Invitation

Time: 5 May, 2021 10.00 am

Venue: online

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https://cesnet.zoom.us/j/95942545616?pwd=QnJLMk5yU2JsZkZLWHIreXI1T2hOZz09

Meeting ID: 959 4254 5616
Passcode: 840507

Presenter: Martina Horakova (PhD) assistant professor (Department of English and American Studies, Masaryk University, Czech Republic

Topic: ‘Kin-fused’ Revenge: Alter/Native Canon in Leah Purcell’s The Drover’s Wife

Abstract: In the talk I will explore one of the many rewritings of Australian colonial writer Henry Lawson’s iconic short story “The Drover’s Wife” (1892)—the play The Drover’s Wife (2016) written by Aboriginal actor, writer and director Leah Purcell. The main source for Purcell’s rewriting is a much larger and more significant presence of Indigeneity. The play not only introduces the character of Yadaka, an Aboriginal fugitive, as a key character, but the drover’s wife herself is revealed to have Indigenous origins. This powerful twist offers several implications: the paly, a tour de force of frontier violence with haunting images of racism, rape, lynching, and murder, unflinchingly confronts the very foundations of established literary canon as well as settler belonging, providing an alter/Native to both. I borrow Fiona Probyn-Rapsey’s term “kin-fused” to argue that the play’s resolution implies a critique of Indigenous-settler reconciliation by pointing to a lingering desire to redress colonial violence, embodied in the play by a promise of “kin-fused” revenge.

Bio: Martina Horakova is Assistant Professor in the Department of English and American Studies at Masaryk University, Czech Republic. In her teaching and research, she focuses on contemporary Australian and Canadian literatures, particularly on Indigenous cultural production and theories of settler colonialism. She authored Inscribing Difference and Resistance: Indigenous Women’s Personal Non-fiction and Life Writing in Australia and Canada (MUNI Press, 2017) and co-authored Alternatives in Biography: Writing Lives in Diverse English-language Contexts (MUNI Press, 2011). Among others, she published book chapters in Handbook of Autobiography/Autofiction (De Gruyter, 2019), A Companion to Australian Aboriginal Literature (Camden House, 2013), Postcolonial Issues in Australian Literature (Cambria Press, 2010), as well as journal articles in Journal of Commonwealth Literature, Life Writing, Antipodes, JEASA or Zeitschrift für Australienstudien/Australian Studies Journal. She is currently working on a project related to memoirs of postcolonial settler belonging in Australia. From 2016 she is the general editor of JEASA, Journal of the European Association for Studies of Australia.

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MEGHÍVÓ

A MTA Veszprémi Területi Bizottsága Nyelv- és Irodalomtudományi Szakbizottságának Angol Munkabizottsága, valamint a Pannon Egyetem MFTK Angol-Amerikai Intézete

tisztelettel meghívja Önt következő előadására.

Az előadás ideje: 2021. május 5. (szerda) 10.00 óra

Az előadás helye: online

 Martina Horakova (PhD) assistant professor (Department of English and American Studies, Masaryk University, Czech Republic

Téma: ‘Kin-fused’ Revenge: Alter/Native Canon in Leah Purcell’s The Drover’s Wife

Minden érdeklődőt szeretettel várunk.

Veszprém, 2021. április 21.

Dr. Forintos Éva                                                                    Dr. Szentgyörgyi Szilárd

elnök                                                                                      intézetigazgató

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