Cruising Country
I have to admit that when I saw the title for this conference, I assumed it was about this kind of cruising. While I’m sure that’s not out of the question, the call for papers situates it in the broader realm of space and culture. Looks good!
Cruising Country : A symposium and film event exploring the powers of wheels, roads and screens in non-urban Australia
26-28 May 2005
Centre for Cross-Cultural Research, The Australian National University, Canberra
Since the early 20th century, motor vehicles of all descriptions have been central characters in the settlement, governance and representation of non-urban Australia. They are objects of desire and exchange, actors in subsistence, ceremonial and market economies and sites of deep projective identification. Represented in paintings, films, novels, music, ethnography, ceremony and other cultural media,
vehicles communicate closely with the aesthetic spirits of modernity and its discontents. Vehicles add velocity to landscape’s powers, compressing distance and reframing senses of place. Containing, carrying and connecting people, knowledge, visions and voices, motor cars are deeply phenomenological spaces.
Cruising Country invites speakers to explore these and other conjunctures of Australian automobility, intercultural exchange, power and social transformation through a series of presentations, panel discussions and film screenings. We are inviting abstracts of no more than 300 words, outlining your proposed topic, approach, and the forms/media in which you intend to present your work.
Proposals for discussion panels are also welcome. Deadline for abstracts: 1 February 2005
Email your abstract to: ursula.frederick@anu.edu.au and/or lisa.stefanoff@nyu.edu
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