Please join us for a CuSPP Seminar in person (BPB W3.03) and online on Thursday 24 April from 1-2. Please refer to the CuSPP email or email Wesley.Lim@anu.edu.au for the link.

This thesis explores how Patrick White’s fiction unsettles inherited distinctions, particularly between nature and culture, through shifting narrative forms and relational modes of perception. Through readings of novels and stories written across White’s career, including The Aunt’s Story and Voss to The Tree of Man and The Cockatoos, the thesis examines how his fiction approaches questions of subjectivity, perception and environment.

The thesis draws on ecological, philosophical and anthropological approaches, such as ancient cosmology, environmental thought and relational thinking, to consider how White’s fiction resists interpretive closure and invites more dynamic ways of reading. Structured across five chapters, the thesis moves from a critical overview of White’s reception and criticism to close readings that examine movement, perception, landscape and literary form.

Across these analyses, particular attention is given to how White’s narratives disrupt linear progression and symbolic order, foregrounding disjunction, simultaneity and entangled modes of perception. By remaining with the unsettled textures of White’s fiction, the thesis proposes a mode of reading attuned to instability, relation and the more-than-human dimensions of narrative form.

Miriam Potter is a PhD candidate jointly enrolled at the Australian National University and Sorbonne Université, working on the ecological dimensions of Patrick White’s fiction. Alongside her academic work she has spent over eighteen years as an ecologist with Robin des Bois, a non-governmental environmental organisation, and currently lectures in English at Sorbonne Université. Her research is supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program scholarship and reflects a long-standing engagement with both environmental activism and the humanities.

Please join us for a CuSPP Seminar in person (BPB W3.03) and online on Thursday 27 February from 1-2. Please refer to the CuSPP email or email Wesley.Lim@anu.edu.au for the link.

Abstract:

In the final years of his professional life, William Shakespeare’s drama entered the period we now refer to as his “late romances,” plays in which the supernatural world hovers at the edges of all action, and the lines between tragedy and comedy blur. These plays, written and first performed between 1608-1613, pushed the limits of what was considered stageable and believable in the early modern playhouse. In doing so, this collection of plays responded to a post-Reformation crisis of the spiritual imagination—what to believe, and how to conceive of it—through creative experiments in “enchantment”. This thesis argues that these plays amount to a seventeenth-century project of “re-enchantment,” and seeks to amend teleological accounts of “the disenchantment of the world” by suggesting that creative resistance to disenchantment was already in progress in the early seventeenth century.  Far from being immaterial fantasy, the plays under consideration in this thesis—Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale, The Tempest, Henry VIII (All Is True), and The Two Noble Kinsmen—each materialise post-Reformation spiritual dilemmas in performance, bringing to the forefront drama’s potential to make visible the otherwise invisible facets of spiritual crisis: contested spaces like Purgatory, the vitality of objects such as relics, and the embodied experience of prophecy.

By combining theoretical approaches from areas of ecocriticism, materialism, and affect theory, I explore how the material spaces, objects, and bodies in these texts engage with early modern spiritual dilemmas. Across three case studies, I undertake close readings of theatrical texts in pairs, paying attention to their original performance conditions, and placing them in conversation with each other as well as contemporaneous theological, political, and imaginative writing of the period. In the first case study, I position the oceanic spaces of Pericles and The Tempest as experimental navigations of an alternative Purgatory. In the second, I trace the stage lives of theatrical props in Cymbeline and All Is True as desacralized relics. In the third and final case study, I consider the implications of embodying and producing prophecy in The Winter’s Tale and The Two Noble Kinsmen. Together, I use these case studies to test my theory of “the dramaturgy of enchantment,” to suggest that re-enchantment is part of these plays’ structure, production, and reception. Ultimately this thesis argues that these plays deliberately cultivate wonder, an affect closely tied to awe and terror, to capitalise on the affective dimensions of live performance in a period of political, social, and religious ambiguity. Enchantment is thus positioned as an ambivalent cultural mood; one that can accelerate the decay of damaged sites of spiritual fulfilment, or work to repair them. 

Bio:

Barbara Taylor is a PhD candidate at the Australian National University in Canberra. Her research focuses on early modern drama and culture, and her doctoral thesis examines the ways in which dramatic romance cultivates “wonder” beyond the sacred and supernatural. Barbara previously earned a B.A. (Hons) in Ancient History and English Literature from the University of Sydney, and an M.A. in Shakespeare Studies from King’s College London. She has worked as a dramaturgical researcher for Shakespeare’s Globe London, the National Institute of Dramatic Art in Sydney, and for independent Australian theatre.

Please join us for a CuSPP Seminar in person (BPB W3.03) and online on Monday 20th of January from 1-2:30. Please refer to the CuSPP email or email Wesley.Lim@anu.edu.au for the link.

Image from ‘Mi opinión sobre las ardillas’ Alejandro Zambra

Abstract:

Positioned at the intersection of childhood studies, contemporary literature, and Latin American literary traditions, this study examines how childhood is symbolically articulated in the region’s narratives. It is predicated on the premise that childhood, as fictionalised by literature, transcends biological or ontological categories to become a symbolic construct, emerging from attempts to narrate children’s subjectivities, bodies, and social lives. The project pursues two primary objectives: to analyse how contemporary writers shape and signify the category of childhood across the region’s landscapes and to examine how these imaginaries catalyse formal experimentation, signalling a renewed ‘literary fertility’ in Latin America. The research will offer a comprehensive analysis of narratives where children feature as a theme, narrative voice, internal focalisers, characters, and/or intended audience. The selection includes novels, short stories, literary essays, and picture books written in Spanish, Portuguese, and English. By linking cultural constructions of childhood to literary form, this work aims to advance regional literary epistemologies and deepens understanding of childhood as a historically contingent and culturally specific literary category.  

Jéssica Andrade Tolentino is a PhD candidate at the Australian National University. She holds a Master’s degree in Children’s Literature, Media, and Culture from the University of Glasgow. In 2024, she was a fellow at the International Youth Library in Munich. Jéssica is also the cofounder of Colectivo La Lucila, an interdisciplinary group dedicated to the study of children’s literature and media in Latin America. She is also the HDR representative for the Association of Iberian and Latin American Studies of Australasia (AILASA).

Please join us for CuSPP Seminar in person (ADH Conference room) and online on Thursday, 26 September from 1-2pm. Please refer to the CuSPP email or email Wesley.Lim@anu.edu.au for the link.

Image:

Déwé Gorodé in Melbourne, Australia in 1987. The text on the whiteboard reads: “My country is Kanaky” in her language Paicȋ, from the customary region of Paicȋ-Camuki

Abstract:

In this presentation, we explore the literary contributions of Déwé Gorodé and Chantal Spitz, originating from the former French colonies of New Caledonia and Polynesia, respectively. These authors inhabit a unique space within Francophone literature, one that vehemently diverges from the colonial narrative, embodying a potent political discourse that challenges the vestiges of colonization. This investigation is contextualized through the lens of Jean-Paul Sartre’s 1948 assertion, which posits the necessity for a cultural and intellectual decolonization—a rebirth from the ashes of colonial imposition towards an authentic self-representation.

The core of our analysis seeks to interrogate the mechanisms through which Gorodé and Spitz navigate their post-colonial identity, endeavoring to purge the colonial discourse embedded in their cultural heritage. Central to our inquiry is the examination of how these authors construct a narrative that eschews the colonial legacy, engaging in a literary renaissance that is both original and personal. This entails a rigorous critique of the stereotypes perpetuated by Western literature regarding their nations, thereby reclaiming the narrative sovereignty of their cultures.

Furthermore, this presentation probes into the existential and ontological dilemmas posed by the quest for a liberated voice. It scrutinizes the methodologies through which these authors articulate the multifaceted trauma of colonialism, the quest for a post-colonial identity, and the unbearable weight of historical subjugation. A pivotal aspect of our discourse centers on the relationship with language, exploring how Gorodé and Spitz establish a subversive dialogue with their linguistic heritage, thereby crafting a space for resistance and self-definition.

Through this academic exposition, we aim to shed light on the transformative power of literature as a vehicle for cultural emancipation and identity reclamation in post-colonial contexts. The subversive use of language emerges not merely as a stylistic element but as the linchpin of their literary resistance, offering profound insights into the dynamic interplay between language, identity, and decolonization.

Bio:

Ann-Sophie Levidis is a lecturer in French Studies at the Australian National University and a research associate at UMR 8138 SIRICE (Sorbonne – Identités, relations internationales et civilisations de l’Europe), Paris I  and the The Weatherhead Research Cluster on Global History, Harvard. Her first book A Sphynx of Saigon. French War Crimes Trial Policy and the Colonial Origins of International Law will be forthcoming at Cambridge University Press next year. Her second book, The Land Where Decolonization Never Came: The Indigenous Quest for Statehood, Sovereignty, and Environmental Justice in the Atomic Pacific, is in pre-contract with North Carolina University Press.

Please join us for CuSPP Seminar in person (ADH Conference room) and online on Thursday, 8 August from 1-2pm. Please refer to the CuSPP email or email Wesley.Lim@anu.edu.au for the link.

Abstract:  This paper presents new ways of mapping literature by means of digital tools for the Twenty-First Century emerging from a major funded project for mapping literary timespace (Chronotopic Cartographies).  It argues for the mapping of space relationally in non-referential ways by means of “literary topology”.  It articulates an integrated visual-verbal method of interpretation that combines the close reading of spatial meanings and structures within a text with analysis of the map series generated out of that same text, in an iterative structure.  The second half of the paper puts theory into practice through a visual-verbal reading of Lewis Carroll’s Through The Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There.

Biography: Sally Bushell is Professor of Romantic and Victorian Literature in the Department of English Literature & Creative Writing, Lancaster University in the UK.  She is currently a Visiting Professor at ANU funded by the RSHA.  Her research is concerned with literary spatiality and the mapping of texts in a range of ways (across process; empirically; digitally). She is also interested in digital and spatial projects for the mapping of literature. She was PI on the AHRC Funded project: Chronotopic Cartographies and the AHRC Follow On Fund project Steampunk Sherlock Holmes in Minecraft. She co-creator of an educational project (Litcraft) that re-engages reluctant readers with reading by using Minecraft to map literary worlds.  Her most recent books are: Reading and Mapping: Spatialising The Text (Cambridge, 2020) and New Approaches to Digital Literary Mapping: Chronotopic Cartography (Forthcoming, Cambridge Elements series, 2024).

DK image: Die Weise von Liebe und Tod des Cornets Christoph Rilke, Rosas, © Anne Van Aerschot

Please join us for CuSPP Seminar in person (ADH Conference room) and online on Wednesday, 31 July from 5-6pm. Please refer to the CuSPP email or email Wesley.Lim@anu.edu.au for the link.

Abstract: Dance adaptations of modernist works by authors such as Rainer Maria Rilke, Thomas Mann, and Virginia Woolf have been thriving in the last twenty years. Why? Modernist literature’s exploration of the mind and its experiments with language seem at odds with the non-verbal medium of dance and its emphasis on the body and movement. By turning to this untold history of dance adaptations, Meindert Peters’s current research project ‘Dancing Modernist Literature’ generates a new understanding of the reception and continuing relevance of modernist literature in the twenty-first century.

These dance adaptations have uniquely foregrounded the moving body in quintessential modernist concerns, for example over identity. When Franz Kafka’s Gregor Samsa turns into a vermin overnight, for example, Arthur Pita’s 2011 ballet adaptation of The Metamorphosis emphasizes how he tumbles and falls, tests his physical abilities, and reaches new heights. Samsa’s alterity is not merely psychological but also bound up with corporeal pleasure and pain. My research centres around this corporeality, examining the twofold role bodily movement plays in modernist literature’s enduring legacy and appeal. The dance adaptations I explore reveal that the figure in motion and flux is an important subject of these literary texts, complicating modernist concerns over more intangible issues such as identity and language. And they show how the dancing body can be a powerful medium for rearticulating modernist narratives.

In this research talk, Peters discusses some of this work, including his practical work with choreographers.

BIO:

Meindert Peters is Leverhulme Early-Career Fellow in German and Performance and Junior Research Fellow at New College, both at Oxford. His first book entitled Habituation in German Modernism (Camden House, 2024) explores early 20^th-century imaginaries around habit and skill. His current book-length project Dancing Modernist Literature (under contract with Edinburgh University Press) looks at 21^st-century dance performances of European modernist literature in theory and practice. He is editor of Brill’s Bodies and Abilities book series, co-curator of the Kafka: Making of an Icon exhibition in Oxford and New York, and a former professional (ballet) dancer, choreographer, and teacher.

Please join us for a TRN and CuSPP Seminar in person (ADH Conference room) and online on Thursday, 25 July from 1-2pm. Please refer to the CuSPP email or email Wesley.Lim@anu.edu.au for the link.

Meindert Peters (Oxford), RSHA external visitor, will be in conversation with Wesley Lim about the book.

In-person attendees will receive a small token of Wesley’s appreciation 😊.

Abstract:
As the 20th century dawned, authors, artists, and filmmakers flocked to cities like Paris and Berlin for a chance to experience a bustling urban life and engage with other artists and intellectuals. Among them were German-speaking authors and filmmakers such as Harry Graf Kessler, Rainer Maria Rilke, August Endell, Alfred Döblin, Else Lasker-Schüler, Segundo de Chomón, and the brothers Max and Emil Skladanowsky. In their writing and artistic work from that period, they depicted the perpetual influx of stimuli caused by urban life—including hordes of pedestrians, bustling traffic, and a barrage of advertisements—as well as how these encounters repeatedly paralleled their experiences of watching early twentieth-century dance performances by Loïe Fuller, Ruth St. Denis, and Vaslav Nijinsky. The convergence these writers and filmmakers saw between the unexpected encounters during their urban strolls and modern dance performances led to writings that interwove the two motifs. 

Drawing on cultural, literary, dance, performance, and queer studies, Dancing with the Modernist City analyzes an array of material from 1896 to 1914—essays, novels, short stories, poetry, newspaper articles, photographs, posters, drawings, and early film. It argues that these writers and artists created a genre called the metropolitan dance text, which depicts dancing figures not on a traditional stage, but with the streets, advertising pillars, theaters, cafes, squares, and hospitals of an urban setting. Breaking away from the historically male, heteronormative view, this posthumanist mode of writing highlights the visual and episodic unexpectedness of urban encounters. These literary depictions question traditional conceptualizations of space and performance by making the protagonist and the reader feel like they embody the dancer and the movement. In doing so, they upset conventional depictions of performance and urban spaces in ways paralleling modern dance.

https://press.umich.edu/Books/D/Dancing-with-the-Modernist-City2

Wesley Lim is Lecturer in German Studies at the Australian National University. His research focuses on the intersection of Dance Studies, Performance Studies, and Screen Studies. Wesley’s next two book projects deal with Asian sporting masculinity in contemporary figure skating and East German figure skating cultures.

Please join us for a CuSPP Seminar in person (ADH Conference room) and online on Thursday, 18 July from 1-2pm. Please refer to the CuSPP email or email Wesley.Lim@anu.edu.au for the link.

Abstract:

The aim of my creative practice-based research is to explore how aesthetics of silence as used by hearing filmmakers in their narratives of deaf characters serve as a form of erasure and how this influences the presentation of sign language on screen. While silence is one of many defining elements of ‘not hearing’, I argue that in many screen treatments of Deaf characters and narratives the use of silence functions as a system of subjugation, with the perceived absence of sound conflated to the absence of personhood and voice.  A literal ‘silencing’.

“Most people who have hearing are unwilling to believe that a deaf life can be as good as a hearing life. Because they would not want to experience the trauma of hearing loss, they cannot easily reconcile themselves to Deaf Gain.” (Baumann, H-Dirksen: Deaf Gain: Raising the Stakes of Human Diversity: 11)

Using the tools of Deaf Critical theory I will show that hearing writers and directors embrace assumptions that being Deaf equates to living in a world of silence and isolation. I will use the precept of Deaf Gain to interrogate that presumption of silence as a deficit, in order to reframe Deaf people as fully humanised characters onscreen and in culture.

“..deafness has nothing to do with ‘loss’ but is, rather, a distinct way of being in the world, one that opens up perceptions, perspectives and insights that are less common to the majority of hearing persons.” (Baumann, H-Dirksen)

Bio: Sofya Gollan is a filmmaker, actor and writer with over 20 years of experience in the Australian film industry. Her films include Gimpsey (2016) and Imagined Touch (with Jodee Mundy, 2022) with a new film Threshold (2023) screening at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Australia and in festivals worldwide. She is a PhD candidate at the ANU working on a creative practice doctorate about Deaf-led filmmaking, which asks “in whose hands” sign language cinema belongs.

Please join us for another CuSPP Seminar in person (BPB W3.03) and online on Thursday, 23 May from 1-2pm. Please refer to the CuSPP email or email Wesley.Lim@anu.edu.au for the link.

https://www.upress.virginia.edu/author-corner/authors-corner-with-peter-degabriele-author-of-drone-enlightenment/

Abstract: Shuttling between analyses of a 2012 series of memes entitled “Texts from Drone” and the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, this talk will explore how enlightenment theories of moral responsibility and causation relate to contemporary drone warfare. Ultimately, it argues, only an externalist account of causation combined with a Hobbesian account of sovereignty is adequate to understand the political significance of drone warfare.

Bio: Peter De Gabriele graduated from the Australian National University in 2002 with a B.A in Women’s Studies (Hons) and Film Studies before receiving his Ph.D in English from The University at Buffalo-SUNY in 2009. His first book, entitled Sovereign Power and the Enlightenment: Eighteenth Century Literature and the Problem of the Political was published by Bucknell University Press in

Please join us for another CuSPP Seminar in person (BPB W3.03) and online on Thursday, 9 May from 1-2pm. Please refer to the CuSPP email or email Wesley.Lim@anu.edu.au for the link.

Abstract:

As part of doctoral research conducted at the Australian National University, this presentation proposes a comparative analysis of two works by the contemporary Chilean writer Alejandro Zambra. Focusing on close readings of the book of hybrid texts, Literatura infantile (Children’s Literature) (Anagrama, 2023), and his first book for children, Mi opinión sobre las ardillas (My Thoughts on Squirrels) (Ekaré Sur, 2022), we will discuss how Zambra’s literary discourse constructs the categories of childhood and adulthood, and explore the role of intergenerational and transnational dynamics in these works. By analysing the shift in perspective —such as the viewpoint of a recent father or the narrative of a child recounting his father’s fears—, we will address how these relationships are permeated by alterity and otherness. Additionally, the analysis will consider how Zambra employs intergenerational relationships as a fruitful space for reflecting on his own literary work, challenging conventional categories such as genre literature, children’s literature, and adult literature. This paper is part of a transnational study into imaginaries of childhood and parenthood in contemporary Latin American narratives also analysing works by Guadalupe Nettel, Juan Pablo Villalobos, Carolina Sanín, and Valeria Luiselli.

Bios:

Jéssica Mariana Andrade Tolentino is a PhD student at the Australian National University, holding a master’s degree in Children’s Literature, Media and Culture from the University of Glasgow. In 2019, she coedited the book Literatura Infantil: Campo, Materialidade e Produção (Moinhos, 2019). She is cofounder of Colectivo La Lucila, an interdisciplinary group dedicated to the study of children’s media in Latin America.

Dr. Thomas Nulley-Valdés is Lecturer in Spanish Studies at the Australian National University. He is an emerging scholar of World Literature with a focus on Spanish and Latin American literature of the 20th and 21st Centuries. His first monograph is McOndo Revisited (Lexington, 2023), and he is currently preparing an edited volume with Juan Poblete (UC Santa Cruz) titled Chilean Literature as World Literature.