Cirrus@Austlit

'A multi-disciplinary set of studies (Humanities and Social Sciences) of transnational flows and influences and themes connecting India and Australia, from mining and Aboriginal politics to colonial botanical collections to the spread of the ghazal form in poetry. It results from collaborations between Indian and Australian scholars and includes a theoretical overview of the transnational in the editors' introductory chapter.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'The first decade of the twenty-first century has seen an increasing trend in the field of Australian Studies for scholars to situate their research within a broader international context and conversation. In some cases, this involves exploring how concepts developed in other national contexts can be employed to illuminate aspects of the Australian experience; in others, the focus is on the transnational movement of people and ideas between Australia and the rest of the world. This collection of essays represents a selection of this recent scholarship, particularly in relation to conversations between scholars in Australia and India, and was initiated under the auspices of the Indian Association for the Study of Australia (Eastern Region). The essays are drawn from a variety of disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives – history, literature, film, education, sociology and politics, cultural studies and environmental studies.

'The papers collected in the volume are selections from the conference proceedings of an international conference on “Re-mapping the Future: History, Culture and Environment in Australia and India”. This volume particularly explores various intersections of history, culture and environment in the discourse of cross-cultural linkages between Australia and India. It builds on the commonality of cultural networks, the intercolonial history of encounter and exchange, and the Indian diasporic presence in Australia, and looks forward to a future in terms of a developing bilateral relationship between Australia and India.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'This collection of essays takes an interdisciplinary approach to the ecological, social, economic and, in particular, the cultural dimensions of the Australia-India relationship. The essays provide many levels of focus on environment, place and culture. Some evoke appreciation of particular "places," either in India or Australia. Many explore how literature has treated "landscape," while some are comparative studies of cultural, historical and political development. The essays arise from a particular gathering of scholars: The East India chapter of the Indian Association for the Study of Australia (IASA) held its inaugural international conference in Kolkata on 22-23 January 2009. Much of the work is comparative, exploring common Indian and Australian themes of colonial and postcolonial experience, implications of migration and diaspora, and shared language and literature. The work also explores shared environmental crisis, manifest in landscapes such as the Mouths of the Ganges and Australia's Murray Darling Basin. Such comparisons indicate our shared experience of the "crisis" of ecological, social, economic and cultural sustainability. As human future is colonized through environmental degradation, and determined by human migration and shared culture and values, our relationship to "place" is revitalized and reassessed. We seek simultaneously a reconciliation between humans and a realignment of the human-nature relationship. This is the most basic meaning of social and ecological sustainability' (publisher website).

'Patrick White is a major Australian writer who has again and again tried to interpret the nation's exploration history in terms of its gradually evolving forms of spatiality and frontier. Acclaimed as a 'born writer' and again criticized on grounds of contrived stylistic patterns by A.D. Hope (Marr, Life 307-10), White has still remained a controversial novelist.' (p. 125)