Minding the Present: Bodies, Places, Matter in and between Australia and Europe

17-19 September 2025

Department of Linguistic and Literary Studies, University of Padova
(Via Vendramini, 13, Padova, Italy)

This conference aims to explore the demands of the present, the actions and interactions we are all bound to set into motion in order to engage in political and art-activistic practices to start caring for and curing our vulnerable planet and our insecure standing on and with it.

Central to the exploration is the ontology of the present—the hic et nunc (here and now)—together with the concepts of present orientation and the re-figurations of time/s. The conference will focus on how, through discourse, art, literature and geopolitical praxis, we can understand, experience, and potentially reshape both our perception of time, particularly in relation to the present moment. The conference is especially interested in investigating the present as a dynamic space situated between archives of the past (Hall, 2001) and what P. Saint-Amour has defined as traumatic anticipations of the future (Saint-Amour, 2015), taking into account nonlinear, non-Western and Indigenous cosmologies and heterotopias. In this way, the conference asserts that, as Hodgson suggests, “the present moment is not… a static fixed coalescence but a super complexity, the dynamism of which determines its ability for anticipation” (2013, p. 31).

The conference seeks to examine the shaping experiences, identities, and perceptions of the present as a catalyst to urgent action both in Australia—with a special alertness to the very rooted cultures of Indigenous Australia—and in the complex relations between Europe and Australia. The conference particularly welcomes contributions from literature, linguistics, the performing arts, anthropology, cultural geography, memory studies, political and legal studies. The conference also encourages interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary approaches.

Among the questions that contributions may address, the conference would be interested in the following ones:

1. How are traditional notions of past, present, and future being reshaped in contemporary contexts? How do these reconfigurations manifest in cultural, social, and political spheres?
2. How do ‘we’ negotiate between historical archives and future anticipations? How is this tension made readable and visible in/via art?
3. Relationality: how do Indigenous epistemologies challenge and expand Western notions of the time, especially the concept of the present?
4. Rootedness and ‘inauguration’ (see M. Augé, “Starting again is living through a new beginning, a birth” The Future, 2014): How do individuals and communities maintain a sense of rootedness in the face of global changes? How does rootedness interact with our orientation in the present?
5. Caring/Curing: How do practices of care and healing manifest in the present moment? How do they shape our understanding and orientation of bodies, places, and matter?
6. The ontology of the present: How do we understand and conceptualize the nature of our current reality, especially in its entanglement with the vulnerable, powerful, meaningful places, matter and shapes of more-than-human and human life that inhabit Australia and Europe and the spaces in-between them?
7. How can our understanding of the present moment inform and inspire concrete actions and interventions? Is there hope in the present tense, and how might melancholic epistemologies be transformed by, for example, Indigenous cosmologies?
8. How does the anticipation of future events, changes, or challenges shape our present experiences and actions in the connections between Australia and Europe?
9. How do historical traumas continue to influence the literary and cultural relations between Australia and Europe?

Registration open from 2 July – please note that panellists must be or become regular EASA members.

Organising Committee

Maria Renata Dolce (University of Lecce)

Eleonora Federici (University of Ferrara)

Francesca Mussi (University of Pisa)

Marilena Parlati (University of Padova)

Find out more about the conference here.