The Postgraduate Report for 2010 is now online, as is the new Report for South Australia. Thanks to Hannah Schuerholz and Chiara Minstrelli, and to Alice Healy, for these updates on ASAL’s members’ activities and achievements.

Applications for Summer Scholarships at the National Library of Australia are now open, closing on 30 September.  For the first six weeks of every year, 3-4 lucky young Ph.D. students are able to immerse themselves in the Library’s rich Australian and other collections to support their research.

More information on the Scholarships and the application form are here:

http://www.nla.gov.au/grants/summerscholars/

Friday 10 September 2010, 7pm - 9 pm

You are invited to the first Melbourne Salon at the Alliance Française de Melbourne.

Speakers:

Jean-François Vernay is a Franco-Australian essayist based in New Caledonia, who specialises in Australian literature. Jean-François will be speaking about his latest book Panorama du roman australien:  des origines à nos jours 1831-2007 (Hermann Press, 2009), which he describes as “a labour of love” which took 10 years of research. This first survey of Australian fiction aims to give European readers an overview of Australian literature, and is now available in English as The Great Australian Novel - A Panorama (published by Brolga, 2010).

In an article in The Age last year, Jean-François is quoted as saying that his aim in the book was to engage the reader in a kind of conversation. “I wanted to adopt a sort of casual tone. … I wrote the essay using the tone of a novel, which makes it entertaining, I hope, rather than just a collection of literary facts.”

As the founding editor of the journal Correspondances océaniennes, Jean-François has also published numerous articles and book reviews on contemporary Australian fiction, and has been promoting Australian culture for over a decade. His first book Water From the Moon: Illusion and Reality in the Works of Australian Novelist Christopher Koch (Cambria Press, 2007) has been critically acclaimed in Australia.

Elaine Lewis founded the Australian Bookshop in Paris in 1996 to promote Australian writers. Between 1996 and 2001 she organised more than 70 readings for visiting Australian authors, artists and musicians. During this time, Elaine’s work included writing freelance articles for French magazines and speaking to groups of French people interested in Australian writing. Her book Left Bank Waltz: the Australian Bookshop in Paris was commissioned and published by Random House Australia in 2006.

Elaine’s love of the French language led her to commence translating poetry from France, Belgium, and Canada; her translations have been published in France. She is currently committee member of the Franco-Anglais Poetry Festival Association (a translation festival held annually in Paris since 1977), AALITRA (the Australian Association for Literary Translation), the Melbourne PEN Centre, and Deputy Editor of ‘Explorations’, the journal of ISFAR (Institute for the Study of French Australian Relations).

Chair: Kerry Mullan is coordinator of French Studies at RMIT University. The Melbourne Salon is a joint venture between RMIT, ISFAR and the Alliance Française de Melbourne; it aims to create a place where curious and open-minded people can engage in French-Australian cross-cultural dialogues.

Please join us for what promises to be a very special inaugural Melbourne Salon.

Cover charge $22 payable on the night (includes cheese and wine)

Bookings essential.  RSVP: kerry.mullan@rmit.edu.au. Numbers strictly limited.

Dear ASAL 2010 delegates

We are writing to invite conference presenters to submit papers for the JASAL Special Issue on Archive Madness. Papers need to be submitted to JASAL by 10 January 2010.

Postgraduate students who wish to submit their essays to the A.D. Hope prize should follow the same process and include details of their postgraduate status with their essays.

The JASAL site should be consulted for information regarding submission.

We are very excited about this publication given the wonderful work presented at the conference.

Best wishes

New Scholar: An International Journal of the Humanities, Creative Arts and Social Sciences

New Scholar is is a peer-reviewed online journal of emerging scholarship and intellectual practice from the humanities, creative arts and social sciences. Based in Australia, but with international scope, the journal has a particular focus on new scholarship: work by ‘early career researchers’ as well as innovative or even radical interventions from more established scholars. New Scholar encourages original approaches to disciplinary methodologies, as well as interdisciplinary scholarship and the breaking down of traditional disciplinary boundaries. New Scholar also encourages creative scholarly works. The journal aims to facilitate scholarly exchange and the strengthening of
international research communities.

The editors of New Scholar invite submissions for the inaugural issue, the theme of which is ‘New Scholarship?’ The question mark after the phrase ‘New Scholarship’ signals the central problematic of the issue: what counts as ‘new scholarship,’ who gets to say so and on what basis? This issue will examine claims for originality within contemporary contexts for intellectual practice. It will provide a space for investigations of the power structures that frame scholarship, the institutionalisation of scholarly authority and the necessarily circumscribed nature of innovation.

For more information and a pdf of the cfp click here.