The new-look new issue of Australian Humanities Review is now online (http://www.australianhumanitiesreview.org/archive/Issue-May-2013/home.html) and packed with great (Southern hemisphere) winter reading!  We have the first of two special sections based on a public lecture series convened by Ned Curthoys, featuring contemporary takes on Raymond Williams’ celebrated Keywords: Orientalism; Sexuality; Censorship; Romanticism; Melodrama; plus book reviews, and essays on Derrida and the wars over his legacy, and the perverse cosmopolitanisms of Christos Tsiolkas’s Dead Europe. We also welcome new members to our editorial board: Laurent Berlant (Chicago), David Bissell (ANU), Claire Colebrook (Penn State), Steven Connor (Cambridge), Simon During (Queensland), Tom Ford (ANU), Meaghan Morris (Sydney) and Julian Murphet (UNSW).

As always, we invite submissions to AHR on any aspect of contemporary humanities research, especially those informed by contemporary theoretical perspectives, and we are especially committed to working with postgraduate students and early career researchers. Please send a 250-word abstract or proposal in the first instance to ahr@anu.edu.au.

Happy reading!
Russell Smith and Monique Rooney

The School of English, Media Studies and Art History at The University of Queensland invites applications for the Alfred Midgley Postgraduate Scholarship. The Scholarship is open to both domestic and international students.  The Alfred Midgley Postgraduate Scholarship will support a Research Higher Degree student engaged in research in the field of Australian literature.

The School of English, Media Studies and Art History has long-established expertise in research and scholarship in Australian literary studies and remains one of Australia’s leading institutions for research in the field. Potential supervisors include Professor David Carter, Professor Carole Ferrier, and Professor Gillian Whitlock. For staff profiles see http://www.emsah.uq.edu.au/academic-staff.

The amount of the scholarship will be between $6000 and the current APA rate ($24,653) with a possible extension after the first year. One or more scholarships may be awarded each year, on the recommendation of the Head of the School of English, Media Studies and Art History.  For more information and applications forms visit http://www.emsah.uq.edu.au/index.html?page=168101

The deadline for applications for 2013 is 30 June 2013.

Monday 1 July 2013, 2-5pm
Rm 29-­106 Building 29
School of Humanities and Social Sciences,
UNSW Canberra at ADFA
PDF flyer available here.

In 2014, the MLA will release the first title on Australian and New Zealand literatures in its Options for Teaching series. This will be a substantial volume of 40 new essays, sourced from scholars around the world, on historical contexts, key authors, contemporary critical issues and pedagogical case studies.

Published by the pre-eminent North American professional association for literary studies, with 30,000 members in 100 countries, it seeks to inform and enrich the teaching of Australian and New Zealand writing in many contexts. This seminar presents an informal introduction to the aims of the volume from the co-editors, with short presentations from contributors about individual essays and approaches, drawing on case studies.

The afternoon presents an opportunity to explore contemporary issues for the study of Australian and New Zealand literatures in international frames, to investigate key debates in literary pedagogy, and to think about how best to engage a new, worldwide generation of readers in literature from Australasia.

With the volume still in development, the aim is to allow plenty of time for audience discussion and engagement, and to encourage feedback from potential users. This is your chance to contribute to the debate!

For details of other volumes in the MLA Options for Teaching series please go to http://www.mla.org/store/CID44.

BlackWords researches and records a diverse range information about the lives and works of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander writers and storytellers and the literary cultures and traditions that formed and influenced them.

BlackWords is the most comprehensive record of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander publications available. It covers all forms of creative writing, film, television, criticism and scholarship, both by and about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander writers and literary cultures.

BlackWords can be accessed at http://austlit.edu.au/specialistDatasets/BlackWords.

A PDF flyer is available here.

The verb ‘capture’ implies both acts of preservation and of restraint. In his novel The Collector, John Fowles explores this duality, implying that the paradox of art is that “in signalling the importance of freedom, art inaugurates another kind of imprisonment.” [i] In The Collector the imprisoned Miranda believes “when you draw something it lives and when you photograph something it dies.” [ii] Similarly, Jeanette Winterson argues that the act of capturing is not mere reproduction:

The wrestle with material isn’t about subduing; it is about making a third thing that didn’t exist before. The raw material was there, and you were there, but the relationship that happens between maker and material allows the finished piece to be what it is. [iii]

If capturing is a creative act, is it possible to retain the authenticity of the source material?

The digital era provides a new set of challenges to those engaged in acts of capturing. Digital technologies provide access to infinite artifacts: Winterson’s “raw materials”. How do we go about selecting and preserving them for posterity? For public historians—such as librarians and archivists—as Marcus Foth and Helen Klaebe observe, this act is particularly fraught: “[they face] the challenge to accurately capture and chronicle public history, which is increasingly represented through historical artifacts that stem from digital technology and vernacular forms of creative expression.” [iv] Similarly, the appearance of citizen journalists, ordinary web-users engaged in journalistic activities, has challenged traditional news-making practice and problematised notions of ‘authoritative’ news makers. [v]

The Capture edition of LiNQ (Literature in North Queensland) invites explorations of the relationships between maker and material, particularly in the face of the proliferation of digital artifacts available. Writers, artists and historians may struggle with the task of capturing an event, experience, argument or theme, a process that requires the navigation and molding of raw materials in a way that is recognisable to others, using the sometimes inadequate tools of their chosen form.

We call for academic articles and creative submissions (fiction, creative nonfiction, essays, and poems) that document and question the acts of capturing, selection, preservation and representation:

- What are the ethical implications of attempting to capture a life or event?
- Is there a point where capture becomes entrapment? Are there materials that are not meant to be caught and pinned down?
- How can events, lives, identities, topics or themes be captured in exhibitions, histories, short fiction, novels, digital media or nonfiction representations?
- Are some forms more suited to capturing certain experiences than others? Are there limitations of the form and how can they be negotiated?
- How can you capture an audience?
- Why do we engage in acts of capturing? What is the lure?
- What is the psychological impact of captivity?
- How does captivity relate to questions of race, the body and the natural world?

Submissions should be no longer than 6000 words. Include a brief abstract of the article or creative submission (no more than 75 words) and a 50-word biographical note. Book reviews of no longer than 1000 words are also welcome.

Follow MLA citation style and format. All contributions should be submitted as a Mircosoft Word file, double-spaced 12pt font. All images used must be with permission only.

Suitable papers will be double-blind peer reviewed.

Hard-copy submissions are not accepted and will not be returned. Send e-mail submissions to Ariella Van Luyn: ariella.vanluyn@jcu.edu.au

Submissions close 31 July 2013 for our December 2013 issue.

[i] Cooper, Pamela. The Fiction of John Fowles: Creativity, Power, Femininity. Ottowa: University of Ottawa Press, 1991. [ii] Fowles, John. The Collector. Random House, 2004. [iii] Winterson, Jeanette. “Life is What You Make In It.” The Independent. 17 Jun. 2010. http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/life-is-what–you-make-in-it-2002401.html [iv] Klaebe, Helen and Foth, Marcus. “Capturing Community Memory with Oral History and New Media: The Sharing Stories Project.” In Proceedings 3rd International Conference of the Community Informatics Research Network (CIRN), Prato, Italy. 2006. http://eprints.qut.edu.au/4751/ [v] Goode, Luke. “Social News, Citizen Journalism and Democracy.” New Media Society. 11.8 (2009): 1287-1305. http://nms.sagepub.com/content/11/8/1287.full.pdf+html