Abbott, MathewThe Myth of the Earth: Heidegger, Poetry and Politics
AccommodationView a range of accommodation options.
Attfield, SarahThe Politics of Working Class Writing
Austin, MichaelThe Unknown Conservative: Commitment and the Rule of Law in some recent Australian Fiction.
Barker, Karen“Rouse up your feeling intensely!” The double horizon of Jean Devanny’s socialist teleology and the élan ouvrier
Barrett, LindsayAn Australian Story
Boucher, Geoff“A Challenge to the Mere Politicization of Literature: The Frankfurt School and New Humanism”
Brady, VeronicaWalter Benjamin’s Dwarf and the Imaginative Construction of Australia
Broinowski, AlisonThe hegemonic bargain
Burdett, LorrainePolitics and Patrick White: Cold War Culture and the Paranoid Subject in The Aunt’s Story
Chakraborty, Mridula NathIn Praise of Smallness: the case of the provincial, mufossil novel
Christie, MichaelAnthony Macris’s Capital, volume one: Negating Financial Derivatives and Neoliberalism through Literary Form
Christie, Will“Politics and poetry are different things”: English Whig Bards and Scottish Whig Reviewers
Clipstone, Lyndall“I’m having an old friend for dinner” : Identity and Gourmet Cannibalism in The Silence of the Lambs
Coghlan, JoThe Syncretic Philosophies of Sukarno:Merdeka and the ‘imagined state’ in colonial and post-colonial Indonesia
Conti, ChrisThe Primacy of the Object
Cottle, DrewRussel Ward and the Making of the Australian Legend
Curry, Alice‘And, please, don’t tell me I hate foreigners’; Racial Prejudice and Ideological Blind Space in Anne Provoost’s Falling (1997) and John Boyne’s The Boy in Striped Pyjamas (2006).
Dalley, HamishRepenting Colonialism: Kate Grenville’s The Secret River and Nationalist Historiography
Day oneMonday 6th July 2009
Day twoTuesday 7th July 2009
Derrin, DanielFrancis Bacon and the Rhetorical Power of the 'Mental Image'
Dickson, SamThe Spectre of Capitalism: The Haunted Ideological Subject in Don DeLillo's Falling Man
Dunstan, Angela‘An interesting failure’: Vernon Lee’s Miss Brown and the Sexual Politics of Pre-Raphaelite Aestheticism
Ensor, Jason D “A Policy of Splendid Isolation”: Angus & Robertson, George G Harrap and the politics of co-operation in the Australian book trade during the late 1930s.
Generani, GustavoThe Beetle: A Betrayed Rhetoric
Gourley, JamesThe '9/11 Novel': Eternal Return in Pynchon and DeLillo
Griffiths, HuwThe hands and tongues of sovereignty in
King John
Haag, OliverThe Politics of Publishing Indigenous Literatures in Germany: A Comparative Study of Australian and New Zealand Indigenous Literatures in German Translation
Hanne, MikeMaking War and Peace with Metaphor
Holt, MatthewCapitalism as Fiction: The Communist Manifesto.
Hopkins, LucyThe Politics of Childhood in Christos Tsoilkas’ The Slap.
Jain, JasbirThe Nation and its Minorities: Refugees and Exiles in the Homeland
Jenkins, Gareth S.Resisting Rational Transformation: Mannix Narrating Psychiatry Narrating Mannix
Jordan, DeborahCanon, Gender and the Politics of Literary Production
Kordela, KiarinaSecular Logics for Grounding Truths and Laws: Amor Fati, Magic, and Prevention
Kuch, Peter‘We writers are not politicians’—W.B. Yeats: Poetry, Plays, Prose and Politics, and the Politics of Publication.
Kölling, AngelaThe very meat of politics in Joschka Fischer’s Mein langer Lauf zu mir selbst
Lawrence, Stephen‘Politics and Australian poetry: Public events and private poetics’: “Like old lovers, politics and the arts have shared an extended intimacy”
Lee, TomAbstract: From Place to Place: Travel and Illness in W. G. Sebald’s Vertigo
Martin, Jenn‘Now we’ll see what I can do with this planet’: The Rejection of Frontier Analogies in Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy.
McLaren, StephenCaesar confesses Christ: revisiting Joyce’s revolution of the Word
McLean, ThomasA Familiar Road: The Eastern European Immigrant and British Literature
Mercer, ErinSaul Bellow’s difficulties with Holocaust representation in The Victim
Moore, Tony‘Bohemians in the Street: Artists, Politics and Cultural Activism’
Munjal, SaviTelling Stories in a De-storied World – Fictionalizing History in The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns.
Musgrave, DavidThe Politics of The Anti-Pastoral
Ng, LyndaWho Narrates the Nation? Prizes, Politics and (Trans-)National Identity
Olubas, BrigittaWriting about the United Nations: Shirley Hazzard’s Humanist Politic
Orloff, CarolinaJulio Cortázar’s Forgotten Politics: Anti-Peronism in the Rise of a Writer.
Pham, HoaFrom Orlando to Kieu- Writing from the post- colonial feminist diaspora
Phillips, James“The Practicalities of the Absolute: Sovereignty in Shakespeare’s Richard II”
Poland, LouiseFrom Mother I’m Rooted to Angels of Power: A Collective History of Feminist Anthologies
Rene, Nyah YongCross-Fertilizing Nature and Culture: Re-reading Ngugi Wa Thiong’o’s The River Between and Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions
Sands, JessicaSex and Gender Inequality as Contributing Factors of Crime in the Edgar Allen Poe Award-Winners (2000-2008)
Sersier, TaniaSpeaking Out, Writing Stories: Feminist Politics and Literary Practices
Simone, EmmaVirginia Woolf and the Politics of Place
Smith, GavinThe significance of poetry in public debate
Solomon, Stefan“Layin’ ‘mong de t’ings I’s allus knowed”: Racial Representation and the Residual
Somlo, ScarlettThe Madness of Money, Politics and Reality in Kurt Vonnegut’s God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater
Steven, MarkSecondary Mass Graves: Confronting Genocide through Literature
Thomas, RoieThe Khoi-San People of the Kalahari: Their Struggle and their Representation in the work of Laurens Van Der Post.
Treep, ElizabethBeing at Home in Australia: Utopian Constructions in Eve Langley’s Bancroft House
Tuggle, Lindsay“Blood in the ground”: Alice Notley’s Ecopoetics of Mourning in Alma, or the Dead Women
Uhlmann, AnthonyPolitics of Relations in Joyce
van Rijswijk, HonniLiterary and Legal Judgment in Carpentaria and Mabo
Vardoulakis, DimitrisPolitical Literature in Greece: The case of Aris Alexandrou’s The Mission Box
Wallace, Joy and John O’CarrollThe Significance of Writing: From Meanjin to The Little Company.
Keynote Speakers:
Professor Steven Connor (Birkbeck College, University of London)
Professor Andrew Milner (Monash University)
Gail Jones (University of Western Sydney)
Kiarina Kordela (Macalester College, USA)
The productive intersection of literature and politics has invigorated both fields from Plato’s utopian blueprint, The Republic ,to Barack Obama’s inauguration speech. Across forms and modes, history and place, through literary practice and theory, politics has challenged writers, readers and critics to think productively about the worlds in which they live, how these worlds came into being, and what the future might (or should) hold. Simultaneously, literature has long depicted and dissected the very meat of politics: power, war, revolution, nationality, race, class, gender, industrialisation, diasporas and imperialism. More recently, the politics of sexuality, the environment, terrorism, the holocaust and indigeneity have excited creative and critical interest. Literature continues to prompt public and academic discussion about questions of agency and identity, social organization and ideology, propaganda and censorship, history and the imaginary new worlds.
‘Literature and Politics,’ the third annual conference of the Australasian Association for Literature, aims to promote and provoke informed discussion on these and other topics between established and emerging scholars (including postgraduate students).
Conference address: www.aal.asn.au/conference/2009
AAL address: www.aal.asn.au