Issue Details: First known date: 2020... 2020 DIRT - Introduction to 2019 ASAL Conference Issue
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'On Sunday 24 May 2020, the Rio Tinto mining company destroyed a 46,000-year-old human habitation and sacred site at Juukan Gorge in the Pilbara (‘Rio Tinto blast destroys 46,000-yearold Aboriginal heritage site’). UNESCO compared the act to the destruction of Palmyra by Islamic State. Rio was granted permission to conduct this and other blasts in 2013, under section 18 of the Aboriginal Heritage Act. Amongst artefacts found recently at the site were a 24,000- year-old bone tool and a fragment of a 4,000-year-old belt plaited from human hair. The following week, on Thursday 4 June, in a suburban street in the marginal Federal seat of EdenMonaro which had been chosen as the location for the Federal Government to announce a home renovation subsidy, the Prime Minister of Australia Scott Morrison was interrupted in midstream by a miffed home-owner asking the gaggle of politicians and press to move off his lawn as he had just had it re-seeded (‘Get off the grass, homeowner tells Scott Morrison’). They meekly complied, realising that there was a certain sanctity in this quiet Australian’s request. There is an obvious obscenity in putting together these two events but at some level they are indicative of what we were aiming to interrogate at the 2019 ASAL conference on the theme of ‘Dirt,’ which we hosted at the University of Western Australia. As the convenor, I was delighted with the way the conference drew together such a rich range of papers, discussions, addresses, readings and launches. In our thinking about a conference theme we had wanted to explore the way Australian literature and Australian literary studies were working in the contemporary moment and we settled suddenly on the concept of ‘dirt.’ The idea was proposed by my colleague, Alison Bartlett, and our organising committee were immediately taken with it as a concept. It seemed to touch on something essential—in an era sceptical of essences—and material. It reached out into the contested condition of Australian land: dirt as country, dirt as real estate. It reached out into the substance of life: dirt as biotic habitat. It reached out into the source of Australia’s material prosperity: dirt as ore (pay-dirt), dirt as agricultural growing medium (soil). And it reached out into the negative connotation that dirt carries: dirt as scandal, as secret, as abject exclusion.'

 (Introduction)

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    y separately published work icon JASAL Dirt vol. 20 no. 1 2020 19774589 2020 periodical issue 'This issue brings together four different sections, each of which speaks to a different aspect of JASAL and its aims, both as an academic journal and as the main publication of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature. Although primarily a peer-reviewed journal, JASAL has always attempted to reach beyond a strictly academic audience. The journal is open access and so is available to anyone interested in Australian literature, whether or not they are associated with a university library. Similarly, ‘Notes & Furphies’ is a non peer-reviewed section that invites research notes and comments on Australian literature and literary culture from general readers. In this issue we have a fantastically detailed set of notes from independent scholar Alan Thompson on how we might go about mapping the setting of chapter 3 of Joseph Furphy’s Such is Life. Since its first issue in 1994 JASAL has also been the main location for the publication of papers from the ASAL annual conference and ASAL mini-conferences. This issue contains a Special Section, guest edited by Tony Hughes d’Aeth, with a selection of papers from the ASAL’s 2019 annual conference, DIRT, held at the University of Western Australia last July. Finally, JASAL has maintained a commitment to publishing extensive reviews of scholarly works on or related to Australian literature. In this issue we have five reviews of recent works of literary criticism.' (Ellen Smith and Tony Simoes Da Silva : Introduction) 2020
Last amended 30 Jul 2020 11:41:30
https://openjournals.library.sydney.edu.au/index.php/JASAL/article/view/14551 DIRT - Introduction to 2019 ASAL Conference Issuesmall AustLit logo JASAL
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