Call for Papers- 2018 Literary Studies Convention

The Literary Interface
2018 Literary Studies Convention
July 4-7, 2018
Australian National University, Canberra

The Australian National University (ANU) is proud to host the 2018 Literary Studies Convention. The convention will be held on the ANU campus in Canberra between Wednesday, July 4 and Saturday, July 7.

An interface describes a surface or plane that lies between or joins two points in space, but it also refers to ‘a means or place of interaction between two systems’ and ‘an apparatus designed to connect two scientific instruments so that they can be operated jointly’ (OED).

This convention will bring together scholars working across the broad field of literary studies to discuss the literary as an interface between different forms of knowledge and processes of knowledge formation, looking at questions of how and through what means the literary is communicated, represented, negotiated, and remade. By placing the concept of the literary centre-stage while at the same time interrogating its role as an interface, we wish to open up for discussion questions about the role, dynamism, and value of the literary in a time of institutional change and ongoing disciplinary formation. We would also like to debate the role of the literary text – and literary studies as a discipline – as a site of encounter between diverse languages and potentially alien modes of reading and writing.

Invoking the possibility of melding, soldering, and/or merging different elements, the literary interface suggests the resilience as well as the suppleness of disciplinary boundaries. It conjures the possibility of new meeting points; zones of contact and interaction but also sites of contention and disruption that might challenge received platitudes yet help us to bring to the surface new meanings.

Confirmed keynotes include Johanna Drucker, Lauren Goodlad and Brigitta Olubas.

We invite papers and panel proposals, including but not limited to the following topics: 

Mediation, remediation, and transmediation  
Literary Formalism – its past, present and/or future  
Multimedia forms as interfaces  
The relationship between forms, networks, and hierarchies  
Encounters between readers and modes of reading  
Translation  
The relationship between literary studies and other disciplines, e.g., environmental studies, maths, ethnography, science  
The interface between academic and public critical cultures  
Spaces of reading (online and otherwise)  
The negotiation of literary value  
The classroom as literary interface  
Literary objects as interfaces: circulation, reception, paratexts  
The stage and other spaces of performance as interface between temporalities, bodies, performers, writers and audiences  
Cultural interfaces  
Languages of colonialists/postcoloniality  
Transnationalism and minor transnationalism.

Postgraduate Breakfast and Workout: Research Toning Circuit Session on Wednesday 1 July 2018 

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Jointly held by the Association for the Study of Australian Literature, the Australasian Association for Literature, the Australasian Universities Languages and Literature Association, and the Australian University Heads of English.

Follow us on Twitter @LitInterface and Facebook @Literaryinterface2018

Convention Registration
For further information please contact the Conference Convenor, Dr Julieanne Lamond:
E: julieanne.lamond@anu.edu.au
Tel: +61 2 6125 4786

ANU School of Literature, Languages and Linguistics
A.D. Hope Building 14
The Australian National University
Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia