This year's WIP conference is shaping up to be an exciting event. With more than 80 abstracts submitted from all around Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan and the US, in topics ranging from masculinity and psychoanalysis to lollies and vampires, we're certain there will be some interesting discussions.

The call for papers is now closed.

Online registration is now closed.

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Pockets of Change: Cultural Adaptations and Transitions
13th Annual Work-in-Progress Conference
School of English, Media Studies and Art History
University of Queensland, St. Lucia Campus
Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
September 4-6, 2009

Keynote: Associate Professor Angela Ndalianis, University of Melbourne
Esteemed Guest: Professor Donald Sassoon, Queen Mary, University of London

The 13th annual Work-In-Progress Conference will address cultural transition and/or adaptation from a theoretical, critical, or creative perspective from disciplines within the Humanities. The WIP Conference welcomes scholars to present papers in a supportive and relaxed, but professional environment. We are pleased to announce Associate Professor Angela Ndalianis, Cinema and Cultural Studies scholar from The University of Melbourne, as our keynote speaker.

Researchers, postgraduate students and advanced honours candidates from local, national and international universities will present papers which contend with issues of adaptation and transition in relation to all areas of culture and cultural tradition, practice, development and exploration, employing theories that dominate or challenge current academic fields or relate to creative endeavours. Topics may include, but are not limited to:

• media adaptations (e.g.: adapting books into films; a material approach to adapting a novel for the stage, etc.)

• intercultural projects (e.g.: the efficacy of plays, novels, films, etc. which rely on techniques or traditions from more than one culture; the politics of an intercultural project)

• issues of intertextuality (e.g.: conflation of genres; 'writing back' or responses to or revisions of earlier texts; post-structuralist intertextuality versus allusion and influence)

• temporal experimentations (e.g.: anachronisms in literature; subverting/obscuring historical attempts at metanarrative)

• political shifts (e.g.: social impediments or benefits of political leadership changes; reflecting on how new political figureheads impact on the arts)

• technological advancements (e.g.: impact of community access to technology; the role of cultural tourism in arts)

• issues of appropriation (e.g.: who may speak for/of whom and when does adaptation become appropriation?)

• concerns with framing (e.g.: how the old is being made new again; the (un)importance of referencing or contextualising cultural borrowing or appropriation)