The Australasian Universities Language and Literature Association (AULLA) held its thirty-seventh biennial congress in Brisbane from 10 to 12 July 2013. The congress was hosted by the University of Queensland at its picturesque and historic campus in St Lucia on the banks of the Brisbane River. The theme of the conference was ‘world-making,’ and keynote speakers included Professor Anthony Cascardi of the University of California, Berkeley; Professor Simon During of the University of Queensland; Professor Elizabeth Schafer of Royal Holloway College, University of London; and Roger Pulvers, sponsored by the Japan Foundation. In the past, the Association has used a special online edition of its journal, AUMLA, to publish a selection of the papers delivered at the conference. In future, following the transition of that journal to the Journal of Language, Literature, and Culture, published by Maney Publishing (UK), a selection of papers from the biennial congresses will be published in the journal itself in the issues between conferences. The first of the papers from the thirty-seventh congress will appear in the first issue of 2014—Volume 61, Issue 1.
It has also been the practice to award a prize at the congress for the best essay submitted by a postgraduate student. This Sussex-Samuel prize is named after two of the important figures in the early history of the association and its journal. Part of the prize is the opportunity to work with the editor of the journal to turn the essay into a publishable article. I am delighted to include in this issue the prize-winning essay, written by a student from the University of Western Australia, Imogen Forbes-Macphail. In my view, this study of the interrelationship between poetry and mathematics in the nineteenth century is an exceptional piece of work.
Peter Goodall
University of Southern Queensland