Australian Society of French Studies Meeting 2008: The University of Melbourne

The XVIth meeting of the Australian Society of French Studies

University of Melbourne, Australia,
14th to 16th of July 2008

The ‘Minor’ Genres: kinds of document, kinds of documentary discourse

Letters, journalism, newspapers, diaries, first-person witnessing narratives, flâneur-writing, announcements and posters, lectures and professional briefs or consultations, obituaries and eulogies, documentaries in any media, web pages, SMS messaging, manifestos and pamphlets political or other, interviews, meetings, debates … these and many others are minor genres, in the sense that we participate in or use them on a daily basis, but rarely take them as objects of study. This conference presents an opportunity to do so. We invite our colleagues to reflect on genres, taking them as kinds of representation, communication, or interaction, raising questions, say, of their history or their poetics, their discursive conventions, their pragmatics, their socio-cultural stakes. We draw your attention to the possibility, which we would welcome, of using this framework for investigating the stakes of choosing one or another kind of document in the language classroom.

Confirmed plenary speakers:
François Jost, Professeur, Paris III-Sorbonne Nouvelle, Director of the Centre d'Etude sur les Images et les Sons Médiatiques.
Christopher Candlin, Senior Research Professor, Department of Linguistics, Macquarie University, Sydney
Philippe Met, Assoc. Professor of Romance Languages; Undergraduate Chair, French, University of Pennsylvania

Special conference guest:
Ross Chambers (Professor Emeritus of French and Comparative Literature, University of Michigan)
Update: Unfortunately, Prof. Ross Chambers is now no longer able to attend the XVIth Meeting of the Australian Society of French Studies. Prof. Chambers has been filmed presenting his paper and this video will be shown during a special session of the conference. A round table discussion of his paper will take place in the same session. A. Prof. Philippe Met of the University of Pennsylvania will be giving a plenary session in place of Prof. Chambers' originally planned session.