Information and call for papers for the 11th Biennial Conference of the European Association for Studies on Australia (EASA), University of Presov, Slovakia, September 12-15, 2011.
Crossing the Borders: Reality, desire and imagination in Australian, New Zealand and the Pacific lives, literatures and cultures.
Deadline for abstracts: 30 March 2011.
My pleasure. I´d be interested in seeing what you write about this.
Going to try and write something about this, I think. Thanks again.
Thanks, Rachel. Interesting, too, is to get away from the anglo slant and look at oz expats in non english-speaking countries – an added layer, methinks.
http://britishexpats.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=83http://www.expatexposed.com/Couple of links you probably have already seen but which I was reminded of when I read the conference overview.It’s certainly a line of enquiry pregnant with potential for research. Thank you.
As far as I know, theory seems to neglect the expat as do most instances when it comes to national identity (no voting in oz if you´ve been away more than 6 years, for instance). Hybridity, i feel, is not the answer for this growing invisible group. The Empire is Ashcroft´s (et al)but even since that book, it´s still all about hybridity. So it will be interesting to hear other voices, specially coming from outside Australia.
Could I have managed another typo?!I actually think this is more complex because there’s a process, I think, of the expat embracing, rejecting, re-embracing from an adjusted standpoint their adopted national traits before an identity is arrived at, and then, yes, I think it is an abstract ultimately.There’s too much here to simplify into one comment. But it’s interesting to me because I recently reread “The Empire Writes Back” and I don’t recall anything mentioning expats. I note the Ashcroft you mention and I probably should read that before trying to cobble a vewpoint.
I´m trying to work out the place of the expat in all this. Do we align with national traits or is our “nation” one of ideas?
Best of luck with it!
I´m hoping to be reading from my work. Fingers crossed.
It’s fascinating – the whole notion of how a nation (if one even agrees that such a thing exists to begin with – whole argument to be had there..) perceives itsself or is perceived.I was reading some interesting quotes from British media figures who were commenting about what it meant to them to be British, some were the obvious things one might imagine, patriotic type things, but others stated (Jon Snow among them) that Britishness was a pointless construct. Most British people would rather identify themselves as, for eg, as Londoners. Really, nations have grown to the point that people are reverting to more feudal, tribal identification markers as a means of placing themselves in an ever shifting, ever questioned society. Would love to be able to go to something like this one day – go back to unicversity…my brain needs the exercise.Are you going to this?
This sounds really interesting…off for a read…