In the second week of October, 23 ASAL members and friends flew to Norfolk Island for a week of conference papers, historical enquiry, theatricals and general fun. The conference had a decidedly theatrical turn with entertaining papers on theatre by Julian Croft, Rob Jordan (the expert on convict theatre), and Roni Kelly. Julian and Jack Bedson organised a reading of ‘The Purse or the Benevolent Tar’, one of the plays performed by the convicts on Norfolk Island in 1840, under Alexander Maconochie’s enlightened rule–possibly the only performance of the play since 1840! We also enjoyed papers and presentations from historians, such as Jim Davidson and Susan Magarey as well as more literary discussions of convicts, bushrangers and convict novels. The open session when delegates talked briefly about their current projects demonstrated a broad range of ongoing research on literature and culture. Everyone is keen for further conferences of this kind in exotic locations–we are thinking about ‘Unemployed at Last!’ and the possibilities of Furphy’s exotic Echuca/Shepparton in 2010. These photos of the play reading, the dinner, and the conference sessions give a little taste of the occasion. (more…)

The theme of the ASAL 2010 conference is “Archive Madness”, and aims to promote and enable consideration of the limits of disciplinary borders and the revival of the archive in literary analysis. The title echoes and redirects Derrida’s famous study “Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression”. Archive fever is, for Derrida, is “a compulsive, repetitive, and nostalgic desire for the archive, an irrepressible desire to return to the origin, a homesickness, a nostalgia for the return to the most archaic place of absolute commencement” (p. 91.) The archive is simultaneously a site of revelation and concealment, both of which are accorded the authority of the actual trace. (more…)