« Indigenous and at home: Jacek Anderst , Keziah Bennett-Brooka, Tamara Mackean, ‘Flipping the script on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and housing: a call for strengths based discourse in Australian housing research’, International Journal of Housing Policy, 2026

The key words: Clare Corbould, Hilary Emmett, ‘Settler Colonial Keywords for New Area Studies: Land, Labour, and Language in Mark Twain’s Following the Equator (1897)’, in Clare Corbould, Hilary Emmett, Sarah Garland, Malcolm McLaughlin, Thomas Ruys Smith, John Wills (eds), American Studies in the Age of New Area Studies: Infinite Space, Routledge, 2026

01May26

Abstract: This chapter examines the role/place of cross-cultural translation in New Area Studies by reading Mark Twain’s Following the Equator (1897) as a mode of area studies avant la lettre. Drawing on Raymond Williams’ Keywords (1976) and later developments of this concept, we examine Twain’s use of three terms: recruit, squatter, and native. Our close reading of Twain’s comparative account of settler colonies reveals: first, his scorn for euphemisms that mask coercive Pacific labour regimes; second, his unsettling of Australian celebrations of squatters by recalling American associations with land theft and slavery; and third, Twain’s reproduction of settler-colonists’ claims in Australia to nativeness and of myths about Aboriginal people’s “extinction.” As a methodology for New Area Studies, keywording thus enables a nuanced interrogation of cross-cultural translation. In de-exceptionalising US histories of land, labour, and racialisation by situating them within shared settler colonial formations, the method is useful across multiple disciplines, including literary studies, cultural studies, history, and New Area Studies.


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