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The history of exploration has often been thought of as a heroic drama in which the explorer is the principal narrator and protagonist. This two-day conference will discuss exploration as a collective effort and experience involving a variety of people and social strata in various kinds of relationships. It will engage with the recent resurgence in interest in the history of exploration, by focusing on the various intermediaries, the guides, translators and hosts who assisted and facilitated European travellers in exploring different parts of the world in the long nineteenth century.
While the myth of the solitary intrepid explorer has long been questioned, the notion of exploration still suggests the discovery of a wilderness. This conference aims to examine the extent to which the explored territory was in fact a peopled landscape, inhabited not only by indigenous peoples, but also often by the vanguards of Empire such as slavers, marines, merchants, sealers, whalers, and missionaries, as well as early settlers who hosted the explorers and travellers. Recent historiographical shifts mean that scholars now recognise that so called ‘lone travellers’ in fact depended on local support for food, shelter, protection, information, guidance, and emotional solace, as well as other resources. This conference, which has a global focus, will analyse in detail the contributions of local people as intermediary figures, as interpreters and ‘native’ assistants, thus making the hidden histories of exploration more visible. Those hidden histories include not only indigenous participants but local settler populations.
Keynote Speakers
*Felix Driver, Professor of Human Geography, Royal Holloway, University of London
*Leonard Collard, Professor of Indigenous Studies, University of Western Australia
We invite papers covering exploration in Australia, Africa, the Americas, and the Pacific which address the following themes:
•The role that Indigenous people played in colonized lands as guides and translators, enabling and participating in exploration
•The experience and agency of Indigenous peoples
•The role of settlers, such as sealers, merchants and squatters in the construction of knowledge about Indigenous people and topography
•The role of class in constituting the myth of the solitary explorer
•Gendered analyses of exploration, for example the role of Indigenous women
•Historiographical/methodological engagements with these themes
We especially welcome submissions from post-graduate, early career, and Indigenous scholars. We will be looking to publish selected papers from this conference.
Submission deadline: 4 March 2013
Conference Date: 17 and 18 July 2013
Please send a 200 word abstract and brief biography to shino.konishi@anu.edu.au
Conference Organisers:
Dr Shino Konishi shino.konishi@anu.edu.au
Dr Maria Nugent maria.nugent@anu.edu.au
Dr Tiffany Shellam tiffany.shellam@deakin.edu.au
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