CFP reminder: Australians Abroad: An interdisciplinary conference (UQ, Feb 2011)] [08.08.2010]
Australians Abroad: An interdisciplinary conference
University of Queensland, 10-11 February 2011
Hosted by the School of Languages and Comparative Cultural Studies, UQ
Keynote speakers:
Emeritus Professor Ros Pesman, author of Duty Free: Australian Women Abroad and co-editor of Australians in Italy: Contemporary Lives and Impressions and The Oxford Book of Australian Travel Writing.
Associate Professor Martin Thomas, ARC Future Fellow, author of The Many Worlds of R.H. Matthews: In Search of the Australian Anthropologist (in press) and The Artificial Horizon: Imagining the Blue Mountains. Award-winning writer/producer of radio documentaries. Martin will speak on the export of images of Aboriginal culture by non-Aboriginal people, focussing on Charles Mountford’s US lecture tours (1944-45) and their enduring impacts.
CALL FOR PAPERS:
If myths of national identity have focused on travel to Australia (‘discovery’, invasion/settlement, transportation, migration), it is worth noting that travel from Australia has been a significant phenomenon for just as long. From Yolngu people accompanying Macassan fisherman to the islands of Indonesia, from those First Fleeters who made the return journey ‘home’ to Europe, to today’s travellers, tourists and expatriates, residents of Australia have left its shores for a multitude of destinations and reasons and in very different roles. Descendants of migrants and refugees, soldiers, nurses, artists, authors, brides, chaperones, utopians, sportspeople, students, teachers, backpackers, cruise-ship travellers, journalists, IT professionals: some have sought to rejoin family, others to escape it; some have sought renown, others have been head-hunted.
We invite papers that explore the conference theme from a variety of disciplinary perspectives including: auto/biography, travel writing, history, language learning, intercultural communication, sociology, tourism, literary/cultural studies.
Possible topics might include:
analyses of fiction, memoirs, letters, diaries, interviews relating to travel by Australians
patterns of travel/writing, configurations of gender and desire at different times, in different places
Aboriginal travel to various destinations and its purposes
the search for Utopia and its construction by Australians
contemporary discourses displacing the ‘cultural cringe’ of the 1960s as the motivation for travel
reflections on Australia from an overseas vantage point
Australian experiences in non-English speaking territory, language-learning memoirs, the relation between language and cultural identity
the extent to which belonging is sought in the destination culture, accommodation to local cultures
representations of particular cultures by Australians
New Zealand travel/expatriate experiences (this might form a panel broadening the conference theme to Australasians Abroad)
Abstracts of 250 words or panel proposals (3 x 20 minute papers on a common theme with an abstract for each) with full contact details should be sent by 31 August 2010 to Dr Juliana de Nooy at: j.denooy@uq.edu.au
Conference registration will open in October 2010 and will include earlybird registration fees. Participation by postgraduate students is particularly welcome.
Further details will be posted, as they become available, on the conference website: http://www.slccs.uq.edu.au/index.html?page=134821&pid=70702