University of Roskilde and University of Copenhagen, Denmark
"Translating Cultures: Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific"
The colon is an early indicator that EASA has decided to expand its area of activity to include New Zealand and the Pacific. Translating, on the other hand, indicates a process, an open-ended attempt at conceptualising what is meant by Australian, New Zealand and Pacific Studies. This can obviously, given the location of EASA and its conferences, be done from a European perspective, but it can also be explored from within each of the nations covered by the umbrella terms, and between those nations. In other words, to discuss Australian, New Zealand and Pacific Studies is an uncontainable practice, which we perform both with an acute sense of the object at hand, but also with a hopefully equally acute sense of our own subjectivities, as academics located in very different environments, with very different agendas and demands, which our performances as academics are supposed to meet.
We invite papers working in all kinds of academic fields, from sociology, anthropology/ ethnography/ethnology, literature, geography, history, environmental studies, cultural studies, postcolonial studies and probably a few others… The very broad title of the conference is also a broad invitation to everyone working in these fields to identify themselves with the EASA network and its conferences which have developed over a substantial number of years to become the primary site for discussions of Australian Studies in Europe, and now hopefully also New Zealand and Pacific Studies. So rather than attempt to single out particular suggestions for approaches, we conclude by inviting particularly people who see themselves as working on migrancy, indigenous studies, refugees and multiculturalism (including also for example Asian-Australian Studies). The reason for particularly singling out these fields of interest, is that they speak most readily and immediately to concerns which are very much at the top of the European agenda, and as such would provide another important opportunity to show that despite the geographical remoteness of Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific, certain issues are of a global concern and reach, and constitutes a field where Europeans could meet the fellow colleagues through the prism of Australian, New Zealand and Pacific Studies.
Accompanying event:
One day immediately after the conference will be devoted to the third EASA Postgraduate Seminar, where advanced students can discuss their work with experts in their field in a lecture + workshop-format.
Conference Organisers:
- Mads Clausen, Dept. of English, Copenhagen University
- Lars Jensen, Cultural Encounters, Roskilde University, hopeless@ruc.dk
- Eva Rask Knudsen, Dept. of English, Copenhagen University
- Kirsten Holst Petersen, Depts. of Cultural Encounters and English, Roskilde University
- Stuart Ward, Dept. of English, Copenhagen University
Timetable:
- 15 January, 2007 - Email your 200 word abstracts (in an attached file) with title to Mads Clausen (mclausen@hum.ku.dk)
- 1 March, 2007 expiry of early bird registration fee
- 1 August 2007 deadline for full registration
