Cirrus@Austlit

'Hundreds of white supremacist working-class Australians settled in Paraguay at the end of the nineteenth century, establishing a community there called Colonia Cosme. In the poetry and song of their newspaper, the Cosme Monthly, these settler colonialists reflected on the racial and class dynamics of their community, imagining affinities between their community, the defeated American Confederacy, and the White Australia policy that would accompany Australian Federation at the turn of the century. Blackface minstrelsy in particular played an important role in the colony’s cultural life, helping to establish a retrograde sense of belonging in a place largely inhospitable to their efforts. This essay considers how the Australians in Paraguay used genre and medium to fix racist identifications at the heart of their colonial culture.'

Source: Abstract.

'Victorian emigrant ships headed to the Australian colonies carried printing presses and published newspapers on board for the entertainment of passengers; the emigrants themselves generated most of the content. Based on archival work in Australia, South Africa, and England, this essay analyzes poetry published in these ship newspapers, and shows how emigrant poems engage both nostalgically and parodically with canonic poetry of the period: works by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Thomas Hood. Shipboard emigrant poems showcase the process of transition from home to abroad, British citizen to colonial subject; they offer an important view into the culture of Victorian emigration and colonialism.' (Publication summary)