Literary Studies Convention
University of Wollongong
7 – 11 July 2015

Theme: Literary Networks

Literature is a meeting point for intersecting lines of thought and feeling about the world. As the German critic Theodore Adorno observes in his Aesthetic Theory: “Art is autonomous and it is not…. The great epics, which have survived even their own oblivion, were in their age intermingled with historical and geographical reportage.”

Like its object of study, the discipline of literary criticism survives by making connections to other disciplines and to other ways of thinking and feeling about the world. Literary thinking, in this sense, is networked thinking. It is intermingled with other modes of discourse such as the philosophical, the linguistic, the political, the social, the geographical, the theological and the sexual.

We invite papers that engage with literature and literary criticism as a network where a network, is understood very broadly as a group or system of interconnected people or things. Given that this conference seeks to bring together scholars who work in and between a variety of national literatures, literary, media and cultural histories, we encourage submissions that engage with and exemplify the rich variety of critical and creative practices currently being undertaken under the aegis of ‘literary studies’ in a contemporary Australian context.

Deadline for abstracts: 31 January 2015.

For guidelines and further information visit lha.uow.edu.au/lit-net2015