David Carter is Emeritus Professor at The University of Queensland where he was previously Professor of Australian Literature and Cultural History and Director of the Australian Studies Centre (2001-2006). Prior to this, he was a lecturer in literature and Australian studies in the Faculty of Humanities, Griffith University.
His monographs include:
- Australian Books and Authors in the American Marketplace, 1840-1940 (with Roger Osborne, 2018).
- Always Almost Modern: Australian Print Cultures and Modernity (2013).
- Dispossession, Dreams and Diversity: Issues in Australian Studies (2006).
- A Career in Writing: Judah Waten and the Cultural Politics of a Literary Career (1997).
The latter won the Walter McRae Russell Award for literary scholarship.
His publications as editor include:
- Making Books: Contemporary Australian Publishing, with Anne Galligan (2007)
- The Ideas Market: An Alternative Take on Australia's Intellectual Life (2004)
- Stories from Down Under: Nine Short Stories from Australia and New Zealand, with Karin Ikas (2004)
- Culture in Australia: Policies, Publics and Programs, with Tony Bennett (2001)
- Judah Waten: Fiction, Memoirs and Criticism (1998)
- The Republicanism Debate, with Wayne Hudson (1993)
- Images of Australia: An Introductory Reader to Australian Studies, with Gillian Whitlock (1992)
- Outside the Book: Contemporary Essays on Literary Periodicals (1991)
He has contributed to the Cambridge History of Australian Literature (2009), the History of the Book in Australia (vol. 3, 2006), the Cambridge Companion to Australian Literature (2000), and the Penguin New Literary History of Australia (1988).
His research interests are in the area of Australian cultural history, and, in particular, print culture studies, publishing history, literary history, Australian magazines and periodicals, media/cultural institutions, and modernity.
David was Manager of the Australian Studies in China program on behalf of the Australia-China Council (2002-2016). In 2007-2008 and again in 2016-2017, he was Visiting Professor in Australian Studies at the Center for Pacific and American Studies at Tokyo University. He was a board member of the Australia-Japan Foundation from 1998 to 2004 and President of the International Australian Studies Association from 1997 to 2001.