The Oulipo Group and literary invention. This project aims to explain the emergence of the Oulipo group, a new force in world literature based in France. The project will contribute to the broader search for points of fruitful contact between abstract reasoning and artistic practice. It will provide a new theoretical account of the Oulipo's writing practice, an explanation of how that practice relates to similar currents in contemporary writing around the world, and improved access to the group’ ....The Oulipo Group and literary invention. This project aims to explain the emergence of the Oulipo group, a new force in world literature based in France. The project will contribute to the broader search for points of fruitful contact between abstract reasoning and artistic practice. It will provide a new theoretical account of the Oulipo's writing practice, an explanation of how that practice relates to similar currents in contemporary writing around the world, and improved access to the group’s recent work via translation. Among the anticipated benefits are a deeper understanding of literary form and its historical development, and a mapping of the areas in which the Oulipo's innovative approach to writing is yet to be tried.Read moreRead less
The early woman writer, 1530-1660. This project aims to provide a literary history of women’s textual practice in the English Renaissance. This project will examine the scope, content and purpose of early modern women’s writing to make new discoveries about reading, writing and book use in the period when book production and distribution was first appearing on a larger scale. It uses digital technologies to create open-access digital forms of this writing to extend access to it, and also to furt ....The early woman writer, 1530-1660. This project aims to provide a literary history of women’s textual practice in the English Renaissance. This project will examine the scope, content and purpose of early modern women’s writing to make new discoveries about reading, writing and book use in the period when book production and distribution was first appearing on a larger scale. It uses digital technologies to create open-access digital forms of this writing to extend access to it, and also to further Australia’s position in both cutting edge digital scholarship and scholarship on the early modern period.
Read moreRead less
Rethinking the Victim: Gendered Violence in Australian Women's Writing. This project, the first to examine gendered violence in Australian literature, argues that literary texts by Australian women writers offer unique ways of understanding the social problem of gendered violence, bringing this often private and suppressed issue into the public sphere. It draws on the international field of violence studies to investigate how these writers challenge the victim paradigm and figure women's agencie ....Rethinking the Victim: Gendered Violence in Australian Women's Writing. This project, the first to examine gendered violence in Australian literature, argues that literary texts by Australian women writers offer unique ways of understanding the social problem of gendered violence, bringing this often private and suppressed issue into the public sphere. It draws on the international field of violence studies to investigate how these writers challenge the victim paradigm and figure women's agencies. By including white, Indigenous and minority women writers in its case studies, and by interviewing selected writers, it will shed new light on the role of gendered violence in the diverse and interconnected cultural histories of the nation, and will significantly extend the parameters of the Australian literary canon.Read moreRead less
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE180101150
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$332,202.00
Summary
Enlisting World literature. This project aims to generate new knowledge to understand relationships between national literatures and global reading patterns. It will focus on how world literature was used in the Cold War for global circulation by focussing on the English-language paperbacks produced by East German publisher Seven Seas. Expected outcomes include the first thorough history of a socialist Cold War book scheme with an international scope, drawing on rich archival sources.
Future fables: literature, evolution and artificial intelligence. The future of AI is a site of considerable philosophical and cultural anxiety in the West. Given the future of AI is currently only available to publics through literary or fictional tropes, it is vital that we investigate the historical evolution of these literary or fictional tropes of AI to understand its future direction. This project aims to understand (1) how the post-Darwinian literary imagination has shaped our current anx ....Future fables: literature, evolution and artificial intelligence. The future of AI is a site of considerable philosophical and cultural anxiety in the West. Given the future of AI is currently only available to publics through literary or fictional tropes, it is vital that we investigate the historical evolution of these literary or fictional tropes of AI to understand its future direction. This project aims to understand (1) how the post-Darwinian literary imagination has shaped our current anxieties about AI and (2) how literary and scientific writers after Darwin rethink the future of the human species by imagining the co-evolution of humans, animals and machines. Expected outcomes of the project include conceptual resources to understand the human-nonhuman relation and the future of AI.Read moreRead less
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE200101206
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$329,246.00
Summary
Provincial Poets and the Making of a Nation. This project aims to rediscover, document and analyse prominent regional voices swept aside by the powerful forces constructing national identity in nineteenth-century France in order to argue for a more positive view of provincialism and challenge the division between central and peripheral cultures. Expected outcomes of this project include a more inclusive and representative literary canon, a new awareness of the crucial role of regional poets in t ....Provincial Poets and the Making of a Nation. This project aims to rediscover, document and analyse prominent regional voices swept aside by the powerful forces constructing national identity in nineteenth-century France in order to argue for a more positive view of provincialism and challenge the division between central and peripheral cultures. Expected outcomes of this project include a more inclusive and representative literary canon, a new awareness of the crucial role of regional poets in the formation of the modern nation state, a new and advanced 'transregional' theoretical framework to revalue the potential of locality and place, as well as a wealth of novel evidence in support of public debates aimed at bridging the urban-rural divide in Australia, France and beyond. Read moreRead less
Shirley Hazzard: life, work and ethical engagement. Shirley Hazzard is one of Australia's most significant expatriate authors. This project will provide a long-overdue analysis of her acclaimed literary fiction in light of her controversial political writings and her commitment to principles of humanism, and will examine for the first time her extensive literary friendships and associations.
Scenes of reading: Australian literature and the world republic of letters. Australian literary studies today is negotiating the relationship between its nationalist legacy and globalisation. This project analyses how and in what ways Australian literature is connected to the world literary system. It will renew the theoretical bases of the subject and demonstrate new approaches for Australian literary studies.
American Literary Celebrity and Contemporary Identity. In post-war America, the writers James Baldwin, Truman Capote, Gore Vidal and Tennessee Williams were all assumed to be homosexual in the days before this became relatively "safe," yet they all attained celebrity status. This project aims to examine the effect that the presence of these literary celebrities had on the formation of contemporary gay identity. In doing so, the project aims to demonstrate the inadequacy of the analytic categorie ....American Literary Celebrity and Contemporary Identity. In post-war America, the writers James Baldwin, Truman Capote, Gore Vidal and Tennessee Williams were all assumed to be homosexual in the days before this became relatively "safe," yet they all attained celebrity status. This project aims to examine the effect that the presence of these literary celebrities had on the formation of contemporary gay identity. In doing so, the project aims to demonstrate the inadequacy of the analytic categories of the open secret and the closet, conventionally used in sexuality studies to explain gay identity in the post-war years before gay liberation. The project endeavours to contribute to our understanding of two vital and interrelated aspects of contemporary society: celebrity culture and gay identity.Read moreRead less
Reimagining the cultural archetype of the fall in modernist poetry. This project intervenes in recent popular and scholarly debates about the clash between religious traditions and secular societies by analysing the way twentieth-century poets adapted the myth of the Fall. Through this critique, the project will revitalise theories of modern poetics and shed new light on today's fractured religious climate.