James Buzard

Professor and Head of Literature Faculty,

James Buzard works on 19th- and early 20th-century British literature and culture, with particular interest in the Victorian novel (Dickens, George Eliot, the Brontës, and others), modernism, the history of travel, and theories of culture and society. In addition to teaching on these topics, he enjoys teaching "great books" surveys such as Foundations of Western Culture: Homer to Dante and Forms of Western Narrative. He is the author of The Beaten Track: European Tourism, Literature, and the Ways to "Culture," 1800-1918 (Oxford 1993) and Disorienting Fiction: The Autoethnographic Work of Nineteenth-Century British Novels (Princeton 2005), as well as of numerous articles in journals and books. He is also a contributing editor of Victorian Prism: Refractions of the Crystal Palace (Virginia 2007), a collection of essays on the impact of the Great Exhibition of 1851. An avid fan of Flanders & Swann, African popular music, and virtually any movie in black and white, he has a peculiar fascination with revolving doors.

Graham Huggan

Professor of Commonwealth and Postcolonial Literatures, University of Leeds

Graham Huggan is Chair of Commonwealth and Postcolonial Literatures in the School of English at the University of Leeds, and also co-Director of the University’s Institute for Colonial and Postcolonial Studies. His research interests range across the fields of Colonial/Postcolonial Literatures in English and French, Postcolonial Theory, Comparative Literature and Literary Theory, Cultural Studies (especially Multiculturalism), Short Fiction, Travel Writing and English as a Second/Foreign Language. His books include Australian Literature: Racism, Postcolonialism, Transnationalism (Oxford University Press, 2007), The Postcolonial Exotic: Marketing the Margins (London: Routledge, 2001), Tourists with Typewriters: Critical Reflections on Contemporary Travel Writing (with Patrick Holland; University of Michigan Press, 1998; 2nd ed. 2001), Peter Carey (Oxford University Press, 1996) and Territorial Disputes: Maps and Mapping Strategies in Contemporary Canadian and Australian Fiction (University of Toronto Press, 1994). Current projects include Extreme Pursuits: Travel/Writing in an Age of Globalization (University of Michigan Press), and a co-written book on postcolonialism, animals and the environment.

Jean-Marc Moura

Professor of Comparative Literature, Université de Lille III

Jean-Marc Moura (Ph.D, Paris III), is Professor of Comparative Literature at the Université de Lille III and a leading authority on the interface between francophone literatures and postcolonialism. His numerous books include La Littératures des lointains (Champion, 1998), Littératures francophones et théorie postcoloniale (Presses Universitaires de France, 1999), Exotisme et lettres francophones (Presses Universitaires de France, 2003) and with V.Gély, J.Prungnaud, E.Stead (eds): Littératures européennes et mythologies lointaines (Presses de l’Université de Lille III, 2006). Jean-Marc Moura’s participation in the conference is supported by the French Embassy in Australia.

Stephen Muecke

Professor of Cultural Studies, UTS

Stephen Muecke is Professor of Cultural Studies at UTS and Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. He has a long-term research interest in Indigenous Studies, transnational cultures and new ethnography. He took his Masters from Paris VIII working on the sociolinguistics of verbal parody performances, and has since worked (for his PhD) on the narratology of Aboriginal stories from the West Kimberley (WA). He has also researched Aboriginal philosophy (Ancient & Modern: Time, Culture and Indigenous Philosophy, UNSW Press, 2004), fictocritical writing, travel writing and the life and work of David Unaipon. His latest book is Joe in the Andamans and Other Fictocritical Stories, Sydney: Local Consumption Publications, 2008.

Alain Quella-Villéger

Director of Carnets de l’exotisme and Author

Historian, specialist in explorers’ travel accounts, and the work of Pierre Loti. Born in 1955 in Rochefort, Alain Quella-Villéger completed a doctorate in contemporary history and is professeur agrégé in Poitiers. He is the creator and director, from 1990 - 2006, of the journal Les Carnets de l'exotisme. He is also a novelist and poet.

 

Peter Spearritt

Professor of History, Chair University of Queensland Press Board

Like most Australians of his generation, Peter Spearritt has seen rapid changes in travel patterns, from camping by the side of the road in the l950s to a nation where half of all rental holiday apartments are in Queensland. He rails against the overdevelopment of the Queensland coast, especially the 200 kilometre city from Noosa to the Tweed. In 1991 he co-curated the exhibition Trading Places: Australian Travel Posters 1909-1990 at the Monash University Gallery. As a collector of travel brochures, from the l880s to the present, he became intrigued, while working with Jim Davidson on Holiday Business: Tourism in Australian since 1870 (MUP 2000), at the longevity of holiday making at most of our tourist sites. In the colliding world of travel guides and online booking, he has given up on travel agents and embraced the web, but not the laptop, delighting in internet establishments, from laundromats in Montreal to backpacker dives in Bundaberg.

Tom Swick

Travel Editor of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel and Author

Columnist Thomas Swick was born in Easton, PA, in 1952. He grew up in Phillipsburg, NJ, and received a B.A. in English literature from Villanova University in 1974. After studying in Aix-en-Provence, working on a farm in Alsace and teaching English in Warsaw, he returned to the States and has been the travel editor of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel since 1989. Swick's work has appeared in The American Scholar, The North American Review, The Oxford American, Columbia Journalism Review, Commonweal, Ploughshares, Boulevard, The New York Times Book Review, Washington Post Book World, National Geographic Traveler, and Travel & Leisure. His travel stories have been included in The Best American Travel Writing 2001, 2002 and 2004, and will also be included in the forthcoming 2008 collection. He is the author of two books: a travel memoir, Unquiet Days: At Home in Poland (recently translated into Polish) and a collection of travel stories, A Way to See the World: From Texas to Transylvania with a Maverick Traveler.

Tony Wheeler

Travel Writer and Co-Founder of Lonely Planet Publications

Tony Wheeler is the co-founder of Lonely Planet Publications, started with Maureen Wheeler in late 1973, to publish "Across Asia on the Cheap", the story of their trip from London to Australia. From that self-published guidebook Lonely Planet Publications has grown to become the world's largest independent guidebook publisher with more than 500 titles in print, over 400 staff and offices in London and Oakland as well as the head office in Melbourne. Tony and Maureen still travel for nearly six months each year and "Once While Travelling", the story of their life together and the creation of Lonely Planet, was published by Penguin Books in late 2005. The New York Times described Tony as 'the trailblazing patron saint of the world's backpackers and adventure travellers.'

Richard White

Senior Lecturer in History, University of Sydney

Richard White is a graduate of the University of Sydney and after teaching at Monash University and the University of Western Sydney, joined the Department of History at the University of Sydney in 1989. He teaches in all areas of Australian history, as well as the history of travel and tourism. His current projects include Cooee: its rise and fall (contracted with Melbourne University Publishing) and Driving to Australia: overland journeys between Europe and Australia 1888-1972. His books include On Holidays: A History of Getting Away in Australia Pluto, Melbourne, 2005 (with Sarah-Jane Ballard, Ingrid Bown, Meredith Lake, Patricia Leehy, Lila Oldmeadow), Cultural History in Australia University of New South Wales Press, Sydney 2003 Hsu-Ming Teo & Richard White (eds), Memories and Dreams: Reflections on twentieth-century Australia: Pastiche 2 Allen & Unwin, Sydney 1997 Richard White & Penny Russell (eds), The Oxford Book of Australian Travel Writing Oxford University Press, Melbourne 1996 Pesman, Ros, David Walker & Richard White (eds), Pastiche 1: Reflections on Nineteenth Century Australia Allen & Unwin Australia, Sydney 1994 Penny Russell and Richard White (eds) and Inventing Australia: Images and Identity 1688-1980 Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1981.