Australian Literary Cultures

Convenor: Paul Sharrad
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Australian Literary Cultures is a vibrant research group whose work engages with text analysis and theoretical discourse in the area of ‘literary cultures’, including oral, print and e cultures; public writing cultures; lifewriting; colonial and postcolonial literatures; diasporic (migrant and refugee) narratives; literature and social activism; child and youth culture; indigenous literature; sexuality and gender studies. The group encourages the study of literatures and literary cultures at the intersections of disciplines and genres. Examples of current comparative and transcultural research include work in the area of Asian/Australian connections, Australian/Canadian studies, Australian/Italian stories, Australian/New Zealand women’s writing, South-South studies, the transnational culture of Modernism in Australia, Medievalism in Australian literature, literary festivals, internationalisation of Australian literary cultures, writing the garden, performing food, the impact of orality on written text, eco-criticism, and text/iles (visual, tactile and verbal intersections).

Members of the group have affiliation with the Association for Canadian Studies in Australia & NZ, the Australian Canadian Studies centre (University of Wollongong), the Australasian Children’s Literature Association, the European Association for the Study of Australia, the Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies (and the European branch of this association); and participate in the online bibliographical data base of Australian Literature, with particular focus on the Multicultural & BlackWords subsets. The group also includes editors of the Australian Literary Studies Journal, Kunapipi (a postcolonial journal of writing and culture), the journal of Australian Canadian Studies and Questione Meridionale /The Southern Question (an interdisciplinary, multilingual journal).