2019 Academic stream

The 2019 conference features a full day of panels presenting scholarly papers on historical fiction.

On Sunday 27 October, three panels will consider academic aspects of our conference theme: History repeats.

Past and Present Tudors: Reading the Early Modern in Contemporary Young Adult Fiction, Dr Stephanie Russo
Gender, genre and crime in recent historical biofictions from Australia, Dr Catherine Padmore & Dr Kelly Gardiner
The memorial turn in historical fiction: The Australian home-front novel of World War II as case study, Dr Melanie Myers
(Re)writing the Secret Histories of Homosexuality: Historical revisionism and the representation of male-male desire in gay historical biofictions, Jonathon Ball.

How world building for novels shapes how we tell of the past and how we see the past, Dr Gillian Polack
Reading avant la lettre: voice, form and narrative situation in prehistoric fiction, Joshua Mostafa
History Repeats: The Australian Children’s Timeslip Novel 1960-2018, Judith Ridge
‘the truth of the book’: Jessica Anderson’s The Commandant as a work of biofiction, Merran Williams.

A Massacre and Its Representations, Dr Ali Alizadeh
An Anzac Love Affair? The Centenary War Books Boom and Australian Historical Romance Fiction, Dr Christina Spittel
The Nigerian Civil War Novel as Historical Literature: Re-imagining Fact as Fiction in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo, Ezechi Onyerionwu
Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s Arus Balik: the battle for hegemony of land and sea, Jennifer Mackenzie.

Panels consist of four twenty-minute papers, followed by discussion and questions. All conference participants are welcome.

You can read all the abstracts for the papers here.

Tickets to academic sessions are free if you have a conference ticket, but places are limited so do book.

The program is convened by Sara Knox, Catherine Padmore and Kelly Gardiner, and supported by Western Sydney University and La Trobe University.