[csaa-forum] cfp: Landscapes of Exile: 'Once Perilous, Now Safe'

[baden.offord at scu.edu.au]

Landscapes of Exile: ‘Once Perilous, Now Safe’
27-28 July 2006
Byron Bay, New South Wales
Hosted by Southern Cross University and Griffith University

CALL FOR PAPERS
Deadline for Abstracts 22 January 2006

The Centre for Cultural Diversity and Social Justice together with the Centre for Public Culture and Ideas will 
present a third part to the cross-disciplinary symposia Landscapes of Exile held previously in 2004 at the 
University of Barcelona’s Centre for Australian Studies, and at the New Norcia Monastery in 2005, hosted by 
the Institute of Advanced Studies, University of Western Australia. 

Byron Bay is Australia’s most easterly point with a landscape that is breathtaking and beautiful. Known by 
local Aboriginal Arakwal people as cavanbah – meeting place – Byron Bay has become one of the most 
significant icons in the Australian imagination, a destination for backpackers from around the world, a centre 
of enormous cultural activity and one of the jewels in what is known as the rainbow region of northern New 
South Wales. 

This third symposium will extend earlier explorations on the theme of landscapes of exile into questioning how 
space becomes place through cultural, artistic, intellectual and ethical practices. Australia has been a major 
focus of these symposia, from the convict experience in Tasmania to the establishment of a Spanish 
monastery in Western Australia. Exile has affected the human condition in complex and diverse ways. It can 
be traumatic as well as transformative. What chiefly characterizes the experience of exile is that the 
landscape (physical, psychological, metaphysical, social, political and cultural) becomes a crucial feature of 
survival and meaning. Byron’s lighthouse, built over a century ago, oversees the bay, etched with the Latin 
motif ‘once perilous, now safe.’ This motif has ironic salience in contemporary Australia.

We invite contributions from scholars, writers, media and cutlural practitioners, artists and musical composers 
to make presentations.

Following the 2004 & 2005 symposia, all papers in 2006 will address the experience of ‘exile’: understood in 
both the strictest sense of the word and also in the widest metaphorical sense to include, for example, forced 
migration, experiences of internal exile and incarceration, place and the ethics of belonging. 
We are particularly interested in opening up cross disciplinary discussion among scholars working in the fields 
of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, Spanish Civil War Studies, Immigration Studies, Indigenous Studies, 
Convict Studies, Whiteness Studies, Queer Studies, Place Studies, Inter-colonial Transportation, personal 
experiences of forced exile/migration, experiences of returning migrants, refugees and asylum seekers among 
others.

This symposium has been scheduled to closely precede the Byron Bay Writers’ Festival, which occurs from 
4-6 August. 

Please send a 250 word abstract of your paper with full contact details.  Deadline for abstracts is 22 January 
2006.

SEND ABSTRACTS TO: Dr Erika Kerruish <ekerruis at scu.edu.au>





Convenors:

Associate Professor Anna Haebich
Centre for Public Culture and Ideas
Griffith University

Associate Professor Baden Offord 
Centre for Cultural Diversity & Social Justice
Southern Cross University
Australia