ASFS 2015
“French Studies on the Move”
The 23rd Annual Conference of the Australian Society for French Studies
Wednesday 9 to Friday 11 December 2015 (with a postgrad/ECR day on 8 December)
Co-hosted by the University of Newcastle and the University Technology Sydney
University House, Civic Precinct, University of Newcastle, NSW 2300
Keynote speakers:
Professor Jarrod Hayes (University of Michigan) and
Professor Murray Pratt (Nottingham Trent University)
In 1993 Monash University sent out a call for papers for what would be the inaugural conference of French Studies in Australia and what would go on to become the Australian Society for French Studies. That CFP targeted papers reflecting on “issues concerning French Studies in Australia today”; that it could be so general in tone suggests, in hindsight, a confidence in the transparent meaningfulness of French Studies: “current debates in literary and cultural theory” could sit alongside “issues in language teaching pedagogy” because, we may assume, those whom the CFP addressed recognised themselves, and their place, in both areas.
In 2015 the landscape in which French Studies finds itself has moved: for one thing, there are fewer departments of French Studies; and our areas of interest, for various reasons and in variously nuanced institutional contexts, overlap with those of other discipline areas to the extent that some of us only perform a ‘French Studies’ identity at such conferences as this. “French Studies on the Move” would like to focus on the ways in which French Studies practitioners (also) operate in other areas. In this way, we wish to call for papers focusing on translation of disciplinary identity, and thus for papers with a focus on the “trans-” (of translation, transnational, for example), the “inter-” (of intertextuality, interdisciplinary, for example) and the “para-” (of paratext, paradox, for example).
And so, we wish to renew the first CFP of 1993, for papers focusing on current debates in literary and cultural theory and issues in language teaching pedagogy, but this time round with a view to questioning how these reflect our identity as “French Studies”.
Abstracts should be sent by email to Julie Robert (Julie.Robert@uts.edu.au) by July 1, 2015.
Updated information about the conference will be posted to the conference webpage on the ASFS website: http://australiansocietyforfrenchstudies.com/events/asfs-2015-conference/