Call for Papers

Antarctic Visions: Cultural Perspectives on the Southern Continent
21-23 June 2010
University of Tasmania, Hobart, Australia

Download the Call for Papers [PDF]

Following the success of the “Imagining Antarctica” conference at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand in September 2008, the University of Tasmania will host “Antarctic Visions,” a second conference examining Antarctica from a cultural perspective. Drawing on the arts, social sciences and humanities, the conference will focus attention on the ways we perceive and represent the southernmost continent. Connections with other disciplines – particularly scientific disciplines – are encouraged, as are new approaches to familiar challenges, such as the whaling and climate change debates. While the primary focus of the conference is on the far south, papers which combine Antarctic and Arctic material are welcome.

Papers of twenty minutes with ten-minute question times are invited. Panel proposals are also welcome.

Topics might include:

• Climate change and the South Polar regions: what can the humanities add to the conversation?
• Antarctica in literature, music, art, photography and film
• The influence of perceptions of Antarctica on policy
• Rethinking the heroic era
• Tasmanian connections to the Antarctic
• Human-animals relations in Antarctic
• Resource exploitation (including whaling)
• Gender and Polar Studies
• Postcolonial Antarctica
• Subantarctic islands: histories and cultures
• Polar pastimes
• Food in polar history
• Cultural geography of Antarctica
• Polar psychology
• Antarctic travel and tourism
• Antarctic archives, libraries, artefacts and museums

Please submit an abstract of your paper, or your proposal for a panel, with a brief biography, to Ralph.Crane@utas.edu.au or Elizabeth.Leane@utas.edu.au by Monday 15 March 2010.

Conference contributors might also be interested in attendinsome or all of another University of Tasmania conference, “Oceanic Passages,” 23-25 June 2010, hosted by the Centre for Colonialism and its Aftermath.

Convenors: Prof. Ralph Crane (University of Tasmania), Dr Elizabeth Leane (University of Tasmania), Dr Steve Nicol (Australian Antarctic Division), Dr Mark Williams (Victoria University of Wellington)

Keynote Speakers:

Max Jones
Senior Lecturer in Modern History, U of Manchester. Author of The Last Great Quest: Captain Scott’s Antarctic Sacrifice, a cultural history of the Scott expedition, and editor of OUP edition of Scott’s journals.

Christy Collis
Lecturer in Media and Communications at Queensland University of Technology; author of a number of articles on Antarctica, concentrating on postcoloniality and spatiality.

William L. Fox
Writer; author of Terra Antarctica: Looking into the Emptiest Continent and numerous other books.

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