‘Nervous Aesthetics’: Literary criticism, cognitive science, and sensory perception in works by Woolf, Kerouac and Nabokov
Lecture
Presented as part of the SLLL Literary Studies Seminar Series Recent movements in literature and the humanities have drawn upon insights gleaned from biological sciences in the search for new analysis and further relevance. For some scholars this is viewed as a renaissance while for others it…
‘The man who isn’t there’: André Gide as travel companion in Robert Dessaix’s Arabesques
Lecture
Presented as part of the SLLL Literary Studies Seminar Series This paper looks at the characterisation of André Gide as travel companion in Robert Dessaix’s 2008 text Arabesques. The Australian writer journeys around North Africa and Europe in the footsteps of—but also, crucially, accompanied by—…
Holocaust Memory as a Global Language: The Case of Indigenous Australian Suffering
Lecture
Presented as part of the Humanities Research Centre Seminar Series Earlier this year, the Australian Prime Minister accused Labour of a ‘holocaust of defence jobs.’ Memory scholars suggest that the memory of the Holocaust has become ‘cosmopolitan’ (Levy & Sznaider 2006, 2010), ‘transnational’ (…
‘A New Discovery of an Old Intrigue’: a re-evaluation of Daniel Defoe’s library catalogue, with a case study of its Iberian content.
Lecture
Presented as part of the Literary Studies Seminar Series Daniel Defoe’s library catalogue is a problematic resource, consistently maligned in Defoe studies. This thesis locates two major problems: the focus on dividing the inventory between Defoe and Phillips Farewell (whose libraries were combined…
Latinity Among the Visigoths (and why it matters)
Other
ANU's Dr Chris Bishop will take us to the fascinating late 6 C CE when the Visigoth Chieftain Reccared wrote a letter to Pope Gregory the Great ... 'The letter, written in Latin by a Gothic-speaking warlord, offers a unique insight into a generation who abandoned their native tongue,…
‘Remember[ing] with Advantages’: Henry V and the play of commemorative rhetoric in Australia
Lecture
Presented as part of the SLLL Literary Studies Seminar Series The temporal correspondence of the first anniversary of the Gallipoli landing with Shakespeare’s three hundredth death-day resulted in a commemorative entanglement that reveals much about the pragmatic and performative nature of ‘acts’…
Placename narratives and identity in the north east of Ambon Island
Lecture
Presented as part of the Centre for Research in Language Change (CRLC) Seminar Series Ambon Island in the Central Maluku region of Eastern Indonesia has a long history of contact with non-indigenous cultures. During the seventeenth century, the Dutch colonizers caused many inland villages on Ambon…