Non-Scientists, Con-Scientists and the Rocky Horror Clown Show: Wondrous Science in the Australian Context

Thursday 23 March, 1pm Milgate Room, AD Hope Bldg, SLLL

Scientists seek to explore how nature works and ask how humanity can best comprehend different aspects of the world. In fictional and cultural contexts, scientists appear as rebels against the status quo and the ordinary. In the collections of the National Library of Australia, literary scholar Anna-Sophie Jürgens has discovered that some scientists even behave like artists: they are creative, skilled craftsmen, ‘imagineers’ or bewildering performers. By revealing how fictional and fictitious scientists do not merely domesticate the unknown, but also invent and stage it, she will provide new insights into the connections between scientific knowledge and the creative imagination in Australia.

Anna-Sophie Jürgens is a Humboldt postdoctoral fellow currently working “On the Origin and Evolution of a Species: Australian Scientists in Fiction”. She studied Comparative, Russian and French Literature in Germany and Russia. Her research interests include science in fiction, modern and contemporary circus fiction, the history of (violent) clowns, and aesthetics and poetologies of knowledge.

On March 16th, Gemma King (School of Literature, Languages and Linguistics, ANU) will be giving a Q&A after the film A Kid (Le Fils de Jean, Philippe Lioret). Before the film, there will be wine and cheese, and the event is being sponsored by the High Commission of Canada (the High Commissioner will be in attendance).

Gemma King’s second Q&A is on March 29th after the film Farewell, My Queen (Les Adieux à la Reine, Benoît Jacquot). At the reception beforehand, there will be sparkling wine and macarons, and the film is designed to tie in with the current Versailles exhibition at the National Gallery.

To book tickets for these events and to find more information about the festival, taking place this month, go to: http://www.affrenchfilmfestival.org/schedule.

Australian Society for French Studies Conference 2017: Truth and Representation

The Australian National University, 13-15 December

Confirmed keynote speakers:
Professor Nicki Hitchcott, University of St Andrews
Dr Chris Watkin, Monash University

What is truth and how do we represent it? For centuries philosophers, artists, theologians, and political thinkers have reflected on the nature of truth, each exploring the various rhetorical and visual strategies with which we might render its universality and its relativity. When we talk about truth, we call upon objectivity, authenticity, and verifiability. But we also inevitably evoke subjectivity, artifice, and mendacity. Indeed, to talk about truth is to recognise its intimate connection to lies.
In our current political climate, terms such as ‘post-truth’ and ‘fake news’ have become ubiquitous. In the wake of Brexit and the American presidential election, and leading up to the 2017 French election, politicians and the media continually call the status of truth and representation into question. How are we to determine what truth is when facts are manipulated to reflect and reinforce the opinions we already hold? How are we to retain our grasp on reality when we see our world increasingly through the mediation of the screen? Such questions bring to mind a much broader problematic surrounding our understanding of social, cultural, and political reality in the light of myriad and ever-evolving ideologies and theoretical orientations.
This conference seeks to reflect on these questions within French and Francophone Studies. What role can our interdisciplinary research play in negotiating the problems of truth and representation in the 21st century, from cultural studies and politics to literature and film? Our aim is to address these problems from a multiplicity of methodological approaches and areas of focus.
We invite proposals for individual papers (20 minutes) and for panels (3-4 papers of 20 minutes each) related to the theme of truth and representation. We will also consider proposals that do not conform directly to this theme. Possible topics for discussion may include, but are not limited to:

• Philosophical, theoretical, and historical/historiographical understandings of truth-making
• Representations of Otherness
• Reflections on language and the shaping of political discourse
• The role of truth in education, including plagiarism and academic dishonesty in the language classroom
• Film and the fluid boundaries of audio-visual representation
• Embodied truths, psychic truths, lived realities
• National myths and the politics of migration
• Life-writing/ Representing the truth of the self
• Truth and religious pluralism
• Postmodernism and post-truth
• Representation in (applied) linguistics and second language acquisition
• Imagination, or the truth of fiction
Please send your proposal of 250 words for papers in English or French to asfs_2017@anu.edu.au by 3 July 2017.

Organising committee: Leslie Barnes, Ashok Collins, Solène Inceoglu, and Gemma King, ANU.

The schedule for the Literary Studies Seminar Series is now available here.

Hope to see you on Thursdays at 1pm in the Milgate Room.

Thanks to Russell Smith for the organisation and for the magnificent design work.

Come along to the CuSPP Writing Group.

It takes place in the A.D. Hope Common Room (Room 113) from 10am each Monday of semester. We begin with an hour but we have the room for two. Please bring along the hot drink and writing apparatus of your choice.

Many thanks to Gemma King for her organisation and graceful time-keeping of the writing groups thus far.

Congratulations to ANU SLLL PhD Candidate Ashley Orr who has a blog post on 19th C ‘stunt journalist’ Nellie Bly over at the Dangerous Women Blog. Read more here: http://dangerouswomenproject.org/2017/02/26/nellie-bly/

‘Out of Place’: Diasporic travel writing and the impossibility of return

Professor Srilata Ravi (University of Alberta)

Seminar Room 2/3, Sir Roland Wilson Building, ANU, Tuesday March 7, 2017, 4.30-5.30pm

In the last fifty years forced and unforced migrations have resulted in some of the greatest upheavals and displacements seen in history. Refugees, economic migrants, and political exiles have moved away from their geographical places of origin to settle in foreign places, carrying with them (in multiple forms and to different degrees) memories of their past, tensions in the present and aspirations for their future.

While such movements have very often resulted in permanent dislocations, rapid developments in communication technologies and affordable transportation have provided some members of these dispersed communities the opportunity of “looking back” or returning (temporarily, repeatedly or permanently) to their homelands—to places “left behind” in the course of their migration. Through a reading of selected travel texts in the French language, this paper will examine how the affective consequences of such diasporic returns are textualized.

Srilata Ravi is Professor of French and Francophone Literature at the Faculté Saint-Jean of the University of Alberta. Her research interests are in Francophone Postcolonial Studies, Diaspora Studies and Indian Ocean Studies. Her recent publications include Translating the Postcolonial in Multilingual Contexts (with Judith Misrahi-Barak, in press); Sports, modernité et réseaux impériaux : Napoléon Lajoie, Kumar Shri Ranjitsinhji, baseball et cricket au tournant du XXe siècle (with Claude Couture, 2017); Rethinking Global Mauritius: Critical Essays on Mauritian Literatures and Cultures (2013); and Ecritures mauriciennes au féminin: penser l’altérité (with Véronique Bragard 2011).

There are only 4 posts left: 17 August, and 5, 19 and 26 October. Book now to avoid disappointment! Contact russell.smith@anu.edu.au to reserve your place.

Next semester’s program will run from Thursday 27 July to Thursday 9 November. Places on the Thursday Lunchtime Seminar program are open to SLLL staff, graduate students, visiting fellows and visiting scholars from other schools in the ANU, and from other institutions in Canberra and around the world. The seminar especially encourages researchers to present work in progress – draft chapters or trial-run conference papers – for engaged and collegial feedback and discussion. Seminars are from 1-2 Thursdays in the Milgate Room, first floor A D Hope Building.

Staff, students and visitors of ANU, University of Canberra and ADFA are encouraged to attend and to present work-in-progress for lively and collegial feedback and discussion – on any topic ranging from literary studies to film to cultural studies to gender and sexuality and beyond…

In particular, please encourage graduate students and school visitors to attend and to present their work. Please feel free to get in touch if you have any questions.

Russell Smith: russell.smith@anu.edu.au