Alongside economic, political, and strategic motivations, curiosity spurred the spread of empire. This interdisciplinary conference invites scholars and curators to explore imperial curiosity with the University of Tasmania 's Centre for Colonialism and Its Aftermath. We want to bring together those working in various historical, literary, ethnographic, and cultural collections with scholars from diverse disciplines: literary studies, geography, Asian studies, history, indigenous studies, art history, architecture, legal studies, museum studies, gender studies, cultural studies, and anthropology, amongst others.

We welcome papers which address the following topics, and others which might surprise us:

• Imperial inquisitiveness &/or acquisitiveness
• Imperial wonder & awe
• Resisting imperial curiosity
• The cultural industries of imperialism
• Imperial florilegium
• Textual economies of curiosity: reading, travels, and travails
• Imperial networks and/or the imperial archive
• The gendering of imperial curiosity
• The psychological terrain of imperial estrangement
• Imperial affect (curiosity, fear, awe, pleasure)
• Cabinets of curiosities: collecting & classification
• The objects of empire
• The erotics of empire

250 word abstracts should be submitted no later than 1 December, 2006 and should be accompanied by a 100 word biographical note.