Comparing settlers: Brenda Machosky, ‘Why Australia? Inquiries and possibilities in the United States’, Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 2021 | settler colonial studies blog

Comparing settlers: Brenda Machosky, ‘Why Australia? Inquiries and possibilities in the United States’, Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 2021

02Jan22

Abstract: This article surveys the state of Australian literary studies in the US as evidenced from the history of institutions and organizations and the scattered work of individual American academics. The two nations share a common settler colonial history and their literary identities have been subject to a “cultural cringe” against the British centre. A lack of popular knowledge about Australia in the US corresponds to almost non-existent course offerings in American tertiary education, although a limited but dedicated group of Australianists provide opportunities for students and critical inquiry. The article argues that US literary scholarship would benefit from analysis of the more overt effects of settler colonialism in Australia as a reflection of its own embedded colonialist ideologies. It also advocates for literature, particularly works by Aboriginal writers as alternative voices and an important critical tool against the dominant global epistemologies of science, economics, and politics.

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