Cirrus@Austlit

'For several reasons, not all related, the scholarly engagement of Australian studies within Australia and its disciplinary instrumentalities—biennial conferences, a journal, and so on—remains predominantly Eurocentric. Explanations for this Eurocentricity are deserving of a standalone article, but the following series of articles manifests one attempt to represent some of this extant diversity. Beyond the now scant formal institutional settings and apparatuses constituting Australian studies within Australia, a broad church continues to participate in this field. Outside of the International Australian Studies Association, much of this participation—including at the institutional level, locally and internationally—is conducted through various networks established and sustained by dedicated individuals, including some chancers. Student exchanges, visiting lectureships, collaborative research projects, guest speaking invitations, art exhibitions, theatrical productions, orchestral and other music performances, among many more informal and inchoate events, form part of this wider engagement of Australian studies overseas. Much of this engagement takes place throughout Asia, including Japan, India, Indonesia and China. The genesis for this themed section lies at least partly here: to bring scholarship—in this instance from mainland China—germane to the journal’s remit to its wide readership. Owing to the COVID-19 pandemic and its wide-reaching impacts for many scholars worldwide, this themed section is smaller than the special issue we originally envisaged; however, the contributions published here represent many of the continued commitments to, and the promising progress of, Australian studies in China.' (Introduction) 

'Morrison's Writing Home is an important and ambitious work that among other things systematically contests two current orthodoxies: one being that Central Australia is an exemplar of Australia's enduring frontier; the other that settler Australians will always be alien to the land in which they dwell. In picking apart these shibboleths, some will no doubt proclaim Writing Home is controversial and inimical to Aboriginal aspirations and the realisation of restitution for dispossession. This would be to misread Morrison. Morrison also addresses a significant lacuna in Australian literary scholarship, that being the paucity of critical literature addressing writing of and about the Centre, despite the existence of a significant regional corpus. Given the influence of the Northern Territory in constructions of Australian identity, it is peculiar, as Morrison points out, that there is so little evaluation of the local literature informing these constructions (34). Nevertheless, his book is not a survey of this body of literature. Rather it selects key texts from different eras with which to illustrate his overarching argument. Texts selected are by those who have walked, no matter how briefly (Chatwin for example), the Central Australian places of which they write.' (Publication abstract)

'This book provides a guide to research and teaching in an Australian Indigenous Studies that is oriented toward the diverse, contemporary world. Central to this perspective is a sensibility to the intercultural complexity of that world - particularly its Indigenous component - and an awareness of the interactional capabilities that the Indigenous (and others) need to successfully negotiate it. These capabilities are important for facilitating Indigenous peoples' goal of equality as citizens and recognition as Indigenous, a goal which this book seeks to address. The Indigenous Studies presented in this book rejects as unproductive the orientation of orthodox Indigenous Studies, which promulgates the retention of old cultures, positive stereotypes, binary oppositions and false certainties. It adopts a more dialogical and process-oriented approach that highlights interactions and relationships and leads to the recognition of cultural and identity multiplicity, intersection and ambiguous difference. The book covers key topics such as ancestral cultures, colonisation and its impacts, identity politics, interculturality, intersectionality, structural marginalisation, unit development and teaching complexity. The focus of the book is the development of a sensibility that can shape readers' perceptions, decisions and actions in the future and guide teachers in their negotiation of intercultural classroom relationships.' (Publication summary)

'Walkabout magazine was one of the most influential and innovative Australian magazines across much of the twentieth century and it is long overdue for an extended, appreciative study of its internal and external dynamics. Mitchell Rolls and Anna Johnston provide the significant and innovative study the magazine deserves drawing attention to its complex engagement with the natural environment and the land as resource, with history and heritage, with Aboriginal and Pacific Island cultures.' —David Carter, Fellow at Australian Academy of the Humanities

''Travelling Home' provides a detailed analysis of the contribution that the mid twentieth-century 'Walkabout' magazine made to Australia’s cultural history. Spanning five central decades of the twentieth century (1934-1974), 'Walkabout' was integral to Australia’s sense of itself as a nation. By advocating travel—both vicarious and actual—'Walkabout' encouraged settler Australians to broaden their image of the nation and its place in the Pacific region. In this way, 'Walkabout' explicitly aimed to make its readers feel at home in their country, as well as including a diverse picture of Aboriginal and Pacific cultures. Like National Geographic in the United States, Walkabout presented a cornucopia of images and information that was accessible to a broad readership.

'Given its wide availability and distribution, together with its accessible and entertaining content, 'Walkabout' changed how Australia was perceived, and the magazine is recalled with nostalgic fondness by most if not all of its former readers. Many urban readers learnt about Indigenous peoples and cultures through the many articles on these topics, and although these representations now seem dated and at times discriminatory, they provide a lens through which to see how contemporary attitudes about race and difference were defined and negotiated.

'Drawing on interdisciplinary scholarship, 'Travelling Home' engages with key questions in literary, cultural, and Australian studies about national identity and modernity. The book’s diverse topics demonstrate how 'Walkabout' canvassed subtle and shifting fields of representation. Grounded in the archival history of the magazine’s production, the book addresses questions key to Australian cultural history. These include an investigation of middle-brow print culture and the writers who contributed to Walkabout, and the role of 'Walkabout' in presenting diverse and often conflicting information about Indigenous and other non-white cultures. Other chapters examine how popular natural history enabled scientists and readers alike to define an unique Australian landscape, and to debate how a modernising nation could preserve its bush while advocating industrial and agricultural development. While the nation is central to 'Walkabout' magazine’s imagined world, Australia is always understood to be part of the Pacific region in complex ways that included neo-colonialism, and Pacific content was prominent in the magazine. Through complex and nuanced readings of Australian literary and cultural history, 'Travelling Home' reveals how vernacular understandings of key issues in Australia’s cultural history were developed and debated in this accessible and entertaining magazine.' (Publication summary)

This work 'explores how we might read Friendly Mission in the twenty-first century. In doing so the essays in this volume are symptomatic - but not conclusively representative - of the multiple readers, readings and interpretations that this textual artifact can generate. Narratives of colonial encounter - explorers' journals, ethnographies, letters, paintings - survive to be fathomed by later generations and, particularly in the former settler colonies, such accounts of early contact between indigenous and invading cultures are crucial to understandings of nations and their politics.' (from the editors' Introduction p.13-14)

'Reading Robinson, while remaining cognisant of local resonances, extends Friendly Mission from parochial particularity and situates it within international contexts, both in terms of contemporary accounts of colonial/settler contact, conflict with indigenes and current scholarship analysing this material.' - back cover

'A literary genre is emerging in which Aborigines are cast as the spiritual saviours of the supposedly alienated Western self. One of the most prolific authors writing in this field is the Australian, James Cowan. Through a series of books Cowan moves further and further into the Aboriginal metaphysical realm until at last, he would have his readers believe, he actually enters the Dreaming and becomes an intrinsic part of it. In this article I critically examine these books, focusing on Cowan's construction of Aborigines and the sorts of claims he makes. I also consider some possible consequences of his particular portrayal of Aborigines. Despite his prominence in this field, and publishers' claims that he is 'an internationally respected authority on Australian Aborigines and other indigenous peoples', his work so far has received little critical analysis.' (Publication Abstract)

'Joel Monture, writer and professor of traditional Native American arts, tells of a visit to Santa Fe, "the place to buy culture and reduce your spiritual deficit".' He writes poignantly of discovering two of his former students - a Lakota (Sioux) woman and her partner, an Arapaho sculpture student - making suede jackets - average price $US 4,000 - in a dingy backroom under sweat shop conditions.' Disgusted and pained by the exploitation, by the counterfeit traditional garb and artefacts on sale and, more discreetly, the illegal sale of authentic heritage items, Monture concludes by noting that Native American popularity peaks in twenty-year cycles, and that during the troughs, a period when Native peoples become invisible, 'mainstream culture' redefines them in alignment with their changing interests.' He then notes that the dominant culture "will not stop short of acquiring even our spirituality for eventual mutation into a New Age pantomime"'  (Introduction)