The 2019 Association for the Study of Australian Literature (ASAL) Annual Conference will be hosted by the Westerly Centre at The University of Western Australia in Perth from 2-5 July 2019. The conference theme of ‘Dirt’ is meant to evoke a number of dimensions of material and cultural life that inflect Australian literary and narrative cultures.
• Dirt is the contested ground of a postcolonial nation.
• Dirt is the substance of our threatened ecologies.
• Dirt is the basis of our primary production—mined and milled, ploughed and tilled.
• Dirt is the enemy of cleanliness; it’s what we try to wash away, but stubbornly remains.
We are seeking 20 minute papers or proposals for panels that speak to the dirt of Australian experience and invite attempts to think through this concept in challenging and creative ways. Papers on these themes are welcome, but papers considering any and all aspects of ‘Australian’ literature broadly conceived are welcomed.
Topics could include: • Eco-criticism and environmental writing • The abject • Literature and pollution • Indigeneity and sovereignty • Gender and the body • Rural literatures • Literature and mining • Queer identities and expressiveness • Permeable borders and the politics of exclusion • The poetics of dirt / dirty poetics • Regionality and provincialism • Scandals, secrets and life-writing • Degradation and bare life • Exports/imports and movement of cultures • Commodities and Commodification • Post-nationalism and the world • Low cultures and debasement
Please submit your proposal to tony.hda@uwa.edu.au using the subject heading ASAL 2019 together with:
1. Title of paper
2. 250 word abstract
3. Name, position, organisation, brief bio (100 words max)
Deadline for abstracts is 31 January 2019