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Semester 1, 2007 programme
9 March
23 March
13 April
20 April
4 May
18 May
25 May
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Post-grad students panel. School of English, Journalism and European Languages, UTAS
Rebecca Dorgelo "The Importance of Being Auber: A.O. Neville and Ernest Solomon Scat in Benang."
Dominic Lennard "The Crisis-Child of The Omen."
Elizabeth Mead "The Motherland Trope in Peter Carey's True History of the Kelly Gang."
Semester 2, 2007 programme
July 27
August 10
August 24
September 14
September 28
October 12
If you wish receive email notification of upcoming seminars please email SEJEL.admin@utas.edu.au and let us know.
Semester 1 Abstracts
"Archduke Ludwig Salvator’s sojourn in Tasmania in 1881"
Dr Eva Meidl, School of English, Journalism and European Languages, UTAS
In 1881 Archduke Ludwig Salvator of Austria travelled to Australia to attend the International Exhibition in Melbourne. As a prolific writer on the natural environment, particularly on Mediterranean islands, Ludwig Salvator took the opportunity to spend some time in Tasmania to gather as much information as he could. The resulting book Hobarttown oder eine Sommerfrische in den Antipoden is written in German and was published in 1886 in Prague.
The extraordinary research methodology employed by the Archduke, the “Tabulae Ludovicianae” reflects certain characteristic ways of seeing, learning and understanding, fundamental to the culture of nineteenth-century industrialising societies. Hobarttown oder eine Sommerfrische in den Antipoden is organized to guide prospective emigrants considering Tasmania as a place of settlement. The rational was clear: potential migrants would derive important information by comparing the meticulous details about Tasmania, presented by Ludwig Salvator, with their lives in their home country. The exquisite illustrations by Ludwig Salvator would also serve to promote Tasmania as a place of boundless beauty. This paper endeavours to bring Ludwig Salvator’s book to the attention of the Australian public for the first time.
"Why western academic culture may be sinking under the weight of 'complaint' and what can be done about it"
Dr Kerry Howells, School of Education, UTAS
This seminar examines the notion that complaint could be a hidden factor in student disengagement and teacher disempowerment. In drawing the distinction between the constructive kind of complaint that leads to pro-action and that which comes from a kind of "victim mentality", the seminar proposes the possible prominence of the latter in university contexts. It is postulated that, in academic culture, a dialogue of the second type of complaint is often clothed in incisiveness, intelligence and critical thinking, and can be taken as a display of intellectual prowess. The seminar will discuss the possible negative effects that complaint could have on research, teaching and learning, and the academic community. Alternatives are presented to provoke discussion as to possible ways forward.
"Musings in Maoriland"
Dr Jane Stafford, Victoria University of Wellington and Professor Mark Williams, University of Canterbury
The literature of Maoriland, as New Zealand was popularly known from the 1880s to the beginning of the First World War, has been the ‘black hole' in New Zealand 's literary memory. Maoriland writers were associated with sentiment, gentility and colonial deference, a world of saccharine fantasy in which Maori warriors in heroic attitudes and Maori maidens in seductive ones inhabited outmoded Victorian literary forms, while at the same time the business of settlement sidelined and dispossessed actual Maori.
The recent publication Maoriland: New Zealand Literature 1872-1914 by Jane Stafford and Mark Williams suggests that the writing of Maoriland was more complex and more diverse, the beginnings of a self-consciously New Zealand literature, which adapts European literary forms to the new place. In this, the parallels and contrasts with Australian nineteenth-century literature and its place in the local canon is particularly striking.
This seminar discusses the research involved in the writing of Maoriland, the questions it raises for colonial and postcolonial criticism, and, as a case study, looks at that epitome of Maoriland writing, Alfred Domett's Ranolf and Amohia.
"American Tropics: Towards a Literary Geography"
Professor Peter Hulme, University of Essex
“American Tropics: Towards a Literary Geography” is the title of a collaborative project at the University of Essex which is investigating the writing of literary history through an attention to place. This paper will outline the project, with attention both to its underlying theory and to its conceptualisation of area, place, and site. A brief case study will look at some of the writing associated with Guantánamo Bay.
"Curious Relationships: Implications and Consequences of Writing Lives."
Miranda Morris, Kris Harmon and Toni Sherwood, UTAS
When working closely on the lives of others the boundaries between objectivity and subjectivity become blurred and inevitably a relationship develops between researcher and subject(s). Despite, or perhaps because of this potential intimacy, biographical work in its various guises has become a burgeoning field of study within the academy. Reflecting this trend, a special interest group – 'Imaginary Friends' – comprising people working in this field has been meeting regularly at UTAS over the past year. Three members of this group, Miranda Morris, Kris Harman and Toni Sherwood (working across the disciplines of Gender Studies, Aboriginal Studies/History and English respectively) present a panel discussion that addresses the responsibilities, delights and pitfalls of delving into the lives of others.
"Finding the Body in the Library: thoughts on archival research and biography"
Dr Sylvia Martin, Honorary Associate, School of English, Journalism and European Languages, UTAS
I might have subtitled this paper ‘Confessions of an archive tragic' but that has been used already in Removing the Boundaries, so I will just have to confess to being another of those odd characters who suffer from the incurable disease of archive fever, an affliction that manifests itself in the compulsive haunting of library manuscript rooms, of forbidding state archives, even of the lounge rooms of unsuspecting individuals willing to let the sufferer trawl through boxes of family photographs and memorabilia.
My paper will reflect on the impossibility of the archive as a repository of the ‘truth'; it will also reflect on the inherent instability and hybridity of the genre of auto/biography. To illustrate how the processes involved in re/creating a life inform my research practices in reading archives and, conversely, how archival material informs the ways I structure my biographies, I will draw from my work on Passionate Friends: Mary Fullerton, Mabel Singleton and Miles Franklin (2001); Ida Leeson: A Life: Not a blue-stocking lady (2006), and my work-in-progress on the life of Aileen Palmer, the brilliant but troubled elder daughter of one of Australian literature's pre-eminent couples, Vance and Nettie Palmer.
Sylvia's book 'Ida Leeson: A Life: Not a blue-stocking lady' has been shortlisted for the 2007 NSW Premier's Literary Awards for non-fiction and for the 2007 Kibble Literary Award for women writers.
Semester 2 Abstracts
"Microhistory as Biography: Recovering the Life Mary Perth, a Runaway Slave", Prof Cassandra Pybus, Honorary Research Professor in the School of English, Journalism and European Languages and Australian Research Council Professorial Fellow in the School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry, University of Sydney
Biographers must engage with the life narratives of subaltern individuals, not just literate and well-connected elites. Without knowing the stories of such people, how can we comprehend our part in the world? In this paper I will discuss the Herculean task of trying to recover the life narrative of Mary Perth, a slave woman who was part of a cohort of runaways allied to the British during the American Revolution, subsequently resettled in Canada and later Africa . As an actor in that complicated and traumatic drama, Mary Perth's struggle to find dignity and self-determination is historically significant. But she only exists for historians as a name on a series of lists compiled by her slaveowners and by British officials. Is it possible to recover her submerged life from archival fragments?
“Newspapers and ‘common sense': why should we read editorials?”, Verica Rupar, School of English, Journalism and European Languages, UTAS
This paper examines editorial discourse and the newspaper's production of 'common sense' in relation to issues of public concern. Using a case study of editorials published on genetic engineering in New Zealand, the article discusses how discursive characteristics of one journalistic practice (reporting facts in the 'news') influence another journalistic practice (expressing opinion in the 'editorial'). Focusing on the newspaper genre that communicates 'views', the paper investigates the manner in which editorials achieve their persuasive goals, and examines how particular components of journalistic discourse, such as headlines, topics and the editorial structure, contribute to public discussion about important issues in society.
“Italian POWs in the north of Tasmania”, Ian McFarlane, Associate Lecturer for Riawunna at the Cradle Coast Campus, UTAS
Dealing with the WW2 rural labour scheme that assigned over 4,000 Italian POWs to work on Australian farms (nearly 1,000 in Tasmania) - this study focuses on those prisoners assigned to North West Tasmania; the intent and function of the scheme, the working conditions of prisoners, social impact on the relatively isolated rural communities affected, while comparing and contrasting the differing accounts emerging from archival and oral evidence.
"The Musical Style of an homme de lettres: Camille Mauclair", Dr Rosemary Yeoland
What is it that renders a written phrase musical? What techniques may a writer employ to meld literature and music?
This paper seeks to address such questions by examining examples taken from the “musicological” works of the French writer Camille Mauclair (1872-1945). This homme de lettres left a considerable literary legacy to the musical domain. Not having had a formal theoretical musical training, he nonetheless conceptualised his great love of the art in his works and employed a particular musical style of writing. Mauclair's form of musicality owes its origins both to his symbolist background and to the wagnerian idea of a fusion of the arts.
The extracts studied are taken from Mauclair's La Religion de la musique, Les Héros de l'orchestre, Schumann and Histoire de la musique européenne de 1850 à 1914. With the aim of highlighting the rapport between text and music, the paper investigates his use of alliteration, assonance, internal rhyme and rhythm: tools of trade of the symbolist poets and writers. Other techniques employed by Mauclair, such as musical metaphors and analogies will also be discussed.
"Frank Hurley: Manipulating the Truth", Dr Nicola Goc, School of English, Journalism and European Languages, UTAS
During World War One Australian documentary photographer Frank Hurley, best known for his iconic photographs of the Antarctic, created photographs of the battlefields of Flanders, which were fakes. Hurley created iconic images of Australian soldiers on the battlefields of France through the use of montagesadding airplanes and figures, smoke and bomb blaststo create a more dramatic image. Hurley was doing nothing new. Like the American Civil War photographer Matthew Brady half a century earlier, Hurley was overtly manipulating images long before the advent of digital photography. This paper will analyse the iconic war photography of Australian photographer Captain Frank Hurley and his practice of manipulating pictures from the backdrop of a Europe at war in 1917. It will investigate Frank Hurleys practice in an effort to understand why he so vigorously pursued his right to create and display photomontages as true representations of the war experiences of Australian troops. The influential role British press baron Lord Beaverbrook played in assisting Hurley to achieve his goal, and the battle of wills that developed between Hurley the photographer and the Charles Bean the journalist/historian in the process of truth telling will also be discussed.
“Mystical Monster Marine: Octopus & Squid in the Human Imagination”, Prof Helen Tiffin, School of English, Journalism and European Languages, UTAS
This work in progress paper is from the beginning (rather than the end) of a project on the cultural and biological history of the Cephalopoda (octopus, squid etc.). It will eventually I hope be developed into an illustrative monograph for the Reaktion animal series, one designed to remove boundaries between the social sciences, biological sciences and the humanities.
In this talk, focus will be on textual and illustrative figurations of octopus and squid and will consider issues of zoomorphism, anthroporphism and the continuing conundrum of the relationships between representation and the real. |
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