CFP: Australian Studies Project (06/30/07)
Editors: Nathanael O'Reilly, Jean-François Vernay, Robyn Walton
Australian Studies project: A collection of international perspectives on fear and protection related topics within the scope of Australian Studies for an essay collection with the working title Protect Australia Fair: International Perspectives on Australian Culture.

Dear Australianists,
What are Australians afraid of?
Australia's Great Ocean Road provides magnificent views of coastline and ocean. And all the way along it, an international visitor remarked the other day, are warning signs for motorists.
'So there ought to be', the Australian replies, 'That's a narrow, winding road with a long drop down onto rocks. We care about people's safety and wellbeing. We're a relatively happy, prosperous and healthy country with an amazing pluralist population and we want to stay that way.'
'But it's more than that,' the visitor responds. 'Why is fearfulness a theme in Australian culture? I see fear expressed through a whole lot of over-protective behaviours and laws. What's wrong with you people? You're protecting yourselves against things that don't eventuate.'
Nathanael O'Reilly, Jean-François Vernay, and Robyn Walton are seeking international submissions on fear and protection related topics within the scope of Australian Studies. Contributors might wish to consider the following leads, which we've provisionally divided into three spatial zones of fearfulness, or explore challenging new ones.
National and International Fears
Pluralism and multiculturalism fears
Population and natural resources fears
Law and authority
The besieged complex
Civil unrest, violence, riots
Terrorism and counter-terrorism
Xenophobia, past and present
Invasion narratives
Immigration: refugees, asylum seekers, detention centres and fear
Science and technology fears
Complacency warnings versus 'Relaxed and comfortable' lifestyle
Culture, Local, Regional and State level Fears
Fear and spirituality
Fear and collective identity
Fear and indigenous issues
Fear and critical whiteness studies
Fear in city, inner-urban and suburban environments
Fear in regional and country Australia
Fear in and of the natural environment
Fear in cinema and literature: the thriller, the horror genre, disaster movies, speculative fiction, dystopias, post-nuclear and post-millennium themes
Fear and language, communications, media
Affluence, employment and fear of material loss
Fear and performance
Fear and fashion
Individual and Personal Space Fears
The threatened body
Selfhood, identity, representation
Fear and desire
Family and domestic fears
Homophobia in a heterocentric society
The paranoid mind
Psychoanalytic fears
Self-protectiveness, exposure anxiety
The suggested length for essays is 4,000 words. Essays should be suitable for an interdisciplinary and international readership. All submissions will be refereed by an international panel of distinguished scholars in the field.
Style guide: refer to the MLA sixth edition.
You may submit your enquiry, expression of interest or finished essay to the editors at the following address: fearozproject_at_yahoo.com.
Bionotes:
Nathanael O'Reilly
Nathanael O'Reilly was born in Warrnambool, Victoria and attended Monash University and the University of Ballarat before leaving Australia to work overseas. He teaches Australian literature and writing classes at Albion College in Michigan while completing a Ph.D. at Western Michigan University; his dissertation examines suburbia in contemporary Australian fiction. His articles, interviews, reviews and poetry are published in North American, European and Australasian journals. Nathanael is the Secretary, Newsletter Editor and Webmaster for the American Association of Australian Literary Studies.
Jean-Francois Vernay
Born in New Caledonia, Jean-François Vernay was educated at the Université de la Nouvelle-Calédonie and at the Université Toulouse-Le Mirail, from which he holds a PhD. As Founding Editor of Correspondances Océaniennes, a Nouméa-based postcolonial journal focussing on Oceanic cultures, he has been editing articles on postcolonial societies for five years, while regularly publishing articles in refereed journals and collections. His latest publication is a monograph entitled Water From the Moon: Illusion and Reality in the Works of Australian Novelist Christopher Koch (New-York/ London: Cambria Press, 2007).
Robyn Walton
A doctoral candidate in the English Program at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Robyn Walton completed her previous degrees at the University of Sydney. She then worked as a book editor and taught at University of Technology, Sydney, for fourteen years whilst also writing fiction. She was awarded the Australian Vogel literary prize in 1986. Her fiction, essays and chapters on utopianism and cultural history have been published in Australia and Europe in several languages. Forthcoming: a chapter on utopianism and post-colonialism in Histoire transnationale de l'utopie littéraire et de l'utopisme (Honoré Champion) and, with Rosaleen Love, a section in Women in Science Fiction and Fantasy: An Encyclopedia (Greenwood).
Due dates:
Date for expressions of interest: end March 2007.
Date for final submissions: end June 2007.

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Received on Sat Feb 24 2007 - 13:11:43 EST