow of the Precursor (2012).

Publishers include Wakefield Press, Lythrum Press, and Cambridge Scholars Press.

As soon as we can we will upload details about the conference, registration form, hotel and other accommodation, Sealink bookings, conference events, side trips etc. at http://www.flinders.edu.au/ehl/firth/firth-conferences/

For further information about the conference, in the meantime, please contact the conference coordinator nena.bierbaum@flinders.edu.aunena.bierbaum@flinders.edu.au>

Kind regards,


Diana Glenn, Graham Tulloch and Nena Bierbaum
Conference Organising Committee

Call for papers: Australia’s Mediterranean Isolario:

Australia’s Mediterranean Isolario: Writers’ and Artists’ Perceptions of the Mediterranean Islands

Call for Papers for a Special Issue to be submitted for consideration to the Journal of Australian Studies

As an island within the Pacific region Australia writes itself a narrative of having reasonable historical and cultural relationships with other Pacific Islands. Its colonial history with Britain has favoured and endorsed a similar, though perhaps more tenuous, relationship with the Atlantic seaboard. But what about its relationships and links with the Mediterranean islands? Australia’s link with the Mediterranean is older than its settler history and goes back to the notion of Terra Australis, the landmass that mimed Europe. It was this resemblance that led to the pursuit of the inland sea—a ‘mediterranean’— in the middle of the island continent in the nineteenth century. In modern Australia’s imaginary it is al fresco dining that bespeaks a Mediterranean lifestyle. Are there any other connections between Australia and the Mare Nostrum and its islands?

Hardly ever present on the list of must-sees for Australian travellers abroad experiencing their European grand-tour, the islands of the Mediterranean have instead captured the imagination of many Australian writers and artists. From the mid 1950s, when Charmian Clift and George Johnston moved with their family to the Greek island of Kalymnos and later to that of Hydra, a number of them have chosen different Mediterranean islands as home and/or inspiration for their work. Shirley Dean, Shirley Hazzard, Robert Dessaix, Dorothy Porter, Roseanne Dingli, Peter Robb, Venero Armanno and Arnold Zable are probably among the most popular writers whose work has featured an island of the Mare Nostrum as the location for or the subject of their writing (Corsica, Capri, Corfu, Crete, Malta, Sicily and Ithaca respectively). Joined and nurtured by the same sea, though idiosyncratically different from each other, the islands of the Mediterranean fittingly conjure the more recent idea of an ‘island’ as a hybrid space, isolated and connected at the same time, single fragments of a rich and multilayered network. Sites of exclusion, seclusion and freedom, these islands have provided a space where writers and artists from all over the world have come to express their personality and unleash their creativity.

What draws Australian writers and artists to these particular islands? Is it their ancient and mythological dimension, their evoked timelessness, or rather their stark and often simple reality, or is it all these? Is it their geographical dimension and actual isolation or rather their peculiar cross-cultural manifestations and their undermined cosmopolitanism, or none of these? Is it that distinctive sense of freedom that only a circumscribed space, such as a small island, can give? What are the differences and similarities that surface from their Antipodean representations and how do they differ from those of islands in other regions of the world? Is the idea of the ‘island’, with its cultural and geographical imprint a prominent trope in these works? Is the yearning for these smaller islands born from the fact that Australia too is an island? Is the creativity of the artists influenced at all by such hybrid spaces? What lies behind these perceptions? Is it a cultural, historical or geographical phenomenon? What sort of isolario transpires from these specific Australian perceptions? These are just some of the questions and issues this collection aims to focus on at a moment in which the Mediterranean region is featuring prominently on the media. Rather than being merely a taxonomy of representations of the Mediterranean Islands perceived through Australian eyes, this collection aims to uncover the many possible relationships these neglected spaces of cultural production have in Australian Studies and aims to do so from a number of interdisciplinary perspectives.

Expressions of interest and abstracts of 300 words should be submitted to Luisa Pèrcopo at lpercopo@hotmail.com or lpercopo@unica.it by 15 January 2012.

Book Launch: Lentil as Anything: Food, Culture, Community

For the festive season we have decided to continue our offer of free postage for the Lentil as Anything book right up until Christmas! With profit going directly to Lentil as Anything, this book is the perfect Christmas gift.

Lentil as Anything: Food, Culture, Community is a coffee table/cookbook celebrating food, writing, and cultural diversity—with profiles of key chefs at the Lentil as Anything restaurants, their favourite mouth-watering recipes, interviews with staff members, and writing from established Australian authors Arnold Zable, Alice Pung and Tara June Winch.

Through the lives, struggles, and triumphs of many wonderful people Lentil as Anything: Food, Culture, Community captures the essence of community in a unique cultural and culinary work of exceptional depth.

You can order the book directly through our website www.ilurapress.com or pick it up at any of the Lentil as Anything restaurants for RRP $54.00.

It is also available at the following Melbourne bookstores; other states to follow soon.

• Berkelouw Books (Armadale)
• Books for Cooks (Fitzroy)
• Brunswick St Bookstore (Fitzroy)
• Convent Gallery Bookshop (Abbotsford Convent)
• Coventry Street Bookstore (South Melbourne)
• Dymocks (Camberwell)
• Embiggen Books (Melbourne)
• Hill of Content (Melbourne)
• Paperback Bookshop (Melbourne)
• Readings (Carlton)
• Readings (Hawthorn)
• Readings (St Kilda)
• Stonnington Books (Malvern)

Lentil as Anything: Food, Culture, Community was produced in association with the National Australia Bank and the Australia Council for the Arts.

From the Ilura Press Team, have a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

"Do give books ... for Christmas. They’re never fattening, rarely sinful, and permanently personal." -- Lenore Hershey