The Fifth Biennial International Conference of the Contemporary Women’s Writing Association
CONTEMPORARY WOMEN’S WRITING AND ENVIRONMENTS
Hosted by RMIT, Monash and Deakin Universities, Melbourne, Australia
3-5 July 2014
News: Registration now open (April 2014)
News: Postgraduate and Early Career Researcher bursary winners announced (Feb 2014)
The 5th biennial CWWA conference, ‘Contemporary Women’s Writing and Environments’ recognizes and investigates the importance of environments to women’s writing, and the contribution women’s writing makes to current thinking about environments. Taking an expansive view of ‘environment’, the conference will unite practitioners and scholars in discussion of the ways in which contemporary women’s writing engages with places, spaces, homes, cities, nature, workplaces, communities, publics, literary spheres and virtual worlds.
Papers and panels in English are sought on all genres of literary and popular writing since the 1970s, including: fiction, poetry, plays, nature writing, travel writing, life writing, theory, criticism, graphic novels, cross-media forms and writing for performance. The language of the conference is English, however the convenors welcome discussion of texts in any language (with translation). Papers and panels are also sought on the relation of writing on the environment to teaching and activism.
Possible topics might include:
· Ecocriticism
· Ecopoetics
· Environmental studies
· Women’s writing environments· Women in academia
· Women’s writing and virtual environments
· The body as environment
· Literary architectures
· Women in the city
· Publishing environments
· Urban social geographies
· Gender and perception of the environment
· Ecological Feminism
· Activism and writing
· The page and the screen as environments
· Affective environments
Keynotes:
Chris Kraus: cutting-edge LA-based writer of fiction and art criticism, Chris’ books include I Love Dick, Aliens & Anorexia, Torpor, Summer of Hate and Where Art Belongs. She was awarded the Frank Jewett Mather Award for Art Criticism from the College Art Association in 2008. She also founded the Native Agents series for Semiotext(e).
Lyn Hejinian: A founding f
igure of the Language writing movement in the 1970s, Lyn is one of America’s foremost experimental poets. Her books of poetry include My Life, Writing Is an Aid to Memory, Happily, The Fatalist andThe Book of a Thousand Eyes. She has also published a collection of essays, The Language of Inquiry. She teaches at the University of California, Berkeley.
Deborah Rose: an Adjunct Professor in Environmental Humanities at the University of New South Wales where her research focuses on multispecies ethnographies in this time of extinctions. She is a founding member of the extinction studies working group, and of Kangaloon – creative ecologies – as well as co-editor of the newly formed journal Environmental Humanities. Her influential books include Wild Dog Dreaming: Love and Extinction, Dingo Makes Us Human, Reports from a Wild Country, Country of the Heart, Nourishing Terrains and Hidden Histories.
Kate Rigby: Australia’s first Professor of Environmental Humanities (Monash University), founding member of the Australian Ecological Humanities network and founding president of the Australia-New Zealand Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment. Kate is a leading Australian theorist of ecopoetics, and is co-editor of Ecocritical Theory: New European Approaches (U of Virginia P 2011).
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Submission of abstracts or panel proposals:
E-mail the conference contact (below) with the following information:
· A 250-word abstract in MS Word (doc or docx) format
· Your full name as you would like it to appear in the conference booklet
· Contact information (email)
· A short biography including academic affiliation
· Audiovisual requirements
Please note that all presenters are required to be members of the Contemporary Women’s Writing Association.
Deadline:
Applications and abstracts: 31 December 2013** (final extension)
Notification of acceptance: January 2013
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Contact:
Dr. Jessica Wilkinson
School of Media and Communication
RMIT University
Melbourne, Australia
Email: cwwamelbourne2014[at]gmail.com
Conference Venue:
State Library of Victoria
Melbourne CBD
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Conference Convenors:
Dr Jessica Wilkinson (RMIT University)
Dr Anna Poletti (Monash)
Dr Melinda Harvey (Monash)
Dr Ann Vickery (Deakin University, Melbourne)
Dr Cassandra Atherton (Deakin University, Melbourne)
Contemporary Women's Writing Association 