y separately published work icon Journal of Postcolonial Writing periodical issue   peer reviewed assertion
Alternative title: International Perspectives on Australian Literature
Issue Details: First known date: 2022... vol. 58 no. 1 2022 of Journal of Postcolonial Writing est. 2005- Journal of Postcolonial Writing
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'This Special Issue showcases stimulating recent writing about Australian literature by scholars whose background (or foreground) lies outside Australia itself. As well having intrinsic interest, these studies draw attention to the state of Australian studies throughout the world, Australian writers’ reception overseas, their impact upon world literature and, and the insights that derive from the critics’ “offshore” positionality. One important feature of the discussion of Australian literature in academic research, articles, and books has been to propel this body of work beyond its national borders and give it international exposure. This Special Issue gives a voice to scholars based around the world and from several different backgrounds – the UK, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, India, China, Japan, and the USA – as well as from Australia itself. Researchers outside Australia were invited to contribute to this volume in terms of the following topics: the state of Australian literary studies in their countries; the globalization of Australian fiction and the effect, if any, of supportive Australian programmes which buttress that process; the translation and reception of Australian literary texts; the extent to which offshore local publishing participates in the dissemination of Australian literature; and the teaching of Australian fiction abroad. The nine articles included here achieve a degree of representativeness in that they range from reception studies of Australian literature in various overseas locations (Vernay, Kačer, Daozhi, Machosky) to readings of Australian fiction by international scholars (Pandey and Parui, Huggan, and Čerče), and instances where texts do not sit comfortably at the intersection of cultures (Shek-Noble).' 

(Jean-François Vernay International perspectives on Australian literature : Introduction)

Notes

  • Contents indexed selectively.

Contents

* Contents derived from the 2022 version. Please note that other versions/publications may contain different contents. See the Publication Details.
Australian Literature and Its Institutionalization in the Offshore Playground, Jean-François Vernay , single work criticism

'This article maps out the globalization of Australian literary studies by examining the internal and external forces at play in the shaping of the discipline onshore and offshore. This survey of a declining field, which has recently been further diminished with the discontinuation of the Chair of Australian Literature at the University of Sydney, assesses the onshore impact of the global crisis in the humanities before discussing the geopolitics of Australian literary studies within the larger context of our hyper-connected world. By investigating the offshore institutionalization of Australian fiction, the article challenges what Robert Dixon perceives to be the “weak” version of the internationalization of Australian studies as presented in a rhetoric that has counterproductively pitted the local against the global. While the global state of Australian literary studies can be seen as revealing a mixed picture, offshore efforts to maintain a vigorous field are commendable.' (Publication abstract)

(p. 6-20)
Greening White, Graham Huggan , single work criticism

'Patrick White’s support for green issues, especially in his later life, is well documented; however, relatively little attention has been paid to date to the planetary perspective of his fiction which, as Andrew McCann suggests, hints at “the possibility of a renewed relationship to the ‘earth’ ”. Focusing on what is generally considered to be his “greenest” novel, The Tree of Man, and adopting a broadly eco-materialist approach, this article assesses White’s work in the wake of the recent ecological and planetary turns. What difference does it make to position White, not as a national or an international writer, but as a planetary writer?And what if White’s work, usually looked at for the insights it provides into human subjects and subjectivities, were to be looked at instead in relation to what Jane Bennett calls “the material agency or effectivity of nonhuman or not-quite-human things”?' (Publication abstract)

(p. 21-35)
“I Feel I Am a Man and a Free Man Too” : Palawa Voices and the Ethics of Representation in Contemporary Tasmanian Fiction, Jan-Melissa Schramm , single work criticism

'This article takes as its point of departure the political work of the English novel in both accompanying and arguably catalysing the expansion of the public sphere in the 18th/19th centuries through the enfranchisement of an ever-expanding range of previously marginalized voices. The representation of first-person testimony was crucial to this achievement, enabling the novel genre to function as a paralegal petition for the pursuit of an ever more equitable polity. Taking as its point of departure novels which revisit criminal trials and scenes of testimonial reception preserved in the colonial archives, the article considers the representation of Indigenous characters in contemporary novels by non-Indigenous Tasmanian authors (including Richard Flanagan and Rohan Wilson) and argues for the ethical effectiveness of their formal choices. Despite the risks involved in the representation of Indigenous voice, these novels ask important questions about the English legal system and its transplantation to Australian shores.' (Publication abstract)

(p. 36-50)
Czech Translations and Receptions of Contemporary Australian Fiction, Tomáš Kačer , single work criticism

'I was offered the opportunity to translate The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas into Czech in November 2010, two years after its original publication in Australia. The offer came from the publishing house Host, a growing and quite prestigious publisher focusing on original Czech poetry and fiction and quality literary translations of various genres. I was considered suitable because I had at the time five translations of full-length novels under my belt. The publishing house also relied upon my knowledge of the Australian context and my ability to conduct research in areas unfamiliar to me as I was a student of comparative literature in a post-graduate programme. Therefore, it entrusted me with a novel as complex and extensive as The Slap. There was also a very personal reason why the publisher picked me: like Tsiolkas, I have Greek ancestry, and the publisher thought that this, in particular, would help me understand the Greek dimension of Tsiolkas’s novel. After The Slap, I also translated Barracuda into Czech in 2014 – the last book by Tsiolkas published in Czech to date.' (Publication abstract)

(p. 51-64)
Jeanine Leane’s Counter-reading of Australian Historical and Cultural Memory Locally and Internationally, Danica Cerce , single work criticism

'Rooted in nationally defined conditions and primarily addressing its immediate audience of Indigenous and white Australians, Australian Indigenous literature performs an important role in the articulation of Indigenous peoples’ protest, constituting an indictment of white Australian colonial ideology, recuperation of neglected Aboriginal history, and a call for redefining blackness. However, despite its preoccupation with local and national, this literature is also a component of world literature in the sense that it raises ethical questions about societal, political and cultural violence and abuse that continue to haunt all societies in the 21st century. Focused on the poetry collection of Wiradjuri poet Jeanine Leane (2010) Dark Secrets: After Dreaming (AD) 1887–1961, this article demonstrates how Leane confronts assumptions about the irreducible division between empowered and disempowered cultures. It argues that, despite the plurality of cultural responses to colonial pressure, Leane’s verse deals with wider themes and provides spaces for cross-cultural relationality.' (Publication abstract)

(p. 65-79)
“Do Not Shoot, I’m a B–b–British Object!” : Reading David Malouf in Indian Universities, Nishtha Pandey , single work criticism

'Since 2009, Australian author David Malouf’s texts have been included and then excluded from key courses in Indian universities. Malouf’s place in the curriculum (particularly that of An Imaginary Life [1978]) relates to pedagogical and intellectual negotiations with postcolonial theory – especially debates about the inclusion of white settler literatures. It also should be seen in the context of the country’s emergent (hyper)nationalist political imagination. Referring to the influential course “New Literatures in English” offered by University of Delhi’s English department, this article argues that the selection of Malouf texts by Indian English departments indicates not only ongoing debates in postcolonial thought, but also a preference for postcolonial texts that can be read through essentializing lenses. It proposes Malouf’s later novel Remembering Babylon (1993) as a productive text through which to discuss the limitations of using deterministic cultural markers in the creation of a postcolonial Indian imaginary.' (Publication abstract)

(p. 80-94)
From Oodgeroo Noonuccal to Alexis Wright : Postcolonial Reading of Australian Indigenous Literature in China, 1988–2018, Xu Daozhi , single work criticism

'This article examines the scholarly analysis of Australian Indigenous literature in China from 1988 to 2018, a period that saw increasing academic interest in this genre among Chinese scholars. These analyses mostly (but not exclusively) draw on postcolonial theories. Postcolonial criticism in China first manifested through Third World theory but has recently been replaced by multicultural theory. The article will discuss how Third World theory and multicultural theory facilitate a positioning that aims to subvert western dominance and yet unwittingly inscribes uncontested binaries between east and west, black and white, colonized and colonizer. By focusing on the “postcolonial” readings of writers like Oodgeroo Noonuccal and Alexis Wright in the Chinese context, the article suggests the dichotomized paradigm, which emerges from applications of these theories, precludes a critical and nuanced analysis of Indigenous literature and the complex postcolonial or settler colonial exigencies confronting Indigenous people. It argues that a more critical, non-essentialist approach is needed.' (Publication abstract)

(p. 95-110)
Teaching Australia and Japan through Richard Flanagan’s The Narrow Road to the Deep North, Liz Shek-Noble , single work criticism

'This article explores historical and literary connections between Australia and Japan through Richard Flanagan’s The Narrow Road to the Deep North (2013). The novel calls attention to differing military narratives as constructed by aggressor and victimized nations through representing Australian prisoners of war captured by the Imperial Japanese Army to work on the Thai-Burma Railway. The article serves as an exploratory study in how The Narrow Road might be taught in a Japanese university course on Japan-Australia relations through literary texts. Previous scholarship on the novel has not addressed its subject matter in relation to Japan’s continuing equivocations about its activities during the Asia-Pacific War. The article therefore explores how Australian fiction might stimulate discussion among Japanese students about contentious aspects of their nation’s history, and lead to the cultivation of cross-cultural knowledge and empathy through imagining lives that are different from their own.'(Publication abstract)

(p. 111-124)
Why Australia? Inquiries and Possibilities in the United States, Brenda Machosky , single work criticism

'This article surveys the state of Australian literary studies in the US as evidenced from the history of institutions and organizations and the scattered work of individual American academics. The two nations share a common settler colonial history and their literary identities have been subject to a “cultural cringe” against the British centre. A lack of popular knowledge about Australia in the US corresponds to almost non-existent course offerings in American tertiary education, although a limited but dedicated group of Australianists provide opportunities for students and critical inquiry. The article argues that US literary scholarship would benefit from analysis of the more overt effects of settler colonialism in Australia as a reflection of its own embedded colonialist ideologies. It also advocates for literature, particularly works by Aboriginal writers as alternative voices and an important critical tool against the dominant global epistemologies of science, economics, and politics.' (Publication abstract)

(p. 125-138)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

Last amended 16 Jun 2022 13:02:29
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