NYT on White, Frame

The New York TImes review of The Hanging Garden by the always stylish John Sutherland is now up, and this issue is a bumper crop for Antipodean literature fans as it also includes Alison McCulloch's fine review of Janet Frame's short stories. Importantly, both these reviews--unusually or material about Australian/New Zealand literature published in US outlets--go into the social background of the authors' works: McCulloch mentions the fading of the 20th century welfare state that provided the background for Frame's work, Sutherland the stolen generation issue and Julia Gillard. One also likes the sense that two writers who did all their work in the twentieth century, who,in other words, are not the latest thing, are being honored, as classics of world literature. So kudos to new editor Pamela Paul for commissioning these reviews.

I do find it odd that Sutherland did not once mention White's homosexuality, even at times where it would appear relevant--such as his discomfort as a teenager in Britain or the citation of Flaws in the Glass, where White was explicit about his sexuality. One could understand why, in the early 80s, a Times article on 'the private Patrick White' referred enigmatically to his 'male housekeeper', Manoly Lacaris, but, in this age of increasing acceptance of gay marriage. surely a retrospective discussion of White should honor one of the most admirable of writers partnerships, gay or straight of the twentieth century? 

The Hanging Garden in the NYT

Rumor has it that the posthumously published early novel by Patrick White, The Hanging Garden, will be reviewed on the front page of next Sunday's (May 26) New York Times Book Review. This is wonderful news for Australian literature, and in line with the Times;'s high regard for and positive treatment of White, extending back not only to White's novels but to the David Marr biography which got a front page review in 1993 or so. But, typically for the Australian Nobel Prize winner whose world reception was yet always somehow asymmetrical--it also reminds us of a bypassed opportunity, that the film of White's Eye of the Storm was released last year and was very inconspicuous, calling little attention to the writer on his centenary if the Hanging Garden review and the Eye of the Storm movie had dovetailed, real momentum could have been brought to the reading of White, but without that the review, welcome as it is, will be for most but another distraction on Memorial Day weekend, and the whole concatenation yet another missed appointment in the history of reading across the Pacific. 

Antipodes and Wayne State

Antipodes is pleased to announce that we have reached a publishing agreement with Wayne State University Press, headquartered in Detroit, Michigan. The Press will publish and distribute the journal, including via electronic channels  such as JSTOR, as well as provide marketing and logistical support, The editorial staff will continue on as before. We thunk this new association will increase the visibility of the journal, and we are pleased to report that the referee assessments received by the Press were glowing, In turn, we are confident that the press has the ability to convey what we value in our journal to a larger public.

In addition to the contents previously announced on the Antipodes webpage, the following poets will be featured in June 2013: 
Ali Alizadeh             
Joe Dolce        

Michael Farell           

Peter Hansen         

Sarah Holland-Batt      

Michele Leggott        

Kate Middleton,          

Jan Owen                

Anna Ryan-Punch     

Thomas Shapcott   

AAALS conference outcomes

The recently concluded AAALS conference in Washington DC was an outstanding one, full of enlivening papers. Andrew McCann's keynote on biopolitics and the metrocolonial in nineteenth century Australia was both theoretically challenging and lucid in its challenging insights, and we were very happy to have six graduate student papers, including Shinjini Chattopadhyay of Jadavpur University who won the Wertheim prize with her paper on Judith Wright.

The next conference will be in Portland, Oregon, in April of 2014. The board gave preliminary approval to a new publishing arrangement for Antipodes, of which more hopefully later. 

            The 2013 AAALS program is available here

American Association of Australasian Literary Studies (AAALS)

2013 Conference Program

February 15 – 16, 2013. Georgetown University, Washington, DC.

Friday, February 15

8:00am                         Registration and Continental Breakfast

9:00am                        Welcoming Remarks

9:15 - 10.30             Panel 1. Colonialism & Modernism. Chair: Carolyn Bliss, University of Utah

1.     Susan Laverick, Charles Sturt University - “Negotiating Desire in Rosa Praed’s Outlaw and Lawmaker (1894).”

2.     Nicholas Birns, The New School – “Medium-Sized Mortals: Elizabeth Harrower, The Watch Tower and Late Modernity.”

3.     John Scheckter, Long Island University – “‘Modern in Every Respect’: The 1914 Conference of the British Association for the Advancement of Science.”

10:30 - 10:45            Break

10:45 - 12.15             Panel 2. Contemporary Fiction. Chair: John Scheckter, Long Island University

1.     Libbie Chellew, Deakin University - “The Uncanny Everyday: Suburbia in Two Short Stories.”

2.     Nathanael O’Reilly, Texas Christian University – “Finding the Extraordinary in the Everyday: Shaun Tan’s Tales From Outer Suburbia.”

3.     Richard Carr, University of Alaska, Fairbanks – “Nick Carmody, Entertainment Reporter, or ... ?:  Seven Mile Beach as Guide to Contemporary Identity.”

12:15 - 1.30            Lunch - Staff Faculty Club. Keynote Speaker:  Michael J. Green, Georgetown University and CSIS.

1:30 - 2.45            Panel 3. Children’s & Young Adult Literature. Chair: Nathanael O’Reilly, Texas Christian University

1.     Sue Page, University of South Australia – “The Invisible Made Visible: Representations of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in Children’s and Young Adult Novels.”

2.     Theodore F. Sheckels, Randolph-Macon College – “Disciplining and Punishing Down Under: Being in and Speaking from Confinement in the Fiction of John Marsden.”

2:45 - 3:00                        Break

3:00 - 4.20            Panel 4. Post-WW2 Women Writers. Chair: Nicholas Birns, The New School

1.     Donna Coates, University of Calgary – “Fascinating Rhythms: The Pursuit of Life, Liberty, and Happiness in World War Two Novels by Mandy Sayer and Mardi McConnchie.”

2.     Diviani Chaudhuri, SUNY Binghamton – “Narrating the Nation: Female Patricide, Traumatic Misrecognition, and Apology in Gail Jones’ Sorry.”

3.     Shinjini Chattopadhyay, Jadavpur University – “‘What Message does Death Send’: The ‘Living Dead’ and the Australian Landscape in the Poetry of Judith Wright.”

6:30            Conference Dinner: Copley Lounge. Keynote Speaker Professor David Hackett Fischer, University Professor and Earl Warren Professor of History, Brandeis University.

Saturday, February 16

8:30                                    AAALS Board Meeting.

9.15 - 10.30            Panel 5. Experimental Fictions. Chair: Per Henningsgaard, Portland State University

1.     Stephan Kraitsowits, University of Picardie, France – “Australian Science Fiction: The Borders Within.”

2.     Mark Klemens, Columbus, Ohio – “Discontinuous Narratives: Pickwick, Ben Hackworth’s Corroboree, and The Americans, Baby.”

3.     Brenda Machosky, University of Hawai’i – “Writing the Body from Where the Paper Starts:  Kim Scott’s Benang.”

10:30 - 10:45            Break

10:45 - 12:00             Panel 6. New Directions. Chair: Eva Rueschmann, Hampshire College

1.     Per Henningsgaard, Portland State University – “Digital Publishing and the Future of Place-Based Literatures.”

2.     Alison Broinowski, University of Wollongong – “COSMOPOLITAN: The New Direction of Asian Australian Fiction in the Asian Century.”

12:00 - 1.30                        Lunch: McShain Lounge. AAALS Keynote Speaker Andrew McCann,

Associate Professor of English, Dartmouth College – "Metrocolonialism, Biopolitics, and the Pursuit of Literature."

This keynote speech is generously supported by the Addran College of Liberal Arts at Texas Christian University.

1.30 - 3.00            Panel 7. New Zealand Literature & Culture. Chair: Theodore F. Sheckels, Randolph-Macon College

1.     Ivy McDaniels, Independent Scholar - “Ocean Greyhounds and French Cows: Katherine Mansfield’s Materialisms.”

2.     Cyrena Mazlin, University of Queensland – “Janet Frame’s Returned Soldiers.”

3.     Kathy Burns, George Mason University – “Cauldron for Controversy:  NZ Prime Minister Helen Clark.”

3:00 - 3.15                        Break

3.15 - 4.00                        AAALS Business Meeting.

Conference Concludes 4.00pm

AAALS Officers

President: Nathanael O’Reilly, Texas Christian University

Vice-President: Eva Rueschmann, Hampshire College

Treasurer: Per Henningsgaard, Portland State University

Secretary: Peter Mathews, Hanyang University

Current and forthcoming issues of ANTIPODES

The December 2012 Antipodes is now published. 

The June 2013 Antipodes will be a special issue on Austrlaia and the 1960s guest edited by Mark Klemens.  include cover art by George Matoulas; articles by Michael Ackland (on Christina Stead), Toby Davidson (on Francis Webb), Caterina Colomba (on Thomas Keneally),, Brenda Machosky (on iris Milutinovic), Colin Dray (on Gwen Harwood),, Richard Pascal (on F. B. Vickers), Sean McMullen (on Australian science fiction), Janice Shaw (on Frank Moorhouse); the issue will also include fiction by John Kinsella and  creative nonfiction by Ouyang Yu (on Mo Yan's Nobel Prize) and Brendan Ryan (on John McGahern).

The December 2013 Antipodes will feature cover art by James Barker  and articles by Yunqiu Liu (on Tim Winton), Michael Buhagiar (on Christopher Brennan), Fiona Duthie (on Elliot Perlman), Michael Titlestad (on the Batavia wreck), Natasa Kampmark (on translating Patrick White), Helen Gildfind (on Eleanor Dark), Therese-Marie Mayer (on Tasmanian bush fiction),  Lars Anderson (on Gerald Murnane), Martina Horakova (on Kim Mahood), Ali Alizadeh (on Lionel Fogarty). 

The June 2014 issue will be devoted to the pedagogy of Australian and New Zealand literature. Most of the prospective article shave already been invited but we do have room for one or two articles in specific pedagogical occasions (a course, a class, a syllabus) in the teaching of Antipodean literature. 

As of the June 2013 issue, John Scheckter (Long Island University) will be joining the Antipodes editorial advisory board. 

Why I buy so many Australian e-books

It is interesting that, as a consumer, I am buying far more Australian books in e-book format than I do in physical format, even though as editor of an Australianist publication I cam more or less get review books on demand from publishers and even though for many years it has been perfectly easy to purchase Australian books in physical form on the Internet. But in the past month, as I research as long paper on a contemporary Australian author, write a couple of book reviews, and strive to inform myself on authors on whom contributors to Antipodes are submitting articles, I have spent about US $100 on various Australian ebooks. Interestingly, whereas I forbore to buy that many Australian books earlier not just because of the physical limitations of my smallish, book-crammed Manhattan apartment, but because the Australian books seemed so much from a different world as to mingle uneasily, in a qualitative sense, with the European and North American books I had largely on hand, leaving me feeling divided as a reader.  On my e-reader, this is no worry; most if the books on these are classics, and yet the Australian books blend in with them quite inconspicuously. If I am a representative sample, the Australian publishing industry is doing quite well on e-books.