edited by Adi Wimmer (Klagenfurt, Austria); David Callahan (Aveiro, Portugal)
5th bi-ennial EASA conference
28 September - 3 October 1999
University of Toulouse, France.
The conference subject is DEPARTURES: AUSTRALIA'S RE-INVENTIONS OF ITSELF.
The most obvious meanings of Departures are suggested by the OED. They include: death; separation or parting; starting on a journey; divergence and deviation from a norm. The term thus covers such broad areas as travel, exile, transgression, innovation, making a fresh start. However, in the context of a postcolonial culture, it applies to the ways in which Australia has reinvented itself - and continues to redefine itself - to produce fresh social or literary forms. On the eve of the Third Millennium, which will occasion a fresh wave of national self-definitions, this is a particularly relevant field of study. Departures can and should, therefore, also refer to the breaking of specifically Australian conventions, policies or ideologies.
Paper proposals should be sent to Xavier Pons by February 15th, 1999.
Registration fee: 500 francs (early, by February 15th), 600 francs afterwards.
Make your cheques payable to:
M.l'Agent Comptable, Universite de Toulouse Le Mirail, France
All speakers must be paid-up members of EASA for 1999 and 2000. The EASA membership fee will be 20 EUROS as of 1999, and can be paid at the conference.
There will be a first circular letter in September. Meanwhile, please check our EASA homepage. Additional conference information will be added to the site as it becomes available.
The conference will start Tuesday, September 28th, with reception and welcome, and end on Saturday, October 2nd. If there is sufficient interest, there will be a conference excursion on Sunday. Travel: Air France has hourly flights to Toulouse from Paris/Orly and offers up to 50% discount on this domestic flight.
Speakers and readers will include: Portia Robinson, Tom Griffith, Beth Yahp, and Brian Castro.
For details, please contact the EASA president and conference organizer Xavier Pons:
email: [email protected]
Address: Universite de Toulouse-Le Mirail, 5, alles Antonio Machado, 31058 Toulouse-Cedex, FRANCE.
Telephone: +33 5 61 50 42 50
Fax: +33 5 61 50 40 32
6th biennial conference of the German Association of Australian Studies. 17-20 September, 1998; Moosegg, Switzerland.
For further information contact the organizer Rudolf Bader, R�merstr. 25, CH-3047 Bremgarten, Switzerland; fax: +41 31 3017762.
ACLALS Conference, Kuala Lumpur, 1-6 December, 1998.
The deadline for abstracts was June 1998. Participants should contact organizers Prof. C.S. Lim, Mrs Siti Rohaini Kassim or Ms Mary Susan Philip, at: Dept. of English, Faculty of Arts, Univ. of Malaya, 50603 Kuala Lumpur.
email: [email protected]
Fax: 603-7595456
Website: www.tcol.co.uk/comorg/aclals.htm
An Interdisciplinary Conference to be held at The University of Tasmania, 3-6 February 1999
This conference, located on richly textured colonial terrain and incorporating a day among the convict traces at Port Arthur, the ruins of the infamous penal colony in 'Van Dieman's Land', focuses on colonial Australia but invites papers from anyone working in colonial studies in areas including Aboriginal and Indigenous studies, anthropology, archaeology, art, cultural studies, cultural tourism, English and literary studies, environmental studies, family history, history, and museum studies.
Abstracts for twenty-minute papers, including provisional title and summary of not more than 250 words, should be submitted by 31 August 1998 to:
Professor Lucy Frost, School of English and European Languages & Literatures, University of Tasmania, GPO Box 252-82, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia. E-mail: [email protected]
Ph: (Intl) +61 3 6226 2348
Fax: (Intl) +61 3 6226 7631
Website: www.utas.edu.au/docs/humsoc/deell/3menu/eye.html
EACLALS Conference, T�bingen (Germany), 6-11 April, 1999.
Deadline extension for submitting papers: now 5 September 1998. Send abstracts to organizer Gerhard Stilz; email: [email protected]. There will be a large number of writers at the conference. Provisional OKs have been given by Wole Soyinka, Nuruddin Farah, Peter Carey, Kevin Hart, Timothy Findley, Patricia Grace, Witi Ihimaera, Vincent O'Sullivan, and Caryl Phillips. Gerhard Stilz is also trying to woo such stellar writers as Nadine Gordimer or Anita Desai.
Web-site: www.uni-tuebingen.de/uni/nes/colonies.html
The Third Galway Conference on Colonialism, 17-20 June 1999
The aim of this multidisciplinary conference is to explore the meanings of the contemporary and historical entities which are categorised under the rubric of colony. Papers would address the question of how colonies have been defined, politically, economically, socially, and culturally. Are there any sure signs of coloniality, postcoloniality? What are the roles of ethnicity, race, gender, and social class in different colonial dispensations? Papers might consider the ever-present danger of generating colonial theory from the specific experience of certain kinds of colonies and then conferring on it the dignity of universality.
Please send abstracts of no longer than 300 words by 1 February 1999 to the Conference Organisers, Dept of English, National University of Ireland, Galway, Ireland.
There is a special conference e-mail address: [email protected].
Details of the conference will be updated at: www.ucg.ie/enl/colony/conference.htm
Bibliographical Society of Australia and New Zealand. Annual Conference, Brisbane, Australia; 8-10 July 1999
Offers of papers (30 minutes' duration) are invited on:
The conference will be held at the Queensland State Library, South Bank, Brisbane, Australia. Offers of papers (with 300-word abstracts) should be directed by 31 January 1999 to: Dr Chris Tiffin, Department of English, University of Queensland, Australia 4072.
Phone: +61 7 3365 2172, Fax: +61 7 3365 2799
Email: [email protected]
Website: www.uq.edu.au/~enctiffi/bsanz.htm
University of Queensland, July 11-15, 1999
For further information, please contact Leigh Dale, email: [email protected].
Conference web page at: www.uq.edu.au/~enldale/pc.htm
International Federation of Modern Languages and Literatures Conference; Harare, Zimbabwe, 26-31 July 1999.
The organisers anticipate that the following themes will be explored: language and identity; international languages and noninternational languages; European and non-European verbal culture; parallels in the past, present and future; the European, African, and Asian diasporas and their literatures; issues in Africa and the Third World; and technology, translations, multilingualism, and nonverbal language.
Organiser: Tava Gwanzura, email: [email protected]
Fax: +263-4-333674
Adventures of Identity. Constructing the Multicultural Subject. 30 July - 2 August, Goethe Institute, Sydney.
Unmasking Whiteness. Race Relations and Reconciliation. 17-18 September 1998, The Queensland Studies Centre, Griffith University, Nathan, Queensland.
The History of the Book in Australia (HOBA). Sept 19-20, 1998; State Library of NSW, Sydney.
Postcolonial/Cultural Studies: Representing Difference. Cultural Studies Assoc. of Australia. 4-6 December 1998.
Ireland and Australia, 1798-1998. Tenth Irish-Australian Conference. 28 Sept - 2 October 1998, La Trobe University.
Women Writing 1550-1750. A Multidisciplinary Conference. 10-11 July 1999, La Trobe University.
Bordering Europe: relations between European post-imperial nations and their former colonies. 20 - 24 September, 1999, Canterbury, UK.
Roughly seventy members and friends of the AAALS gathered at the University of Missouri in St.Louis, Missouri, for the Thirteenth Annual AAALS Conference. The event was managed with great confidence and an admirable "no worries" attitude by Robert Zeller.
Many participants had not yet arrived when the conference was opened in the evening of April 22nd by Chancellor Blanche Touhill, so it was a pleasant surprise to see how the number had swollen by the next morning. An almost ideal "curtain-raiser" was provided by Jim Hoy (Emporia State), who compared 19th century American and Australian folks songs of the frontier. And not just in an academic manner: he sang them, too, ably accompanying his baritone voice on the guitar! Another comparative paper was to follow when D'Arcy Randall (Univ. of Texas, Austin) examined American captivity narratives of the Indian Wars with the various versions of the Eliza Fraser story. Randall told us a narrative which runs counter to all white assumptions on Native Americans: Cynthia Ann Parker, who was abducted in 1837, came to love and marry a Comanche chief. "Liberated" by whites in 1843, she tried several times to run away and to re-join her husband and children. For this, she was so badly ostracised by her fellow-citizens that she soon died, a captive once again.
In all, 22 fine presentations were to follow over the next three days. No parallell sessions were thus necessary, a pleasant change from most conferences that I have been to in the past years - including the one I organized myself. Another departure: there were no distractions. It was virtually impossible to leave the campus, or to get to it unchaperoned from the conference hotel located five miles away (unless you had your own car with you), and so the participants stayed together. Which papers is one to highlight ... Kay Schaffer gave a well-researched presentation on "Landscape and Dreaming: The Sense of Place in Aboriginal Art and Literature", and she also had valuable visual material to illustrate her points. Robert Ross and Shirley Paoloni both spoke on Thea Astley, the former emphasising Astley's tenuous links to Australia, the latter discussing her "darkest views of mankind" in her novel An Item from the Late News, Cath Ellis (Wollongong) spoke about the relationship between pianist David Helfgott (of Shine fame) and Katherine Susannah Prichard, who was a founding member of Australia's CP. She had interviewed Helfgott at his home, improbably named "The Promised Land", and provided entertaining samples of Helfgott's well-known logorrhoea. That Helfgott was close to Prichard is evidenced by the fact that she kept the letters of only six of her correspondents, one of them being Helfgott. (Sadly, hers to him were lost.) Kathleen Doty (Humboldt State) provided a brisk analysis of Malouf's treatment of women (in his novels, naturally.) Julian Croft's unscheduled paper presented an excellent historical survey of the second-largest city of NSW, Newcastle. (At the time of the conference, the centre of a desperate Australian wharvies' strike. They won a noble, but Pyrrhic vitory; the government came off even worse.) Many of us, I suspect, were unaware that such diverse writers as James Tucker, Ronald McCraig, Dymphne Cusack, Elizabeth Harrower, Marion Halligan and James McAuley all have personal/literary ties to Newcastle. Werner Senn, whose densely planned and well-delivered paper on Rosemary Dobson was a pleasant contrast to some loose American presentations, examined the concept of time in selected poems. One session was given to readings by novelist Sue Woolfe and poet Jan Owen. Woolfe (whose novel Painted Ladies was quite a success) read from her recently launched novel Leaning Towards Infinity, part of which discusses the puzzling phenomeneon of prime numbers. Jan Owen's sensual poems contained a memorable definition of the Southeast Asian 'Durian' fruit: "creamy sex on a cunning tongue."
The conference participants were all accommodated in the St.Louis airport Hilton, which advertised itself as having "easy access to the downtown subway." Easy? From the hotel one could clearly see the airport subway station, it was only half a mile away. But it proved impossible to walk there. You had to get on, or phone for, the hotel bus, unless you risked being run over trying to cross first a two-lane road, then a six-lane highway with fences on either side, and finally a busy access ramp. There just wasn't a footpath. However, the hotel bus really did not take more than a few minutes to appear if you phoned from the airport, and polite chauffeurs took you there from the hotel even if you were all alone. America!
St. Louis is, of course, a historical city, the city of Lewis and Clark, of Lindbergh, of T.S. Eliot (whose place of birth, I was shocked to learn, had been torn down. Nor does the original Prufrock store exist any more.) We all visited the Lewis-and-Clark Museum underneath the famous 195-meter high arch by the banks of the Mississippi, the old Union Station, which was once the largest railway station in the US, and the famous botanical gardens. The latter provided a suitable backdrop to a slide presentation by Peter Bernhardt (St. Louis University) on Mary Gibbs' Vision of Bush and Garden. On the final day of the conference we were all whisked away to a downtown location, the Austral Gallery, a fabulous old frontier house full of the most gorgeous paintings. Here we were treated to a lavish spread of indigenous food and Australian wine by our gracious host Mary Brunstrom. This put us into a highly receptive mood for Frank Moorhouse's reading. Some conference members were observed rolling in the aisles with helpless mirth. I really enjoyed myself at this conference, and the nightly meetings at the bar, where, supervised and guided by a patrician Robert Ross we sampled drinks, provided warm and memorable moments.
The 1999 AAALS conference will be held from 15-18 April in Park City, Utah, organized and chaired by the vigorous AAALS president Carolyn Bliss.
Adi Wimmer
Antipodes (Journal of the American Association for Australian Literary Studies, AAALS). This is a fully refereed international journal which appears twice a year. General editor is Professor Robert Ross (Edwin A. Clark Center for Australian Studies, University of Texas/Austin). The 2/1999 issue will focus on the Australian Film Industry and will be guest-edited by Adi Wimmer.
Abstracts of appr. 200 words are invited on any aspect of Australian film production, reception, or marketing. Particularly welcome are contributions on film adaptations and current trends in Australian film making. Please e-mail (preferably) your abstracts a.s.a.p. to [email protected]. Fax: +43 463 2700 333. Finished contributions must be submitted by June 1999.
New Talents in Australian Studies, Journal of Australian Studies 1999 (special issue)
Richard Nile writes:
'New Talents in Australian Studies' (JAS no 62 1999) is being guest co-edited by Ffion Murphy, who is currently enrolled in a PhD in creative writing, and Emily Warner who is writing a thesis on Australian cultural studies.
As a first step, we are inviting currently enrolled postgraduates or recently completed postgraduates (within the last two years) to submit proposals of up to 200 words on an Australian subject of their choice. The proposals must reach the Journal of Australian Studies by Friday 4 September 1998. We would welcome submissions from the humanities and social sciences, in particular, but we are also interested to hear from 'new talents' in other areas. Proposals must show evidence of being interdisciplinary in approach and we actively encourage experimental work.
The Journal of Australian Studies is a fully refereed international quarterly published by the University of Queensland Press.
Film and History, Cold War issue. The journal is planning to devote an issue to films of the Cold War years (c. 1947-89). Welcome are essays that explore the various ways in which the Cold War culture influenced films of the period. If you are interested in submitting an essay, please submit an 150-200 word prospectus by January 1991 to Philip J. Landon, Dept of English, Univ. of Maryland, Baltimore MD 21250. email: [email protected]
Mark Twain called Australia the land of "the most beautiful lies", referring to the fantastic nature of many an outback yarn. Some of that charm has gone distinctly sour lately and the chickens of a "politics of identity" have come home to roost. The clouds surrounding Mudrooroo and his claim to Narogin tribal affiliation just will not lift, and Australia's literary community is once again split down the middle.
The first Australian identity hoax I came across blew up in 1989. John Friedrich was a German con-artist who emigrated to Australia in the early 1970s, on forged papers as it later emerged. Friedrich (which wasn't his real name) had good reason to use forged papers as he was wanted by the Munich police for a number of frauds. In Australia he managed to get himself appointed head of the Victorian Air, Sea and Resue Service. With the rise of international terrorism in the 1980s, he turned his unit (on paper, at least) towards the purpose of combatting terrorism, ordering more and more elaborate equipment, including a mini-submarine. Such was his reputation that he was welcomed at numerous international conferences, CIA-sponsored seminars and the like, flying in and out of the country using VIP-procedures that allowed him to travel without a passport. (He did not have one.) When the board finally forced a showdown, he took off in his car and was eventually tracked down in W.A. Not even his Australian wife and children knew his real identity. There was a tragic end to this hoax as he committed suicide shortly before his trial.
About the "Earn Malley" and the Demidenko /Darville hoaxes (not that I mean to put them on a par) much has been written already. Sydney Sparkes Orr, the graduate of Queen's College Belfast who was appointed professor of philosophy at the University of Tasmania in 1952 without a doctorate and without any substantial publications was a hoax of a different kind; his dismissal for "Gross Moral Turpitude" in 1956 (so the title of Cassandra Pybus' excellent study) sparked a decade-long controversy. But there have been other hoaxes (and hoax allegations) of which we in Europe did not get to hear too much. Here is a survey.
You may remember that Helen Demidenko was propelled to literary fame when she won the 1994 VOGEL award. The very first VOGEL award (which bears a cash prize and publication by its sponsors, Allen & Unwin) was awarded in 1980 to Paul Radley for Jack Rivers and Me. So impressed was the reading public that in 1982 Radley was voted "Young Australian of the Year". Jack Rivers was a first-person World-War II narrative, and some reviewers remarked that for a man in his early twenties Radley had a remarkable feel for the cameraderie of Australian officers and an uncanny ear for military slang. They were onto something without knowing it. Conscience-stricken and in the wake of the Demidenko scam, Radley admitted in 1995 that his "first novel" had in fact been written by his uncle Jack Radley. After Radley's confession (not, alas, accompanied by a voluntary return of his prize money), Archie Weller, who was considered the runner-up to Radley at the time, made a public claim for the 1980 Vogel award. Forget about the money, he said, all I want is to be included in the list of VOGEL winners. Thomas Shapcott and quite a few academics supported Archie, but Allen & Unwin's line was that no runner-up had been named and so it was impossible to give the award to someone else.
Ironically, Archie Weller has meanwhile been called a hoax himself. Archie calls himself an Aborigine, on the basis of an Aboriginal grandmother. He called his novel Days of the Dog (turned into a successful movie with the title Blackfellas by John Ricketson in 1992) "semi-autobiographical". Novel and film tell the story of exuberant Aboriginal juveniles and their struggle with temptations of breaking the white man's law. In early 1998 it transpired that Archie Weller went to one of the most exclusive private schools of Adelaide. His Aboriginality was called into question. Archie's supporters claim he could have never constructed such an elaborate hoax. Proving you have an Aboriginal grandmother was notoriously difficult since Aboriginal culture is "oral" in many ways, not written. Birth certificates were in many instances not even issued to Aborigines by the authorities. Still, it is strange that there are no pictures, no witnesses, to back up Archie's claim. The matter hangs in doubt.
In 1994 Marlo Morgan surprised the publishing world with a best-seller that she had at first published privately, before Harper Collins offered her a contract. Mutant Message Down Under purports to be the factual account how a hitherto unknown tribe of Aborigines had taken her on a spiritually enriched four-month walkabout, during which she learned miracle-healing, coaxing unwanted crocs from watering holes, and how to persuade kangaroos to offer themselves for food. Incredibly, this rip-off of Aboriginal culture has meanwhile sold a million copies worldwide. In 1996, Ms Morgan was forced to admit she had made it all up. But that did not stop the book's sales. The new edition contains a coyish foreword in which Ms Morgan invites the reader to decide her/himself whether her story is fiction or fact. Much to my chagrin, I still encounter people who think they have come across an eye-opening study of Aboriginality. When I was last in Australia, the book was still stacked amongst the "Aboriginal Studies" sections of an Adelaide bookstore. Even more infuriatingly, she has now published a second novel which I chanced upon when I visited the British book chain-store Waterman's. Prominently displayed, it was.
One of the latest scams surfaced in March 1997. In 1993, Leon Carmen, a 47 year-old white male taxi-driver from North Sydney submitted a manuscript to the reknown Aboriginal publishing house Magabala Books, presenting it as the autobiography of a South Australian-born Aboriginal woman named Wanda Koolmatrie. Incredibly, without ever meeting the author or checking "her" credentials, Magabala books published the faked autobiography in 1994 under the title My Own Sweet Time. Even more amazingly, in 1995 it won the $5,000 Dobbie Award for Women's Writing. The award was accepted on "Wanda's" behalf by "her" agent as unfortunately "she" was "overseas". To add to the intrigue, Dorothy Hewett reviewed the book enthusiastically. In her endorsement she wrote: "This heartening comic odyssey cries out for a sequel. It could be the start of a new genre."
There is a saying in German "the jug will go to the well until it breaks." Carmen's jug broke relatively soon. Emboldened by his experience with the first book, he attempted to submit a second MS to Magabala in 1997 and was exposed. For a publishing company that in 1996 received A$ 169.000 in public subsidies, their check-up procedures leave a lot to be desired. The note "About the Author" in My Own Sweet Time contains passages making one wonder how he managed to hoodwink Magabala. Roberta Sykes, Ruby Langford, and other writers have called on Carmen to hand back the Dobbie money. To no avail -- and it seems doubtful that he can even be sued.
The OZ art-world too has been divided its hoaxes. In 1996, 81 year-old Elizabeth Durack (who comes from one of the most prominent pastoralist families in W.A.) entered several paintings in the Native Titled Now contest in Perth, under the alias of Eddie Burrup. The contest is only open to Indigenous Australians. The judges were quite taken by her work and included three canvasses in the Native Titled Now exhibition, which then toured the country and was shown in six venues. Mrs Durack also invented an elaborate biography for Eddie Burrup, complete with snap-shots of his "country" to go with the paintings. The media just loved her hoax. Instead of taking her to task, they lambasted the jury for their inability to spot the difference. Some artists and art critics opined that the background of a painter was irrelevant: only the art itself should be judged. (Doesn't it remind you of the "death-of-the-author" argument in the Darville scam?)
And a Sydney sculptor, Lawrence Gundabuka, revealed that he had changed his name from "Beck" about four years ago. He began to "feel" as an Aborigine because his grandmother looked Aboriginal. "I have a feeling" he said. "I am not interested in proving it to anybody." He also changed the names of his children to Nadjongbila, Bujara and Bidjigal, a change not supported by his wife. More recently, a Bengali man has posed as an Anmatyerre artist. He was found out fairly quickly, but instead of crawling into a corner he proudly insists that Aboriginality is a construct anyway, and even calls himself "Mr. Anmaterre."
In late 1997, Ray Beamish, the estranged white partner of Aboriginal artist Kathleen Petyarre, publicly claimed that it was he who had painted the lion's share of Petyarre's 1996 TELSTRA award-winning painting Storm in Atnangkere Country II. The Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Award is a prestigious one, as well as being the longest-running Indigenous art award in this country. The first prize is $18,000. Petyarre strenuously denied that Beamish's allegations have any real foundation. Nevertheless, she was subjected to many suspicious articles and commentary in Australian media. Many a closet-racist gleefully speculated how many more scandals of that kind would surface.
Petyarre's position was substantiated by a number of published catalogue photographs of similar paintings which she had created years before meeting Beamish. As the major custodian of this Dreaming, over which she has proprietal rights, Petyarre does have the right to direct others in a particular relationship to her to contribute to her paintings in minor ways, but only under her direction. Kathleen Petyarre has never denied that on occasion Beamish played an ancillary role in relation to her artworks. At the same time, she continued to confirm that her responsibility to her Dreaming is an inalienable one - and that she is the owner and author of the image regardless of any contribution by Mr Beamish.
Northern Territory Museums and Art Galleries created a board of art experts to investigate Mr Beamish's claims. The board's decision vindicated Kathleen Petyarre and the TELSTRA award was not withdrawn from her, as Mr Beamish had demanded. The Chairman of the Board, Mr Colin McDonald QC, stated that "after careful consideration of the issue, the Board found that the allegations of Mr Beamish regarding authorship of the Telstra award were not proved. The Board was not satisfied, on all of the materials placed before it, that Mr Beamish was the author of the Telstra painting."
It was, however, the controversy surrounding the doyen of indigenous writing which has caused the greatest controversy in the Australian as well as international literary worlds. Mudgrooroo changed his name from Colin Johnson in 1988 as a political gesture, adding at first "Narogin" then "Nyoongah", but dropping the middle name soon after. (A significant change, the reasons of which became apparent much later.) "Mudgrooroo" means "paperbark" in the Narogin language, as does "Oodgeroo" in Kath Walker's language. In July 1996 Mudgrooroo's half-sister Betty Polglaze (who is 17 years his senior) went public with the results of her family history research. It showed, so she told the press, no trace of any Aboriginal forbears. Their mother Elizabeth Johnson had no Aboriginal blood, but a paternal grandfather (Thomas Johnson) was an Afro-American who had emigrated from North Carolina about 1860.
Mudgrooroo kept a conspicuous silence. Appeals from his friends and supporters to make a statement concerning his background were ignored. After Mudgrooroo declined to prove his claim, the Narogin people angrily rejected any suggestion that he was one of theirs. Indigenous organisations have reacted in quite hostile ways generally. Their hostility is partly explained by Mudgrooroo's earlier attacks on Sally Morgan, author of My Place, whose Aboriginality he called dubious and insufficient (Sally Morgan, according to her own story, is one quarter Aboriginal). In March 1998 Mudgrooroo broke his long silence. He had researched his sister's claim of a black grandfather in the archives of North Carolina, he said, and there was no trace of a Thomas Johnson in any of the records. In a surprise twist of the family feud, he then (somewhat desperately) claimed that another half-sister, Joyreen Stamsfield, was his real mother. His birth certificate had been signed by her, as the mid-wife present. The reason, so Mudgrooroo explained, was covering up the shame of an illegitimate baby. Joyreen rejected his claim and challenged him to a gene test. "I am quite prepared to go for a DNA test" she said. "But he won't. That would be the end to his little game ... and the fortune that he's been scrounging out of everybody". Departing from her sister's story, she thinks that Mudgrooroo's father was a Madagascan.
Mudgrooroo counter-attacked: "It must be traumatic to have kept a family secret for all these years, only to have it discovered. But it's no more traumatic than my own experience of being shunted around from mother to mother to orphanage, growing up without any of these so-called family members bothering about me, only to have them emerge when they think I have earned some money." According to a report in the Brisbane Courier-Mail of March 30 he will undergo a DNA test to resolve the row. At the time of my writing, however, the result (if indeed he took a DNA test)has not yet been made public.
Mudgrooroo may have given us an incorrect line about his heritage (and it is not even certain that he did so knowingly), but it seems a real tragedy that the man who has done most for the acceptance of Aboriginal literature, who served as a role model for many aspiring young authors and has given much help to start their careers is now unfairly treated like an outcast by the Aboriginal community.
I wish to express my thanks to the following friends who have helped me with essential information: JOHN BARNES, BRUCE BENNETT, CHRISTINE NICHOLLS, GARVIN PERRAM and ADAM SHOEMAKER.
Adi Wimmer
I meant to write to you to correct an information which appeared in your newsletter of March 1998. Australian literature is indeed taught at all levels at the University of Liege but no longer by me since I have retired. My successor in the field is Marc Delrez whose doctoral thesis was on Janet Frame but who spent a year in Adelaide and did an MA there on Malouf and Stow.
Dear Hena:
all of us here at EASA wish you good health and many happy years in your well-earned retirement.
As part of my membership renewal drive, I wrote a letter to Professor Katica Ivanisevic. I had met her at a conference organized by EASA founding member Mirko Jurak in Slovenia's Bled. She was scheduled to give a paper at the first EASA conference in Bern in 1991, but did not turn up, owing to the un-civil war then raging in Croatia. Her letter to me (in which she renewed her membership as well as her interest in OZ Studies) explained her absence from our conferences thus:
"At the start of Croatia as an independent state many university professors were called into diplomatic and other important positions, as most of these had formerly been held by the ruling Serb elite. I acted as an advisor to the government and in 1993 was elected Vice-Chancellor of my university at Rijeka - the first woman in Croatia to hold such a position. Later that year, I was nominated as a candidate for the Upper House and duly elected. In 1994 I was elected president of the Upper House, again the first woman to rise to such a position. When my four-year mandate ended in 1997, I was re-elected for another term as member as well the Upper Chamber president. My portfolio is foreign politics. I have to divide my time between two demanding jobs and also between two cities: Zagreb and Rijeka."
By the time her office as Vice-Chancellor ran out earlier this year, Katica Ivanisevic had accomplished many things. Rijeka university now has newly opened departments for English language and literature, as well as German. In addition, a new student dorm and an administrative building were erected. The student population has increased dramatically. Australian Studies, so she hopes, will be added to the syllabus of the English programme as soon as resources allow it.
Adi Wimmer
This newsletter needs more contributions from its members to make it a lively medium of discussion, and a clearing house of information. Conference reports, for example, are ALWAYS welcome. If you want to share your views on any aspect of Australian culture, please send a letter. I am also interested in having information on forthcoming Australian activities at the various European universities pursuing Australian Studies. Let me give you an example. Susan Ballyn (at the University of Barcelona) and I pooled our institutional resources to get Kerryn Goldworthy from down under to teach an intensive course at both Barcelona and Klagenfurt in April/May of 1999. If anyone is interested in a visit by Kerryn, please contact us. Cassandra Pybus and John Barnes are also coming to Europe next spring, I hear. John Kinsella will be reading at various locations in Germany next year. Sue Woolfe will probably visit Europe too to promote her recently published Leanings. Wouldn't it be useful if all EASA members announced such activities in this newsletter in future so that we can take advantage of Australian visitors who are already in Europe? The SRMCAS newsletter does that already, I know: but some Australian writers or academics just don't pass through London.
My E-Mail code, in case you have lost it, is: [email protected]
Dear recipient of this newsletter:
you have been asked to pay any outstanding membership dues in previous appeals. I am sorry to report that not all of you have done so. Please consider the running expenses of our organization and the need to put funds aside for EASA's biennual conferences. We do understand that the bank charges for the transfer of 120 Swedish crowns are considerable and that is why our ex-president Werner Senn started a MASTERCARD or EUROCARD facility at his bank in Berne. This facility, we found, is under-used. If you possess either a Master- or a Eurocard, please send the card details to
Werner Senn
Department of English
University of Bern
L�nggass-Strasse 49
CH-3000 Bern, Switzerland
email: [email protected]
with your specifications as to how much may be cashed from your card. VISA-cards are unfortunately not acceptable. Under no circumstances can cheques made out in British pounds or US-dollars be accepted, as the bank charges for such cheques are prohibitive.
Many members pay their dues at the biennial conference, and if you have already decided to attend the Toulouse conference (where you intend to settle any debts) please let me know. In future, we will ask members to pay their dues for the next two years rather than just one year, and this will make the treasurer's job much easier.
Karin Hansson
email: [email protected]
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