Annual Bulletin no.21 (December 2005)

Director's Report

A greater time than usual has elapsed since the publication of our last Annual Bulletin. Over the summer of 2004/05 the ground floor of UWA�s Arts building, home of the Westerly Centre, underwent substantial renovations. For continuing to work on the Bulletin (and his other duties as Honours Coordinator of English, Communication and Cultural Studies) amid this disruption, Van merits our profound thanks.

The period covered by this report finds us in a cycle of significant anniversaries. The biennial symposium on 'Literature and Culture in the Asia-Pacific' co-sponsored by the Centre and the National University of Singapore celebrated its twentieth anniversary. This landmark was the occasion for one of our best conferences ever, according to feedback from participants. The two founders of the meeting, Professors Bruce Bennett and Edwin Thumboo, gave keynote addresses that reflected on the history and future directions of our subjects. It was a pleasure to see so many old friends and to welcome younger scholars. Dennis Haskell, Megan McKinlay and Pamina Rich have prepared a book of edited and refereed essays based on conference papers, to be published by the Westerly Centre and UWA Press.

Another milestone is the fiftieth anniversary of the first publication of Westerly, our flagship journal. I congratulate the editors, Delys Bird and Dennis Haskell, on the journal, and thank them for their hard work. I would also like to thank the Westerly Centre administrator, Dr Monica Anderson, for her thorough and careful assistance and support.

A number of distinguished scholars visited the Centre during the year, and took part in teaching activities as well as research. Professor Robert Dixon from the University of Queensland led valuable seminars in 'Research Methods' for ECCS Honours students, gave a paper, and facilitated a discussion on Australian Studies. Associate Professor Don Randall from Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey, spent a semester with us as a Distinguished Teaching Fellow, offering an Honours Seminar on David Malouf and researching a monograph on his work. Dr John Eustace from Acadia University in Canada concluded his year�s sabbatical in ECCS and the Centre for Aboriginal Studies.

The Westerly Centre continues to support scholarly publishing in the area of Australian literary and cultural studies in partnership with other publishers. This year we assisted in the publication of Tanya Dalziell�s mono-graph, Settler Romances and the Australian Girl (UWA Press). Another book, Australia Imagined: Views from the British Periodical Press, by Judy Johnston and Monica Anderson, is in press.

The online AustLit database is proving its value to teachers and researchers of Australian Literature. Although up and running, this is a continuing project, on which Dan Midalia is the Research Associate. Dan is working on a comprehensive bibliography of West Australian writing with Delys Bird and Dennis Haskell. The Centre is an original partner in this nation-wide investment in cultural and scholarly infrastructure, and is committed to providing ongoing support for it.

I would finally like to welcome back to Perth Professor Gareth Griffiths, and to welcome Dr Alison Bartlett, newly appointed Senior Lecturer in UWA�s Centre for Women�s Studies, as members of our Centre.

- Kieran Dolin

Activities of Members

Alison Bartlett

Alison Bartlett arrived at UWA in February 2005 from the University of Southern Queensland in Toowoomba, where she has taught literature for nine years. Her appointment is in Women�s Studies, and Alison has been teaching the upper level unit �Sex Bodies Spaces� and the first year unit on �Screen Cultures, Print Cultures�. Since starting at UWA Alison has been to Tianjin to liaise with students and is supervising two Tianjin doctoral students.

Alison has given papers at a number of conferences, including the Generations of Australian Feminisms conference in Adelaide on �Corporeal Feminism and its Uses�; the Cultural Studies Association of Australia conference at Murdoch University on �Reading Rachel�s Breasts: scripts and meanings for breastfeeding�; the Australian Women�s Studies Association conference at Sydney University on �Imagining Breast-feeding in Popular Culture�; and the Australian Literature Conference in Sydney on �Critics, Crucibles and a Literary Career: Inez Baranay�s Neem Dreams�.

Alison has had articles published in Feminist Teacher, Birth Issues, Sex Education and Australian Feminist Studies (in an edition she guest edited with Fiona Giles), and is currently preparing proofs for a book being published by UNSW Press this year titled Breast-work: Rethinking Breastfeeding. This work brings together research from the past 5 years on current cultural meanings of women�s bodies, breasts and babies and their historical contexts.

Veronica Brady

Veronica Brady has delivered papers at many conferences over the past year: at the Women Scholars of Religion and Theology conference at the Australian Catholic University in Melbourne; the Biology Conference organised by the ACT branch of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature at the National Library in Canberra; and at the 2005 Perth International Festival of the Arts she was part of a panel addressing the subject of �Our Creative City�. In April 2005 Veronica was part of the 'Colloquium on Sense of Place' in southern Tasmania, and she gave an invited paper at the conference on 'Sacred Ground: Place and Spirituality in Australia' in Canberra and an invited paper at the conference on 'Negotiating the Sacred: Blasphemy and Sacrilege in a Multicultural Society' organised by the Cross-Cultural Research Centre at the Australian National University.

In Perth she spoke on Patrick White to the Retired Teachers Association of WA and was part of a panel at the WACOSS conference on 'Shaping Community'. Veronica also gave papers at the 11th International Literacy and Education Research Network Conference on Learning (Havana, Cuba), the Future of Humanities conference (at the Monash Center in Prato, Italy), at the Conference on Religion, Belief and Spirituality (at the Bardon Centre, Brisbane), at the Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery and at the Edmund Rice Centre (at the University of Notre Dame). She gave a paper on 'Religion in Australia' at the conference on Modernism and Modernisation organised by the Australian Studies Centre (at Curtin University) and also gave a paper at the Religion, Literature and the Arts Conference (at the University of Sydney). She was a keynote speaker at both the 3rd State Conference of the International Education Association on �Duty of Care� and at the English Australia Conference (Adelaide). Veronica gave a paper at the WA History Conference to celebrate 175 years of settlement and was an invited member of the Conference on Human Dignity (Hobart) jointly organised by the University of Sydney and the University of Tasmania.

Tanya Dalziell

Tanya Dalziell has been invited to the University of Barcelona to conduct an MA module in October 2008 on Contemporary Identities in Australia. This unit will draw in part on her recently published work on "Australian Women’s Writing from 1970 to 2005" (A Companion to Australian Literature Since 1900, eds. Nicholas Birns and Rebecca McNeer, New York: Camden House, 2007). Other recent publications on Australian literature and cultural life include ‘Belated Arrivals: Gender, Colonialism and Modernism in Australia’ (Modernism, Volume 2, eds. Astradur Eysteinsson and Vivian Liska, Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing, 2007) and a forthcoming chapter on fiction and history in nineteenth-century Australia entitled "No Place for a Book? Fiction in Australia to 1890" (Cambridge History of Australian Literature, ed. Peter Pierce, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). She has also recently edited a volume, Critical Seeds: Essays on the work of [the Australian artist, novelist and song-writer] Nick Cave, which is to be published in the UK by Ashgate Press in 2009, and to which she contributed both an introduction and a chapter entitled "The Moose and Nick Cave: Melancholy, Creativity and Love Songs".

With Kieran Dolin and Tony Hughes-d’Aeth, she is editing a double special issue of the journal Studies in Australasian Cinema (forthcoming 2009) and contributing a chapter on the film The Proposition. Tanya is also currently the co-editor and book reviews editor of the Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature, positions that resulted from her co-editing of a special conference issue of the journal in 2006 following her organisation, with Paul Genoni from Curtin University, of the conference for the Association for the Study of Australian Literature in Perth, 2005.

Tanya is currently supervising a number of postgraduate students, many of whom have an interest in Australian literature and Australian studies. Angela Jones, who is writing on music, performance and sound, contributed a chapter to the edited volume on Nick Cave. Lee-Von Kim is researching trauma and haunting in contemporary visual cultures and one of her chapters selects the work of Australian film-maker and photographer, Tracey Moffatt, as its subject. Lee-Von is also publishing an article in the Studies in Australasian Cinema journal special issue. A central conceit of Rebecca Giggs’s PhD thesis in Creative Writing is the "ecological uncanny" in an Australian context, and Rebecca has recently been invited to take up the position of writer-in-residence in Broome in October 2008, supported by WritingWA. This success follows on from Rebecca’s active involvement in various local and national writing projects, including Cottonmouth, and her tenure at the Katherine Susannah Prichard Writers’ Centre as writer-in-residence.

Kieran Dolin

Kieran Dolin continues as Director of the Westerly Centre and, more recently, Chair of English and Cultural Studies. Kieran's book, A Critical Introduction to Law and Literature, was published in April 2007 by Cambridge University Press. It mounts a wide-ranging enquiry into the intersections between literature and law taking examples from current areas of law and from literary history in England, America, Africa and Australia.

Kieran has in recent semesters taught the upper-level units, Subversive Sites in Australian Writing (English 2247) and Australian Literature: Fiction into Film (English 2243). During the 2008 mid-year break he gave two talks to high-school English teachers preparing for the new WACE Literature syllabus for Years 10, 11 and 12. Kieran attended the 2007 ASAL conference in Perth and also the 2007 Australasian Victorian Studies Association conference, where he presented a paper on Dickens's Bleak House and symbolic revolution. This paper was subsequently published in the Australasian Journal of Victorian Studies.

Kieran is currently working with Tanya Dalziell and Tony Hughes-d'Aeth on a collection of essays entitled Compulsory Screening: Borders and Migration in Australian Film and Television. This collection will be published in two numbers of the journal Studies in Australasian Cinema in 2009. Kieran's paper is on the fence as border in Rabbit-Proof Fence and One Night the Moon.

Among Australian Literature postgraduate theses, Kieran is currently co-supervising (with Andrew Lynch) Marija Pericic's PhD research on Irish-Australian fiction and, with Judith Johnston co-supervising, Pauline Farley's PhD on the significance of British children's annuals in Australia. Kieran's two students in the Doctor/Master of Arts in Australian Literary Studies programme co-offered by UWA and Tianjin Foreign Studies University in China, have had their theses passed. He Jianfen researched a study of fiction about the Pacific theatre of operations in World War II, and Bao Lin did a study of recent fictional representations of the Ned Kelly myth.

Gareth Griffiths

Gareth Griffiths was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities in 2007. In 2006 Gareth was also elected to the prestigious Hugh LeMay Fellowship at Rhodes University, South Africa and spent two months there in 2007. During that time he presented several papers to the University and the Grahamstown community, including one in the invited series sponsored by the university on "The Book in Africa".

In 2007 a second, revised and expanded edition of Key Concepts in Post-Colonial Studies co-written by Gareth (with Bill Ashcroft and Helen Tiffin; Routledge, London) originally published in 1998, came out. This makes the hat-trick, with the two previous texts co-authored or edited by these three (The Empire Writes Back and The Post-Colonial Studies Reader) also having been reissued in new updated editions in the last few years. Gareth also published two chapters in books recently “Sites of Purchase: Slavery, Missions and Tourism on Two Tanzanian Sites” in Economies of Representation 1790-2000, edited Leigh Dale and Helen Gilbert (Ashgate, London and New York, 2007) and "Afterword: The World, the Text and Said” in Paradoxical Citizenship: Edward Said edited Sylvia Nagy-Zekmi (Lexington Books, Lanham, MD, 2006).

In 2006 Gareth presented a paper at the "Dis-united Empires" Conference, Queen's University, Ontario entitled "Grover Cleveland and the ‘dusky queens’: Religion, Ideology and American Expansionism". Also in 2006 he presented an invited keynote at the University of Koblenz at the ASNLE Conference entitled "Pictures on the Wall: Images and Missions", and taught there for three weeks as part of the ongoing exchange with UWA, teaching postcolonial and Australian texts. In the same year he presented a second invited keynote at the "Fundamentalism and Literature" Conference, University of Muenster, Germany entitled "Open Spaces, Contested Places: Writing, and the Fundamentalist Inscription of Territory", which is in press in the volume of proceedings.

Over the last eighteen months Gareth has been mainly involved in researching two ARC Discovery grants, which he won in the rounds of 2007 and 2008 respectively. The first of these (2007-9) examines Africans educated in the US in the late 19th/early 20th centuries, the texts they wrote and how their experience casts light on the attitudes to race amongst US religious groups and society generally in the period. The second grant (2008-10) is with three colleagues at UWA and at Edith Cowan Universities from history, women's studies and Indigenous studies. The project examines and compares the role of Indigenous Christians in Australia and Africa and their interactions with colonial authorities and settlers. He is currently on internal teaching leave funded from these grants.

In 2007 in association with these grants Gareth attended the Liberian Studies Association Conference at U Indiana, Bloomington, home of the Liberian Archives project, which seeks to reconstruct the archives destroyed by many years of Civil War in Liberia. He also visited archives at several historically black US universities and presented a talk at Lincoln University, PA.

In 2008 he attended the "Exploring Religious Spaces in the African State: Development and Politics from Below "Conference organised by the Centre of African Studies, the University of Edinburgh and WISER, The Witwatersrand University Institute for Social and Economic Research, South Africa. He also attended and presented a paper entitled "Saving Africa: Narrative Persistence, Missions and Development in Sub-Saharan Africa" at the EACLALS (European Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies) Conference held at Venice International University. He also chaired a session there. While there he was invited by Professor Meenakshi Mukherjee to launch the three volumes of papers to emerge from the International ACLALS Conference held at Hyderabad in 2007. He was also asked to launch a new book by Prof. Chantal Zabus of the Sorbonne. During that same European visit Gareth conducted extensive ARC related archival research in the UK, especially in the Colonial Office Records at the UK National Archives at Kew and at New College Library, and the Library of the CCNWW Centre at the University of Edinburgh.

This September Gareth will take part in the drafting conference for contributors to the Cambridge Companion to Postcolonial Literatures at the University of Toronto, to table his chapter for that volume on "Travel and the Postcolonial". He will then present two invited graduate seminars at Rice University, Texas and then visit archives at several black universities and libraries in the Southern United States for his ARC work.

Gareth is currently supervising doctoral theses in several areas, These include a thesis by Richard Martin, co-supervised with the anthropologist Prof. David Trigger on Representations of the Gulf Country, which will compare historical and contemporary literary, and oral representations of this important region of North-eastern Australia; a thesis by Jennifer Armstrong on the Zimbabwean writer Dambudzo Marechera; Joanna Fedson's thesis on the "Left Behind": Series and Christian Fundamentalist texts and movements, co-supervised with Dr. Ethan Blue from History. His new supervisions include a thesis on texts by Muslim writers in Australia and elsewhere. In 2009 he will also begin a supervision of a thesis on the Arabic responses to the work of Edward Said, with an Arabic language input from the Centre for the Study of Muslim States at UWA and a thesis on V.S. Naipaul's representations of India.

Dennis Haskell

Dennis Haskell gave a paper on �Australian Values in Australian Jokes� at a conference of the Indian Association for the Study of Australia held at Jawarhalal Nehru University (Delhi) and left the delegates rolling in the aisles. Dennis later in the year delivered a different version of the paper to a community group at UWA�s Albany Centre. While in India, with sponsorship from the Australia-India Council Dennis travelled to Ajmer in Rajasthan with Satendra Nandan and Bruce Bennett, giving a talk on �Poetic Image and Symbol� and meeting with postgraduate students of Dayanand College to discuss their Australian thesis topics; Dennis also lectured on �Australian Poetic Traditions� at Jawarhalal Nehru University. Dennis gave a paper on �Representations of Heat in Australian and Singaporean Literature and Painting� at a conference of the Comparative Literature Association of the Republic of China, held at the National University of Taiwan; the paper was published in the conference proceedings as �Sunburnt Country and Sweating Island: Representation of Heat in Australian and Singaporean Literature and Painting�. Dennis spoke on University Governance to a National Conference of Chairs of Academic Boards, discussed �Waltzing Matilda� at St George�s College (UWA) and spoke about �Clancy of the Overflow� on ABC Radio.

Dennis launched Ross Bolleter�s book of poetry, All the Iron Night, the first publication of Smokebush Press, and is participating in ArtsWA forums on Poetry which seek to improve the awareness of WA poetry.

Dennis is involved in organisation of the new Doctor of Arts degree, teaching 'Australian literature into China' at Tianjin Foreign Studies University. In June Dennis took part with the main teachers in the programme, Kieran Dolin and Megan McKinlay, in a presentation about the programme at a UWA Teaching and Learning Showcase, then in Washington DC he took up the Group of Eight Chair in Australian Studies at Georgetown University for five months.

Megan McKinlay and Dennis are completing a critical anthology of contemporary poetry and fiction in South-East Asia. This has been an enormous task and was begun almost a decade ago. The project involves working with editors for the literature of each country in the region; during the period of the project two of the editors have died, one new country � East Timor - has been created, and countries such as Indonesia and Cambodia have seen enormous changes. One of the aims of the project is to depict Australian literature in this context; a great deal of Asian-Australian writing has emerged during this period.

Dennis wrote entries on the Westerly magazine and on Poetry for the Encyclopaedia of Western Australia currently in preparation from the Centre for Studies in Western Australian History, UWA; and published a book chapter, 'The Mythical, Mystical Bush', in Cultural Interfaces, ed. Santosh K. Sareen, Sheel C, Nuna & Malati Mathur (New Delhi: Indialog, 2004). Dennis has published poems in England, India and elsewhere, and his poem 'Girl with a Pearl Earring' was the first published by the West Australian newspaper in its resumption of poetry publishing after many years. Dennis has a new collection of poems, All the Time in the World, due from Salt Publishing in December 2005.

With Delys Bird and Toby Burrows, Dennis has overseen the Westerly Centre�s continuing participation in Austlit, the comprehensive electronic database of Australian literature being prepared by a coalition of eight willing universities and the National Library.

Van Ikin

Van Ikin worked with PhD student Darren Jorgensen to prepare the 'Annual Bibliography of Australian Literature' for The Journal of Commonwealth Literature (UK), and continues as editor/publisher of Science Fiction: A Review of Speculative Literature, now in its twenty-eighth year of publication (but running drastically behind schedule due to problems with new software).

In 2005 Van clocked up his 114th review as SF/Fantasy reviewer for the Sydney Morning Herald, having survived under at least eight different literary editors since 1984. He also continues to interview new and established Australian Science Fiction and Fantasy authors, trying to build up an archive reflecting the views, hopes, and problems of authors working in this burgeoning field. These interviews appear regularly as �The Ikin Interviews� in the magazine Aurealis: Australian Fantasy and Science Fiction.

Van supervises a large number of postgraduates, especially for the MA (Creative Writing), and is currently supervising four candidates for the University�s PhD in Creative Writing, introduced in 2002, as well as supervising two postgraduate students at Tianjin University in China. He is also the Co-ordinator of the First Year Creative Writing unit in ECCS and the Co-ordinator of the ECCS Honours program.

Van wrote the entry on 'Science Fiction and Fantasy' for the forthcoming Encyclopaedia of Western Australia and (with Sean McMullen) he wrote an essay on the history of Australian Science Fiction for the forthcoming Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction. His most recent short story, �Quietly Dead, Quietly Buried� appeared in the fiftieth anniversary issue of Westerly; though only 1600 words in length, the story has been gestating since December 1967!

Judith Johnston

Judith Johnston attended the �World and Text: Ethics, Aesthetics and Emotions� conference of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature at the University of Sydney in July 2004 where she presented a paper titled �The Genesis and Commodification of Australian Legendary Tales� which is part of a larger project on women and the transformation of culture in the nineteenth century. She also attended the joint Australasian Victorian Studies Association/ Dickens Project conference in Sydney titled �Antipodes� in July 2004 where she presented a paper, �Australia and the Victorian Periodical Press� arguing that the British press played an important role in the construction of Australian settler identities based in part on cartoons from the period. The conference was rich in offerings on the connections between Victorian literature and culture and the formation of Australia.

The Anthology Australia Imagined: Views from the British Periodical Press 1800-1900, which Judith has co-authored and edited with Monica Anderson, is in press and will be published in March 2005 by UWA Press.

Judith�s book, Gender and the British Periodical, co-authored with Hilary Fraser and Stephanie Green, was published by Cambridge University Press in December 2003. Judith�s contribution includes a chapter on �Gender and Cultural Imperialism� in which the argument is supported by reference to British periodical articles about Australia. A review in the Times Literary Supplement noted �fascinating chapters on the representation of feminism and imperial expansion in the press� (TLS 9 July 2004, p.28).

Judith�s teaching included tutoring on �Australian Contemporary Literature: Fiction into Film� and presenting lectures on Richard Flanagan�s The Sound of One Hand Clapping. She has also produced lectures on Jean Bedford�s Sister Kate and Richard Flanagan�s The Sound of One Hand Clapping for students at Tianjin University in China.

Andrew Lynch

Andrew Lynch's teaching and research continues to mix interests in medieval and modern culture, including the afterlife of the medieval in Australia. He is currently Chair of Medieval and Early Modern Studies at UWA, and this semester is also coordinating English 2239: Magic and Marvels in Early Narrative, and a new Honours seminar called Dream and Vision in Medieval Literature. His lectures in English 1114: Romance will include Clara Law's film The Goddess of 1967. He is supervising English Honours and MA (MEMS) dissertations on: Treachery in Arthurian literature; Symbol and function in medieval castles; Theory of medieval book illustration. A new PhD student, Sylvia Kershaw, is working on ideas of the past in Australian medievalism. Two other PhDs with relevant topics are Marija Pericic (Ireland and the Irish in contemporary Australian fiction, co-supervised with Kieran Dolin), Laurie Ormond (Contemporary Australian fantasy fiction, co-supervised with Van Ikin). Caitlin McGuinness will be submitting her PhD on contemporary fiction from Northern Ireland at the end of 2008. She has an article from the thesis forthcoming in Irish Studies Review.

Andrew was on study leave in Semester 1. He co-convened the Perth Medieval and Renaissance Group Symposium: 'Reading Religious Change in Medieval and Early Modern Europe' in May. The visiting speakers were Prof. James Simpson (Harvard); Prof. Brian Cummings (Sussex); Dr Juanita Ruys (Sydney). Later in May he gave an invited paper at the State Library of Victoria's 'Imagination, Books and Community' conference, which accompanied 'The Medieval Imagination', a display of local and visiting manuscripts, including many from Cambridge. The conference was remarkable in attracting 200 people to each session (540 to the public lecture), and 110,000 saw the exhibition itself over two months. He also took part in a 'round table' on medievalism at the Leeds International Medieval Congress in July, and organised a session on Australian medievalism featuring Laurie Ormond (UWA), Melanie Duckworth (Leeds) and Louise D'Arcens (Wollongong). Also in July, he gave papers at the International Arthurian Society conference, Rennes (on Chrétien de Troyes) and the New Chaucer Society, Swansea (on John Lydgate). He is the inaugural President of the new Australian/New Zealand branch of the International Arthurian Society, which was formally recognised at Rennes. ANZ members of the branch are planning two sessions at the ANZAMEMS conference in Hobart, December 2008, one of which will be on Australian Arthurianism. In early November, Andrew will give an invited plenary at the conference 'Medievalism and Modernity in National and Colonial Identities', University of California, Riverside.

From 2008-2011, Andrew Lynch is part of a $338,463 ARC-funded Discovery Project: 'Medievalism in Australian Cultural Memory' with Prof. S. J. Trigg (Melbourne); Dr L. D'Arcens (Wollongong); Prof. J. M. Ganim (UCLA, Riverside). This grant grew out of the ARC NEER-funded cluster on 'Australasian medievalism'. Andrew continues on the NEER management committee and the UWA Research Committee. With Anne M. Scott he continues to co-edit Parergon, the international refereed journal of the Australian and New Zealand Association for Medieval and Early Modern Studies.

Some of Andrew’s recent publications on Australian topics include:

• "C.J. Brennan's A Chant of Doom: Australia's Medieval War." Australian Literary Studies, 23.1 (2007), pp. 49-62. (He also reviewed Katherine Barnes' book on Brennan for JASAL 6, 2007.)
• "Thingless names'? The St George legend in Australia." La Trobe Journal, 81 (Autumn 2008), pp. 40-52.
• Andrew Lynch and Anne M. Scott, eds. and intro. Renaissance Poetry and Drama in Context: Essays for Christopher Wortham. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008.

[Many current and former UWA staff and students have contributed to Chris's festschrift.]
Essays are forthcoming in The Cambridge Companion to the Arthurian Legend and The Blackwell Companion to Arthurian Literature.

Megan McKinlay

Megan McKinlay has been working with Kieran Dolin and Dennis Haskell on development and delivery of the Doctoral Program in Australian Studies being taught on-line to students at Tianjin Foreign Studies University, China. With Kieran and Dennis, she gave a presentation at the �elearning Showcase� organised by the Centre for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning.

She continues to work with Dennis Haskell on editing an anthology of Southeast Asian poetry and fiction, anticipating completion of the project in 2005. She is also working with Dennis and Pamina Rich to put together a proceedings volume from the CSAL/Westerly Centre Symposium held at UWA in December 2004.

She has served in 2004 as a member of the State Literature Board and has conducted a number of creative writing workshops at metropolitan high schools. Her 2004 publications include poetry and short fiction in a range of literary journals.

George Seddon

George Seddon was given the 'Lifetime Planning Achievement Award' at the 2004 Planning Institute of Australia (PIA) National Conference in Hobart (following receipt of the WA State Award the previous year); this was the first time that this award has been made, in over twenty years. He was also invited to give the Gordon Stephenson Oration at the WA PIA conference in the new, bleak Perth Conference Centre in November 2004, subsequently taking a group of planners around the settlements at Rottnest (which offer more lively planning lessons than the Centre).

Other speaking engagements for George have included a talk at the Sydney Writers� Festival in May 2004 and the keynote address to the Forest Consciousness Forum at Augusta (the first time this influential forum has been held in WA). Several talks, mostly on the dubious future of the Murray, were given at the La Trobe campus at Mildura, where George spent ten years of his youth. (George comments: �My family left the Chaffey brothers� vision splendid and Ernestine Hill�s Water into Gold half way through World War Two, and I had never been back, so it was a time-capsule experience. My father�s proud bank is now, symptomatically, a rather shady disco, as is the old Post Office, while the Town Hall and Courthouse buildings are near-derelict.�)

In what he describes as �the scribbling line of business�, George had an essay in Disputed Territories. Land, Culture and Identity in Settler Societies, edited by David Trigger and Gareth Griffiths (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University, 2003), and another (�The gouty-stemmed tree�) in The Best Australian Essays of 2004, edited by Robert Dessaix (Melbourne, Black Inc, 2004). A limited facsimile edition of Sense of Place, with several new essays, was launched in December 2004, and two new books � which George says are his last � are scheduled for production in 2005. The first is A Landscape for Learning; a History of the Grounds of the University of Western Australia, co-authored with Gillian Lilleyman (UWA Press); the second is The Return of the Native: Uses and Abuses of the Australian Flora, commissioned by CUP.

Visitors to The Westerly Centre

The Westerly Centre, in conjunction with English, Communication and Cultural Studies and the Institute of Advanced Studies, hosted Associate Professor Don Randall of Bilkent University, Turkey, for first semester 2004. Dr Randall taught an honours unit on David Malouf while researching a book-length critical study of Malouf�s works. He gave several talks on his research, and proved a lively and distinguished visitor.

John Eustace, from Acadia University in Canada, completed a year�s sabbatical at the Centre in mid-2004. John was researching Aboriginal writing and in particular the Nyoongar protest at US author Marlo Morgan�s fraudulent book about contact with Australian Aboriginal people.

John Kinsella was Writer in Residence, and Professor at Large attached to UWA�s Institute for Advanced Studies, at various periods throughout 2004. John gave readings of his work, and conducted poetry and creative writing classes.

Others visiting for shorter periods included Michael Ackland (Monash University, February), Matteo Baraldi (University of Bologna, October), Santosh Sareeen (JNU, Delhi, June), and Sahlia Ben-Messahel (Charles Gaulle University, Lille, July). Brief visits were made by poet Paul Hetherington (February), playwright Alan Seymour (February), Professor Gopal (Indira Gandhi University, Delhi, May), Makarand Paranjape (JNU, Delhi, September), and Bruce Bennett (ADFA, December). Postgraduate students who came to the Centre to further their research included Indians Nilanjana Deb (University of Calcutta, October) and Sumathy Thangapandian (Queen Mary�s College, Chennai, November), and German Jennifer Neikes (RWTH-Aachen, October-November). Among local writers to have frequent contact with the Centre were Sri Lankan-Australian Sunil Govinagge and Nyoongar poet and fiction writer, Alf Taylor. Dennis Haskell is helping Alf with the completion of his memoir as a member of the Stolen Generation.

Graduate and Postgraduate Information

Congratulations to Monica Anderson whose PhD is to be published by Fairleigh Dickinson University Press in the USA under the title Women and the Politics of Travel, 1870-1914. Other recent successful completions include Shelley Saunders, writing on �The Prodigal Son: A Post-Colonial Reading of Patrick White�s Fiction�; Dianne Wolfer, whose Young Adult novel Shadows Walking is under consideration by Penguin; and Ian Nichols, who wrote a Young Adult fantasy novel, Soldier Boy.

Postgraduate students working on aspects of Australian Culture for the PhD include:

• CAROL ANDERSON: �On the Contrary: Women Travellers writing Counter-Narratives in the Nineteenth Century� (supervised by Judith Johnston).
• ROGER BOURKE: writing on fiction about Australian Prisoners of War under the Japanese in World War II (supervised by Delys Bird and Dennis Haskell); Roger has been invited to give a paper on the topic at a conference in Singapore in 2005.
• NAOMI BRITTEN: �Reframing the Australian Gothic: a Comparative Study of Nineteenth-Century and Contemporary Female Gothic Narratives� (supervised by Judith Johnston and Brenda Walker).
• TERRY DOWLING: writing a novel, Clowns at Midnight, offering a vision of an alternative Australian culture (supervised by Van Ikin).
• ANTHONY EATON: writing a Young adult science fiction novel set in a future Australia; the work has just been published as Nightpeople (UQP, 2005) (supervised by Van Ikin).
• WARREN FLYNN: writing a novel, Celestial Spaces, offering an Australian perspective on Korean culture (supervised by Van Ikin).
• NIGEL GRAY: writing an autobiographical novel, Shades of Gray, which will include sections on his life in Australia (supervised by Van Ikin).
• KAREN HALL: �Discovering the �Lost Race� Story: Writing Science Fiction, Writing History� (supervised by Judith Johnston). Karen has attended several local and interstate conferences, delivering papers based on her work that have been well received. Her thesis includes an exploration of the writing of Catherine Helen Spence.
• DENISE HILL: �Katherine Mansfield: the Fictions of Travel� (supervised by Judith Johnston). Denise was awarded an inaugural Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences Dean�s Postgraduate Award to fund travel to Wellington, New Zealand to explore recent Mansfield manuscript acquisitions.
• JOHN RALPH: writing the first Australian thesis to use critique g�n�tique, on manuscripts of Robert Drewe and Kate Grenville (supervised by Dennis Haskell).
• MARTHE REED: researching the Poetics of Place in the work of four contemporary poets, one of whom is John Kinsella (supervised by Dennis Haskell).
• SALLY RICHARDSON: writing on social memory of the Great Depression and the social situation of Aboriginal Australians (supervised by Dennis Haskell).
• ENID SEDGWICK: researching German influences on Catherine Martin and Henry Handel Richardson (supervised by Dennis Haskell and Alexandra Ludewig in European Studies).
• SARAH STOW: �Emigration, Australia, and the Rhetoric of Duty� (jointly supervised by Judith Johnston with supervisors at SUNY-Stonybrook).
• JEANETTE WEEDA-ZUIDERSMA: �In Search of Mother: Representations of Motherhood in Contemporary Australian Literature � A Fictocritical Exploration� (supervised by Delys Bird and Van Ikin).

Postgraduate students working on aspects of Australian Culture for the MA or MA (Creative Writing) include:

• ANNA DONALD: writing a novel, Tenants, set in Broome and surrounds (supervised by Van Ikin).
• KARA JACOB: writing a novel of �magical realism�, The Heroines of Art, set in remote WA (supervised by Van Ikin).
• ANNE JOYNER: writing on landscape in contemporary Australian fiction (supervised by Kieran Dolin).
• MARCELLA POLAIN: writing a novel about the effects on a contemporary Australian of the Armenian Genocide (supervised by Dennis Haskell).
• LOUISE SCHOFIELD: writing a Young Adult fantasy novel, The O Ferry, set in Australia and dealing with aspects of multiculturalism (supervised by Van Ikin).
• BARBARA TEMPERTON: writing about folk stories from Albany, WA (supervised by Dennis Haskell).

Publications from the Westerly Centre(formerly CSAL)

Beyond Good and Evil? Essays on the Literature and Culture of the Asia-Pacific Region. Edited by Dennis Haskell, Megan McKinlay, and Pamina Rich (Perth: UWA Press & The Westerly Centre, 2005). ISBN 1 920694 63 3 paperback: $29.95.

At the beginning of the twenty-first century are we balancing on an axis of good and evil? How do the concepts of good and evil operate in the literature and culture of the Asia-Pacific region? Writers and scholars from the region examine subjects ranging from the Japanese �evil� of WWII to the appropriation of indigenous cultures and the ethics of biographical writing. Although diverse, the essays share an interest in the conflicts between relativism and fundamentalism, between uncertainty and sureness, that are so much with us in this fast-developing region of the world.

Future Imaginings: Sexualities and Genders in the New Millennium. Edited by Delys Bird, Terri-ann White, and Wendy Ware (Perth: UWA Press & The Westerly Centre, 2003). ISBN 1 920694 07 2 paperback: $32.95.

At the beginning of the new millennium, gender-related issues seem less public and more personal than in the past. Yet there are still a myriad of debates to be had and issues to be resolved. In Future Imaginings, leading Australian scholars from a range of disciplines investigate, interrogate, and develop new ways of thinking about gender. The result is a collection that not only challenges established perceptions of gender relations and identities, but explores diverse cultural interpretations and symbolisations of gender � how these have changed, and continue to change into the future.

Other titles from the press

Ashcoft, Bill. The Gimbals of Unease: The Poetry of Francis Webb (CSAL, 1996). ISBN 0 86422 530 X $23.95

Barcan, Ruth and Ian Buchanan, eds. Imagining Australian Space: Cultural Studies and Spatial Inquiry (University of Western Australia Press in association with CSAL, 1999). ISBN 1 876268 37 9 $34.95

Bennett, Bruce (with Peter Cowan, John Hay, Susan Ashford). Western Australian Writing: A Bibliography (Fremantle Arts Centre Press in association with CSAL, 1990). ISBN 0 949206 42 3 $19.95 [out of stock]

---, and John Hay, eds. European Relations: Essays for Helen Watson-Williams (CSAL, 1985). ISBN 0 86433016 4 $13.95

---, and Susan Miller, eds. A Sense of Exile: Essays in the Literature of the Asia Pacific Region (CSAL, 1988). ISBN 0 86422 072 3 $12.95

---, and Susan Miller, eds. Myths, Heroes and Anti-Heroes: The Literature of the Asia-Pacific Region (CSAL, 1993). ISBN 0 86422 072 3. $12.95

---, ed. Peter Cowan: New Critical Essays (CSAL, 1992). ISBN 0 875560 10 6 $19.95

---, Peter Cowan, Dennis Haskell and Susan Miller. Westerly Looks To Asia (Indian Ocean Centre for Peace Studies in association with CSAL, 1993). ISBN 1 86342 169 6. $25.00

Bird, Delys and Brenda Walker, eds. Elizabeth Jolley: New Critical Essays (Collins/Angus & Robertson, North Ryde, in association with CSAL, 1991). ISBN $14.95 [out of stock]

Freadman, Richard, ed. Literature, Criticism and the Universities. Interviews with Leonie Kramer, S.L. Goldberg & Howard Felperin (CSAL, 1983). ISBN 0 909751 81 1 $2.00

Haskell, Dennis and Hilary Fraser, eds. Wordhord: A Critical Selection of Contemporary Western Australian Poetry (Fremantle Arts Centre Press in association with CSAL, 1989). ISBN 0 949206 42 3 $19.95

---, and Ron Shapiro, eds. Interactions: Essays on the Literature and Culture of the Asia-Pacific Region (University of Western Australia Press in association with CSAL, 2000). ISBN 1 876268 50 6 $32.95

---, ed. Tilting at Matilda (Fremantle Arts Centre Pres, 1994). ISBN 1 86368 105 1. $19.95

Ikin, Van, ed. Glass Reptile Breakout: and other Australian Speculative Stories (CSAL, 1990). ISBN 0 86422 099 5 $14.95.

Kramer, Leonie. From Fact to Legend: Writing and Broadcasting in Australia (CSAL, 1982). ISBN 0 909751 75 1 $2.00 [out of stock]

Mengham, Rod and Glen Phillips. Fairly Obsessive: Essays on the Works of John Kinsella (CSAL, 2000). ISBN 1 86368 325 9. $29.95.

Mudrooroo Narogin (Colin Johnson). Dalwurra: The Black Bittern. Ed. With Introduction by Veronica Brady (CSAL, 1988). ISBN 0 86422 072 3 $12.95 [out of stock]

Nettelbeck, Amanda, ed. Provisional Maps: Critical Essays on David Malouf (CSAL, 1994). ISBN 0 86422 3000 5. $18.00

O'Sullivan, Vincent, ed. The Unsparing Scourge: Australian Satirical Texts 1845-1860 (CSAL, 1988). ISBN 0 86422 056 1 $12.95

Ram, A Janaki and Bruce Bennett, eds. Encounters: Selected Indian and Australian Short Studies (Pointer Publishers, Jaipur, in association with CSAL, 1988). ISBN 81 7132 008 2. $15.00.

Saunders, Ian. Open Texts, Partial Maps (CSAL 1993). ISBN 0 86422 238 6. $13.00 [out of stock]

Seddon. George. Swan Song: Reflections on Perth and Western Australia 1956-1995 (CSAL, 1995). ISBN 0 86422 428 1 $24.95

Thumboo, Edwin. Perceiving Other Worlds (University of Singapore Press in association with CSAL, 1991). ISBN 981 210 010 5 $15.00.

White, R. S. Furphy�s Shakespeare (CSAL, 1989). ISBN 0 86422 086 3 $9.95.

Please order through:

The Westerly Centre [M202]
The University of Western Australia
Crawley, Western Australia 6009

Telephone: (08) 6488 2101
Email: westerly@cyllene.uwa.edu.au


Payment can be made by cheque payable in *Australian Dollars only to The University of Western Australia. Payment can also be made through Visa, Mastercard, or Bankcard.