Canberra, Tuesday 24 April, 2001

Conference on autobiographies and life writing

Autobiographies and life writing will be the focus of a conference at The Australian National University this week. The two-day program for "Selves Crossing Cultures; Autobiography and Globalisation" will cover a wide range of life writing styles across cultures and centuries.

The conference will bring together scholars working on colonial, post-colonial and cross-cultural life-writing and self-representation in a variety of disciplines. Conference themes include: exiles and castaways, homelessness and nostalgia, displacement and reconciliation, embarrassment and fracture, strategic remembering.

The speakers will discuss Aboriginal women's life-writing and reconciliation, Australian Jewish writing, autobiographical narratives by Maxine Hong Kingston and Amy Tan, Native American autobiographical art, South American colonial travel narratives, Indian autobiographies by Gandhi and J.Nehru, Indo-Trinidadian autobiography by V.S.Naipaul.

The writings of Australian authors Martin Boyd, Xavier Herbert, Sally Morgan, Hal Porter, Andrew Riemer, and George Barrington will also be studied in the sessions.

The keynote speaker will be Professor Susanna Egan who teaches literature at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. Professor Egan will be discussing "Retravelling True North: Canada in Transit" at 9:30am Tuesday 26 April.

What: Conference: Selves Crossing Cultures; Autobiography and Globalisation. Where: Centre for Cross-Cultural Research, Old Canberra House, Lennox Crossing, ANU, Canberra
When: Starting 9am, 26 and 27 April, 2001

Photo opportunity: There will be a performance art piece as part of the conference at 1:30pm Friday 27 April, 2001. Contact: Jacquie Lo 02 6125 0441.

For conference program and abstracts click here.

For further information or to arrange interviews contact:
Ros Dalziell, Conference Convener, 02 6125 4731 (w) or email: Rosamund.Dalziell@anu.edu.au
During the conference call: 6125 2700
Loren Hackett, ANU Media Liaison, 02 6125 5001 (w)

No:36/2001

© 2000 Marketing & Communications Division,
The Australian National University.
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Last Modified Tue, July 16, 2002