Editor: Elizabeth McMahon
Target Essays on the Australian Humanities
Ken Gelder takes a steely-eyed look at Australian research culture in ‘Notes on the Research Future of Australian Literary Studies‘
In ‘Australian Cultural Studies: Theory, Story, History‘ John Frow overlays the personal and institutional experiences of Cultural Studies in Australia from the early 1970s.
Essays
In ‘The No Road Film: Trackers, Followers and Fanatics‘ Fiona Probyn analyses filmic treatments of the Aboriginal tracker and their implications for conceptions of sovereignty, ownership and reconciliation.
In his pictorial essay, ‘Notes from Underground: of Moles, Metros and Messiahs‘, John Milfull examines the contemporary significance of three related conceptions of history and class: Marx’s revolutionary mole; Benjamin’s angel of history; and Heiner Müller’s proclamation of the End of History in 1958.
Review
Jean Gelman Taylor reviews two new important studies of contemporary Indonesia; Indonesia’s Struggle: Jemaah Islamiyah and the Soul of Islam by Greg Barton; and Beginning to Remember: The Past in the Indonesian Present, edited by Mary S. Zurbuchen.
The Eco Humanities
The two main Eco-articles in this issue take up questions of contemporary Australia. Aidan Davison explores suburban dreams of Nature and the good life. He begins with a theoretical summary of current debates around the idea of Nature as a participant in the movement, interplay, and coupling of human and other-than-human agency, and goes on to discuss suburbs, Eden, and other forms of reinhabitation of settled country. Emily Potter develops a critical analysis of contemporary Australian literature. She reappraises this literature in light of its subtle and powerful consideration of the fate of Earth.
Along with the essays, we offer a preview of Kate Rigby’s new book, Topographies of the Sacred, an important study of the poetics of place in European Romanticism.
We are also pleased to announce a new prize in the area of Eco-humanities Scholarship.
Hard Currency
Check out this new peer-reviewed and free-access online journal, Australian Online Journal of Arts Education.
The latest issue of Crossings, the bulletin of the International Australian Studies Association, is now online.