The United States-Australia cultural relationship has often simply been assumed rather than theorized or empirically grounded. This symposium will examine the concrete interaction of the two nations, shifting the emphasis from the broad cultural patterns often compared to the specific networks, interactions, and crossings that have characterized Australian literature in the US, American literature in Australia, and the many mediations and adjacencies that have accompanied this interaction. This entails shifting the characteristic perspective from two monadic nations facing each another across the Pacific to understanding the Pacific as a thread across which the two cultures have read each other, and focusing away from matters of direct literary influence to a broader range of responses, provocations, and dialogues.

Keynote Speakers

Lawrence Buell
Powell M. Cabot Professor of American Literature, Harvard University

Paul Giles
Challis Professor of English Literature, University of Sydney (from 2010)

Kevin Hart
Edwin B Kyle Professor of Christian Studies, University of Virginia

keynote abstracts available here