CfP InASA Conference 2027

The Cringing Continent

In February 2027, we invite you to join us on Kaurna Country to reconsider one of the foundational epigrams of Australian Studies: A. A. Phillips’s much-cited ›cultural cringe‹. Detached from its original context in the pages of Meanjin, the phrase has been used to stand in for many of Australia’s colonial insecurities, remaining widely cited across disciplines and in the pages of the Journal of Australian Studies. At this conference, we aim to interrogate it anew, and re-vision the cultural cringe’s impact on Australia and on Australian Studies for a new century. At a time of resurgent nationalism across the globe, it is timely to return to a formulation that encourages us to think seriously but self-deprecatingly about our national anxieties.

This conference will aim to use the frame of the cultural cringe to curate a range of
conversations critical to our disciplinary formation. While contributions from any
area of Australian Studies are welcome, we particularly encourage those on:

• The cringe as a manifestation of coloniality
• Cringe comedy and Australian humour
• Ozploitation and Australian genre content
• Australian Modernism’s anxiety of influence
• Meanjin’s influence on Australian cultural life
• Australia as a small player in Europe / as a big player in the Indo-Pacific
• Cross-cultural perspectives on the cringe
• Nationalism, neo-liberalism and cringe
• Universities, social license and the cultural cringe
• The politics of cringe
• Anti-intellectualism as cringe
• Cringe as national pride
• The joy of cringe
• Festivals as institutionalised cringe.

Submissions

Abstracts of between 200 and 300 words, plus a short bio of 100 words, should be
submitted via email to assemblage@flinders.edu.au by Monday 17 August 2026.
Alongside traditional written abstracts, we welcome proposals in alternative forms
to support your access preference, e.g. voice notes or videos of up to 90 seconds.
Please also indicate in your abstract both the proposed form of your presentation,
as well as if you are responding directly to any of the specific prompts included in
this Call; this will assist our programming and in offering timely responses.

We welcome proposals in the following forms:

• Conference papers, of 20 minutes;
• Creative showings, screenings, or interventions, of 60 minutes;
• Panel presentations of three to four pre-selected panellists, of 90 minutes; or
• Manifestoes, channelling the spirit of Phillips’s original, of 15 minutes.