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Journal of Australian Studies @jas-jozstudies.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

And Highly Commended goes to Rebecca Hill whose article shows how Behrouz Boochani’s prison writing should also be read as a sustained thinking of collective practices of freedom. tinyurl.com/nshfdmux

Screenshot of journal article. Title: “Spirits of Resistance”: A Politics of Feeling in Behrouz Boochani’s Prison Writing. Author: Rebecca Hill (RMIT). Abstract: This article engages with Behrouz Boochani’s prison writing, especially his autobiographical novel No Friend but the Mountains and his poetic manifesto, “A Letter from Manus Island”. Boochani wrote these works while he was incarcerated in Australian immigration detention on Manus, a tropical island in an archipelago in the far north of Papua New Guinea. His writing is widely acclaimed for its meticulous description and analysis of the ongoing atrocities of the Australian immigration detention regime. I argue that his work should also be read as a sustained thinking of collective practices of freedom. The practices of freedom that Boochani articulates emerge in the generation of “profound relations” of feeling between the people, animals, plants, oceans and winds of Manus. These relations of feeling resist the system of control, coercion and violence that undergird Manus Prison. For Boochani, the system of control at the prison is a microcosm of what he calls Manus Prison Theory. His thinking of freedom is a thinking with the feelings and forces of Manus, and his writing is traced with the places that he wrote in.

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Journal of Australian Studies @jas-jozstudies.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Postgraduate winner @phoebehayman.bsky.social ooks at the demography of the people involved in the independent ‘teal’ campaigns of 2022 that challenged insider politics. tinyurl.com/y6f36fzy

Screenshot of journal article. Title: Political Outsiders? A Study of “Teal” Independent Campaign Demographics in the 2022 Australian Federal Election. Author: Phoebe Hayman. Abstract: The 2022 “teal” independents’ campaigns were a movement of political outsiders challenging the power of the established parties. Their campaigns mobilised candidates, campaigners and volunteers in the thousands across Australia, but little is known of who these participants were. Analysing the gender, class and ethnicity of campaign participants, this article considers whether the independent campaigns should be understood as a departure from or replication of the elite demographics of political parties. This study employs mixed methodologies, drawing on interview data from candidates, campaigners and volunteers (N = 55) and a survey of highly engaged volunteers (N = 270) to explore who joined independent campaigns and how recruitment processes influenced the gender, class and ethnicity of participants. This article argues that, despite efforts to attract participants from diverse backgrounds, the independent campaigns largely mirrored the demographics of political participants within party campaigns—except for their achievements in recruiting women across participant types. Recruitment via the social networks of existing participants was a contributing factor, reinforcing demographic disparities. This study contributes new knowledge of the teal independents movement and highlights the role of informal and social processes in shaping the gender, class and ethnicity of political participants and representatives, inside and outside of party campaigns.

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Journal of Australian Studies @jas-jozstudies.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Congratulations to the John Barrett Prize winners - catch up on this award-winning scholarship here! Open winners: Emily Yu Zong & Daisy Bisenieks explore how Australian dark humour uses parody, absurdity and laughter to respond to the eco-social phenomenon of invasive species. tinyurl.com/mc4bwyn

Screenshot of journal article. Title: Dark Humour and Invasive Species Storytelling in the Age of Extinction. Authors: Emily Yu Zong and Daisy Bisenieks (Hong Kong Baptist University). Abstract: This essay explores how humour, specifically dark humour, performs an affective politics of opacity in Australian comedies that invokes parody, absurdity and laughter to address the eco-social challenges of invasive species, including rabbits, brumbies, cane toads and red fire ants. The incongruity between jocular feelings and the gravity of extinction highlights humour’s ambivalent potential for violence and subversion. Through an analysis of cartoons and documentaries that bridge conservation science and the Australian cultural imagination, we identify three dimensions of environmental dark humour: (1) it questions human exceptionalism by foregrounding ambiguity, nonhuman agency and assemblage thinking beyond rational control; (2) it performs a cultural diagnosis of colonial legacies, including eco-nationalism and anti-immigration rhetoric, hegemonic White masculinity, and regional and cultural stereotypes; (3) it allows a cathartic release of affective dissent and taboo feelings by subverting culturally normative emotional attachments to invasive animals and mainstream environmentalism. By considering humour as a crucial technique for survival and ambiguity, we argue for its potential to inspire self-reflective, multispecies and decolonial modes of storytelling that can ethically account for human and nonhuman otherness in the age of extinction.

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International Australian Studies Association @intlausstudies.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Congratulations to our 2025 John Barrett Award Winners for best article in JAS! Open winners: Dr Emily Yu Zong & Daisy Bisenieks (HK Baptist University). Postgraduate winner: Phoebe Hayman (La Trobe). And shout out to A/Prof Rebecca Hill (RMIT) for receiving a Highly Commended in the Open Category.

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Journal of Australian Studies @jas-jozstudies.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Chris Dixon reviews Tyree Barnett's Stolen Man on Stolen Land: Being African American in Australia tinyurl.com/y4d6aza4

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Journal of Australian Studies @jas-jozstudies.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Michael Sharkey reviews Susan Lever's A.D. Hope: A Life tinyurl.com/3cw3e7z5

Black and white book cover. AD Hope, an older, slightly balding white man, sits at a desk writing.

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Journal of Australian Studies @jas-jozstudies.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Last, but not least, our book reviews for 50.3. @hannahforsyth.bsky.social reviews Geraldine Fela's Critical Care: Nurses on the Frontline of Australia’s AIDS Crisis tinyurl.com/68sfwnv7

Book cover for Critical Care: Nurses on the Frontline of Australia’s AIDS Crisis shows a man embracing another man. Both are smiling.

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Journal of Australian Studies @jas-jozstudies.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Our final article for 50.3: Jana Norman goes below the surface of oyster reef conservation, asking whether oysters are here for our benefit or are we in it together with oysters, and what difference does it make? #OzStudies #EnvironmentalHumanities tinyurl.com/yc38srcv

Screenshot of journal article. Title: Surfacing a Deeper Benefit of Native Oyster Restoration: Being Human in a More-Than-Human World. Author: Jana Norman (Adelaide University). Abstract: The ecological and economic benefits of oysters and the reefs they create are significant and wide-ranging: filtering pollutants, providing habitat and food for other marine species, protecting shorelines and attracting people to coastal communities. Oysters are also a multibillion-dollar international seafood commodity. Globally, oyster and other shellfish reefs are among the world’s most endangered marine ecosystems. Seeking to recover oyster and oyster reef benefits, governments and conservation groups in Australia and internationally are investing heavily in restoration projects. This article thinks with Australia’s native flat oyster about a benefit missing from the restoration conversation: what if oysters not only clarify water but also help us clarify ecological relations? Are oysters here for our benefit or are we in this together with oysters, and what difference does it make?

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Journal of Australian Studies @jas-jozstudies.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Next in 50.3: What if home is not a refuge, but a site of anxiety? This article reads Tim Winton’s Shallows through the lens of Bachelard and Heidegger to explore fractured dwelling, settler belonging and the collapse of existential grounding in postcolonial Australia. tinyurl.com/4w33zbz3

Screenshot of journal article. Title: "Make the Place Feel like Home Again”: The Representations and Poetics of Home Space in Tim Winton’s Shallows. Authors: Qian Zhu & Suzana Haji Muhammad (University Sains Malaysia). Abstract: This article examines Tim Winton’s Shallows as a novel of unsettled dwelling, arguing that its representations of domestic, coastal and shell-like spaces articulate a specifically settler-colonial form of existential angst. While Shallows has often been read through ecocritical frameworks that emphasise environmental activism, whaling and ecological ethics, this article shifts attention to the spatial and affective dimensions of home, intimacy and belonging. Drawing on Gaston Bachelard’s phenomenology of the house and the shell, and reworking it through feminist spatial theory (Elizabeth Grosz) and settler-colonial scholarship (Lisa Slater, Simone Bignall, Lorenzo Veracini), the article reads Winton’s dwellings as anxious enclosures that promise refuge and expose the instability of settler emplacement. Through a close reading of the book’s central characters, Daniel, Queenie and Cleve, it shows how feelings of emptiness, loneliness and anxious proximity emerge not simply as psychological states but as spatialised affects produced by the unresolved conditions of colonial occupation. The article concludes by reading Queenie’s reimagined relation to place as a tentative movement beyond the contracted shell of settler domesticity towards a more open, non-possessive mode of inhabitation.

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International Australian Studies Association @intlausstudies.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

*CFP deadline extended* Abstracts for InASA's 2027 conference "The Cringing Continent" now due 14 September....

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Journal of Australian Studies @jas-jozstudies.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

Start your week with 50.3: Philip Benson reassesses Australian writer Chester Cobb’s stream of consciousness style in Mr. Moffatt to argue for its innovative and distinctive contribution to modernist literary styles. #OzStudies #OzLit #modernism #JamesJoyce tinyurl.com/4hm7knt2

Screenshot of journal article. Title: Australia’s First Modernist Novel: Mr. Moffatt, Chester Cobb and Stream of Consciousness Narrative Style. Author: Philip Benson (University of Sydney). Abstract: Chester Cobb was an Australian modernist writer who published two novels as an expatriate in England, Mr. Moffatt (1925) and Days of Disillusion (1926). Cobb’s experimental narrative style was praised by his contemporaries, but his name is now virtually absent from critical work on Australian literary modernism. This article reassesses Cobb’s contribution to the modernist novel of the 1920s by examining the narrative style of Mr. Moffatt. The unique contribution of Mr. Moffatt lay in its use of variations in the forms of (free) direct thought to stage the conflict between involuntary and voluntary processes in the flow of everyday consciousness. In this way, Cobb uses stream of consciousness style to advance a plot focused on the spiritual growth of the novel’s protagonist as he navigates the complexities of capitalist modernity. In this respect, Cobb deserves attention not simply as a follower of James Joyce, Dorothy Richardson and other early 20th-century modernists but also as an Australian innovator who made a distinctive contribution to modernist literary styles.

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Journal of Australian Studies @jas-jozstudies.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

More from 50.3: Reading Castro, de Kretser and Dao, Peter D. Mathews argues for an “out-of-focus” life writing that resists demands for clarity, offering instead an ethics of doubt, relation and attention. #OzStudies #AsianAustralian #OzLit #LifeWriting #memoir #autotheory tinyurl.com/43z9r8m5

Screenshot of journal article. Title: Out of Focus: Asian Australian Autotheory and the Ethics of Opacity. Author: Peter D. Mathews (University of Macau). Abstract: This article examines how contemporary Asian Australian writers reconfigure memoir through autotheory, developing what I term an “out-of-focus” life writing that resists demands for coherence, authenticity and national legibility. In Brian Castro’s Shanghai Dancing, Michelle de Kretser’s Theory & Practice and André Dao’s Anam, theory functions not as an explanatory framework but as a dispersive force that interrupts, complicates and defocuses the autobiographical “I”. Drawing on concepts from photography, montage and phenomenology, these works refuse the stabilising tendencies of confessional narrative, instead foregrounding multilingualism, fragmentation and transnational memory. Their hybrid forms (collage, memoir essay and speculative archive) challenge the institutional appetite for transparent identity narratives, particularly those extracted from minoritised or refugee histories. In each text, opacity becomes an ethical stance—a refusal to translate complexity into consumable clarity and a commitment to relations that exceed the nation. By situating these works within Asian Australian literary debates on transnational imaginaries, the article argues that autotheory enables memoir to become a site of formal and philosophical experimentation. The “out-of-focus” memoir emerges not as evasion but as a mode of attention that honours uncertainty, multiplicity and the limits of knowledge.

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Journal of Australian Studies @jas-jozstudies.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Next in 50.3: Daozhi Xu examines Chinese Aust'n responses to the Voice referendum to illuminate the limits of collective guilt and its broader implications for national reconciliation in fostering connections between multicultural communities and First Nations peoples tinyurl.com/mr3bbu3j

Screenshot of journal article. Title: Interrogating Postcolonial Guilt: Chinese Australian Responses to the Voice Referendum. Author: Daozhi Xu (Macquarie University). Abstract: In Australia and other settler colonial states, guilt is postulated as being a psychological legacy of colonisation. The guilt-driven narrative has dominated academic and political discourses of reconciliation, especially during the Voice referendum in 2023. However, the distinction between “in-group” and “out-group” in respect to supposed feelings of guilt is arbitrary and contested. Little is known about the invocation of collective guilt beyond White people. The rejection or denial of guilt is considered emotionally callous, racially condescending, or politically indifferent. It is necessary to identify the dissonances and overlaps between dominant settler society and multicultural groups in respect to feelings of guilt arising from colonial injustices. Drawing on a range of empirical and statistical research on Chinese Australian responses to the Voice referendum, this article will examine whether Chinese Australians satisfy the antecedents that lead to guilt, thereby evaluating the effectiveness and limits of guilt as a postcolonial strategy. It will shed light on the politics of presumed overarching guilt and how it applies to multicultural communities. By moving beyond a simplistic Black–White binary, it offers an alternative lens to envision the paths for reconciliation in contemporary multicultural Australia.

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Journal of Australian Studies @jas-jozstudies.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

More from 50.3: When did the word “wog” crystallise into the recognisable slur it became? @drjessc.bsky.social shows how the word's meaning in postwar Australia was directly influenced by the experiences of WWII Australian soldiers on the Middle Eastern Front. #OzStudies tinyurl.com/muhra4ke

Screenshot of journal article. Title: Desert Wogs and Dirty Dagoes: The Role of World War II Australian Soldiers in Shaping Racial Language in Australia. Author: Jessica Carniel (University of Southern Queensland). Abstract: In post–World War II Australia, wog came to be a slur used against predominantly Southern European migrants, such as Italians and Greeks. However, prior to the war, it was used more benignly to refer to small creatures and minor illnesses, and as a diminutive for the popular golliwog dolls. This article investigates how Australian soldiers’ encounters with Others in the Middle Eastern front—both local Arabs and Italian enemies—were shaped by the racial ideologies they brought with them and shaped those with which they returned to Australia. It identifies these experiences in World War II as crucial to changing the meaning of wog in postwar Australia.

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Journal of Australian Studies @jas-jozstudies.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

Next in 50.3: How do historical crime fiction and television shape our understanding of Australia’s migrant past? This article explores multilingualism, memory and cultural diversity in Kerry Greenwood’s #PhryneFisher novels and Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries. #OzStudies 🕵‍♀️ tinyurl.com/3yxbm66r

Screenshot of journal article. Title: Multilingual Narratives and Cultural Diversity in the Phryne Fisher Series and Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries: Representing 1920s Melbourne’s Chinese and Jewish Communities. Author: Rebecca Margolis. Abstract: Kerry Greenwood’s bestselling Phryne Fisher historical crime novels (1989–2022) and their acclaimed ABC television adaptation, Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries (2012–2015), draw on historical research to portray 1920s Melbourne. Centring on the affluent private detective Phryne Fisher, the novels and television series address post–World War I social issues within the city’s culturally diverse neighbourhoods. This article examines multilingualism as a narrative strategy within Greenwood’s fiction and its television adaptation. It offers close readings of Ruddy Gore and Raisins and Almonds, novels that foreground Melbourne’s Chinese and Jewish communities. It analyses portrayals of multiculturalism across the novels and their screen adaptations and examines how popular period fiction shapes collective memory and an imagined Australian past.

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Journal of Australian Studies @jas-jozstudies.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

First up, @drjpersian.bsky.social revisits the cultural storm created by the 1994 publication of Helen Demidenko’s novel, The Hand That Signed the Paper, to argue that its perpetrator justifications reflected the antisemitic tone of the war crimes debate in Australia. tinyurl.com/3u38m6zx

Screenshot of journal article. Title: Revisiting Helen Demidenko’s The Hand That Signed the Paper: Perpetrator Justifications and Family Memory. Author: Jayne Persian (University of Southern Queensland). Abstract: This article revisits the cultural storm created by the 1994 publication of Helen Demidenko’s novel, The Hand That Signed the Paper. Purporting to be quasi-autobiographical, written by a young member of the Ukrainian diaspora, the novel used family oral histories to present an authentic perpetrator perspective. After winning prestigious national awards, Demidenko was unmasked as an Anglo-Australian, Helen Darville. This article argues that critics who have concentrated on the identity hoax, and historians who have attempted to correct the novel’s ahistoricity, have missed the role of the novel in accurately reflecting the antisemitism that was part of the war crimes debate in Australia. One (perhaps marginal) value of the book thus lies in its explication of perpetrator justifications within the specific historical context of the Australian debate. Darville/Demidenko was also prescient in her focus on memory within the families of alleged perpetrators who had resettled in the West.

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Journal of Australian Studies @jas-jozstudies.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

🚨New issue of JAS out now🚨 50.3 features our cutest cover yet - Horrie the Wog Dog (actually a sad tale but let's not spoil the moment). We begin our 50.3 thread with the co-editors taking on AI. Stay tuned for your daily doses of 50.3! #OzStudies tinyurl.com/zsdjmzft

Blue cover of the Journal of Australian Studies Volume 50, Number 1, September 2026. Features a black and white photograph of a small terrier-like dog wearing a little vest and standing on an ammo crate in front of three tents in the north African desert.

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Jon Piccini @jonpiccini.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

Check out our 18+ cover, JAS pushing the boundaries!

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Ana Stevenson @dranastevenson.bsky.social · 29/06/2026

Very pleased to see my book review in the latest edition of @jas-jozstudies.bsky.social! ✍️ Anthea Taylor's excellent Germaine Greer, Celebrity Feminism and the Archive makes abundant use of the Germaine Greer Archive, with a particular focus on curatorial labour and audience letter writing 💌

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Journal of Australian Studies @jas-jozstudies.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

and Leei Wong reviews Cai Tianming's History of Australia, written for Chinese readers. [Aodaliya Shihua 澳大利亚史话] www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

tandfonline.com

History of Australia

Published in Journal of Australian Studies (Vol. 50, No. 2, 2026)

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Journal of Australian Studies @jas-jozstudies.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

@dranastevenson.bsky.social reviews Anthea Taylor's Germaine Greer, Celebrity Feminism and the Archive www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

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Journal of Australian Studies @jas-jozstudies.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

And last but not least, this issue's book reviews: @jonpiccini.bsky.social reviews Henry Reynolds' Looking From the North: Australian History From the Top Down www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Book cover with an upside down map of Australia. Book title: Looking from the North: Australian history from the top down. Author: Henry Reynolds.

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James Donaldson @cairojim.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

Pleased to have this out and open access with @jas-jozstudies.bsky.social my great grandfather, Major RJ Donaldson DSO, was one of the Aussie engineers at Brightlingsea so this had a special connection for me

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Journal of Australian Studies @jas-jozstudies.bsky.social · 23/06/2026

In our final article for 50.2, @paulkiem.bsky.social and @cairojim.bsky.social examine the at times whimsical evidence for Australian sappers encountering Roman antiquities at Brightlingsea, Essex during World War I. #OzStudies #OzHist #antiquities #OpenAccess tinyurl.com/ycx6pfvk

Screenshot of journal article. Title: The Centurion and the Sapper: Did Australian Soldiers Souvenir Roman Artefacts While Training at Brightlingsea During World War I? Authors: Paul Kiem (Independent scholar) and James Donaldson (UQ). Abstract: As a result of exposure to a classical education or to the histories permeating the popular culture of the British Empire, many Australian soldiers who went overseas during World War I were receptive to encounters with the past. There are examples of soldiers practising amateur archaeology and souveniring artefacts. The officially sanctioned excavation and appropriation of the Shellal Mosaic is the most well known, but there were many small-scale instances of similar activity. This article assesses the evidence for Australian encounters with Roman antiquities at Brightlingsea, Essex. Notwithstanding the limitations of this evidence and the scope for further research, we argue that the likelihood is that Australians did unearth and souvenir Roman artefacts at Brightlingsea. Like similar incidents from other theatres of the war, many of which were also poorly documented, it helps to illustrate the way in which engagement with the material culture of the past was a significant aspect of Australians’ wartime experience.

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Journal of Australian Studies @jas-jozstudies.bsky.social · 23/06/2026

We interrupt your (ir)regularly scheduled programming of JAS 50.2 notices to announce that the #CFP for @intlausstudies.bsky.social conference is out now! Join us at Flinders on 9-12 Feb 2027 to discuss "The Cringing Continent"! Abstracts due: 17 August 2026 For more details: tinyurl.com/4hnn6k8v

tinyurl.com

Call for Papers: ‘The Cringing Continent’, InASA Conference for 2027

The Cringing Continent 2027 InASA Conference Tuesday 9—Friday 12 February Flinders University, Adelaide In February 2027, we invite you to join us on Kaurna Country to reconsider one of the foundat…

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Journal of Australian Studies @jas-jozstudies.bsky.social · 23/06/2026

Cinema helped shape Australia’s conservation movement. In 20th-century #Tasmania, govt-backed nature travelogues promoted #tourism & identity—framing wilderness, parks, and even forestry & hydropower as compatible. Film advanced conservation but also complicated it. #OzStudies tinyurl.com/nhae29fb

Screenshot of journal article. Title: Nature Travelogues, 1920s–1970s: How State-Sponsored Cinema in Tasmania Shaped Conservationism. Author: Benjamin J Richardson (Tasmania). Abstract: An important influence on the historical evolution of Australia’s conservation movement was cinema. Documentary films about travel, commonly known as “travelogues”, were often used to promote nature-based tourism and recreation. They had particular salience in Tasmania, where the government sought to use the island’s natural heritage to define the state’s identity, establishing a specialist film unit for this purpose. Three distinct narratives about nature and its conservation were developed in these Tasmanian travelogues from the 1920s to the 1970s, with the government increasingly interested in promoting the idea that extractive industries such as forestry and hydropower could be compatible with or improve the aesthetic and recreational appeal of wild nature. Thus, while nature travelogues could assist conservationism, including to facilitate the establishment of national parks, they also unleashed ideas that posed a risk to that agenda.

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Journal of Australian Studies @jas-jozstudies.bsky.social · 22/06/2026

Sassano and Mayes look at how Bruce Pascoe’s 2014 book Dark Emu activated a range of actors to respond to the demand for a reckoning with the colonial history of Australian agriculture. #OzStudies #agriculture #FoodSovreignty #reconciliation #AgHist #OpenAccess tinyurl.com/yrn5cmax

Screenshot of journal article. Title: The Pascoe Moment: Towards a Decolonial Turn in AustralianAgriculture. Authors: Angie Sassano (Monash) and Christopher Mayes (Deakin). Abstract: The 2014 publication of Yuin historian Bruce Pascoe’s Dark Emu signalled a shift in Australian agricultural discourse and practice. Prior to its publication, little attention was given to the intersection between food practices and (de)colonisation. Over the past decade, small-scale alternative food movements as well as large-scale export-oriented producers have responded unevenly to Pascoe’s provocation. While the former sought to develop a decolonial approach in response to a growing awareness of settler complicity in colonial food systems, the latter, represented by government agencies and peak organisations, adopted a milder reconciliatory turn of Indigenous–settler relations within conventional agriculture. This article argues that Dark Emu presents a pivotal moment and rupture in Australia’s agricultural practices and food discourses. We examine the sociopolitical conditions surrounding Dark Emu and ask how its publication produced an urgency towards decolonial thinking across alternative food actors, and reconciliatory thinking in agriculture more broadly. We conceptualise the “Pascoe Moment” as a set of contingent conditions around Dark Emu that activated an urgent need to reassemble food systems in response to the (de)colonial question of agriculture. In doing so, this article untangles how agricultural actors differently engage in decolonial questions.

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Journal of Australian Studies @jas-jozstudies.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

When Banished aired in Australia in 2015 it caused outrage. UK audiences embraced the penal colony drama; Australians saw erasure. Findlay & Pinto explore how one TV series exposed deep divides in understanding colonial history across the former empire. #OzStudies #OzHist #OzTv tinyurl.com/4cyuf2v7

Screenshot of journal article. Title: “We Tend to Think of It as Australian History, but It’s British History”: Screening Colonisation in Banished (2015). Authors: James Findlay (University of Sydney) and Sarah W. Pinto (Deakin University. Abstract: In June 2015, the BBC historical series Banished arrived on Australian television screens amid major controversy. Written by the celebrated British screenwriter Jimmy McGovern, Banished dramatised life in the British penal colony at Sydney Cove in 1788. When the series first premiered in Britain, it developed a strong following among British viewers despite mixed reviews from critics. In Australia, however, local criticism of the series began before it had even aired on the cable TV network Foxtel, and this criticism—from critics and audiences alike—far outweighed viewer interest. In this article, we look closely at the distinct ways that Banished appeared on British and Australian screens at the time of its release. We are particularly interested in the way that what had seemed to McGovern, his filmmakers and British audiences to be a fresh and revealing story of British colonisation quickly became a deeply problematic story of erasure and concealment when it landed in Australia. These very different viewings of Banished in Britain and Australia offer an intriguing insight into the contrasting understandings of the history of British settler colonialism in the former metropole and colony in 2015.

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Journal of Australian Studies @jas-jozstudies.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

In our next offering, Burnett shows us how a forgotten 1868 short story by Marcus Clarke uses conventions of drug reporting to explore the colonial consciousness via a #gothic tale of displacement and disillusionment. #OzLit #OzStudies #ColonialGothic tinyurl.com/ydu7dxws

Screenshot of journal article. Title: Marcus Clarke’s “Cannabis Indica” and Altered States of Consciousness in 19th-Century Australian Mass Media. Author: Clare J. Burnett (Griffith University). Abstract: In 1868 eminent Australian author Marcus Clarke wrote a gothic tale for his own Colonial Monthly Magazine titled “Cannabis Indica”, purportedly under the influence of hashish. Contemporaneous reviewers discussed this little-known short story as merely a curio, and modern scholars have followed suit. However, the experimental short story is distinguished as one of the first fictional portrayals of altered consciousness and drug use in Australia by an Australian author. Scholars have primarily considered depictions of altered states of consciousness and drug use by European and American writers rather than colonial authors due to the plethora of international fictional and scientific accounts of drug taking. This article argues that Clarke’s story acknowledges and modifies these international understandings, gothicising the experience of drug taking and adapting colonial touchpoints of understanding about the drug, including its oriental origins and link to medical perceptions of insanity, to engage in a literary experiment into colonial consciousness and what it means to be torn by the duality of rational and irrational, of scientific thought and fantastical thinking, and of being both a colonial and part of the empire.

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Journal of Australian Studies @jas-jozstudies.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

From 1967-1975, psychiatrist Howard Whitaker used LSD for psychotherapy in Victoria, attracting claims of unscientific methods and malpractice. Watts, Clark & Munday explore this work through interviews with former staff of Mayday Hills Psychiatric Hospital, Beechworth. tinyurl.com/3h674c57

Screenshot of journal article. Title: Dr Howard Whitaker and LSD-Assisted Therapy at MaydayHills Psychiatric Hospital, Beechworth, Victoria, Australia. Authors: Alison Watts (Southern Cross University), Eileen Clark (Charles Sturt University), and Jennifer Munday (Charles Sturt University). Abstract: Between 1967 and 1975, psychiatrist Dr Howard Whitaker directed a program for the legal use of LSD and psilocybin in Victoria, Australia. His controversial practices were marred by misconduct, unscientific methods and evidence of malpractice. This study explores Whitaker’s LSD-assisted therapy in the 1970s through interviews with former staff of Mayday Hills Psychiatric Hospital in Beechworth, Victoria. These staff members share their experiences working with Whitaker and implementing groundbreaking techniques. The interview data, collected in a broader social history project about Mayday Hills, sheds light on Whitaker’s unconventional and unethical approaches and reminds us that the 1970s was a time of reform in Victorian mental institutions. The current research in psychedelic drug therapies shows remarkable similarities to Whitaker’s early positive findings from over 50 years ago.

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Journal of Australian Studies @jas-jozstudies.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

K/Gamilaroi scholar Bindi Bennett interrogates how AI generates troubling images of Indigenous Australians. What would ethical AI look like if it centred #Indigenous authority, relational accountability and self-determination in digital spaces? #OzStudies #AIethics tinyurl.com/y8kwhjas

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Journal of Australian Studies @jas-jozstudies.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

Does #circumcision really matter? Tracing the debate in Australian #Nudism. P.S. It does! See Jonathan A. Allen’s article in JAS 50.2. #OzStudies #OzHist

Screenshot of journal article. Title: “Does it really matter? Foreskins and circumcision in Australian nudism”. Author: Jonathan A. Allan (Brandon University). Abstract: In reply to several letters from readers, the editor of Australian Sun & Health, a nudist magazine, asked, “Does it really matter?” This question arose regarding circumcision and the foreskin after multiple contributors voiced their opinions on circumcision in Australia and its relation to nudism. This article examines those letters and the discussions surrounding the penis, foreskin and circumcision at a time when the latter was becoming less prevalent in Australia. I contend that nudism offers a vital perspective on these debates as nudists routinely confront the body in all its raw complexity. Therefore, nudists may provide valuable insights into this conversation, especially since the body is not regarded as taboo, and due to historical and ongoing interests in concepts of the natural, specifically the body in its unaltered state. Ultimately, I demonstrate that Australian Sun & Health served as a platform where readers could view the penis in its authentic form, facilitating discussions about its various representations. Thus, Australian Sun & Health played a role in normalising the foreskin within a circumcising culture.

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Journal of Australian Studies @jas-jozstudies.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

50.2 of JAS is out but the cover is too saucy for Bluesky. The cover image is taken from Max Dupain’s Cronulla nudes series. You can see it on our website: www.tandfonline.com/toc/rjau20/c... #OzStudies #OzPhotography #Dupain

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Journal of Australian Studies @jas-jozstudies.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

Get started with editors Chris Hay and @drjessc.bsky.social’s editorial on rethinking nous in the age of Nous. tinyurl.com/ye25kwtr

tinyurl.com

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Journal of Australian Studies @jas-jozstudies.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

🚨New issue alert🚨 JAS 50.2 is now available. Featuring a Max Dupain photograph on the cover that has been flagged by Bluesky as sexually explicit. 😳 Wait until they read the article in this issue about foreskins… tinyurl.com/4ncnpapk #OzStudies

Cover image from Max Dupain’s Sunbathers series. Depicts nudists frolicking in the sand dunes.

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Journal of Australian Studies @jas-jozstudies.bsky.social · 22/03/2026

This CFP is open for one more week! Get your proposals in by Monday 30 March. #CFP #OzStudies

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Journal of Australian Studies @jas-jozstudies.bsky.social · 15/03/2026

It's Monday morning and you're writing your to do list for the week. Why not add "write abstract for JAS 50.4 special issue" on that list? #OzStudies #CFP #OzHist #OzLit #humanities

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Journal of Australian Studies @jas-jozstudies.bsky.social · 06/03/2026

To celebrate our 50th volume, JAS invites you to contribute to a special issue on (the Journal of) Australian Studies at 50. Please see the CFP below for details - and please circulate it far and wide! @intlausstudies.bsky.social #CFP #OzStudies #OzLit #OzHist #auspol #AustralianStudies

50In 2026, the Journal of Australian Studies
publishes its 50th volume. To mark this occasion we propose a special issue for release in late 2026. For this volume, we would like to invite scholars to revisit its back issues - perhaps with nostalgia, perhaps with criticism, but always with the purpose of evaluating what Australian Studies has been, what it currently is, and what it can be.
We seek articles of that can do one or more of the following:
Select a particular article or special issue from the past to speak to from a contemporary perspective
Revisit one of your own articles published in
JAS
to critically revise, update - or perhaps redact past scholarship
Scholarly reflections of editorial experiences with the journal focused on characterising “Australian Studies” at the time
Critical personal reflections
Debates and disputes in Australian studies (on the pages and off of
JAS
)
A critical history of/commentary on
JAS
and its relationship to the field of Australian Studies more broadly
Critical reviews of key themes the journal has covered (or not covered) over its history
Critical reviews of the role of disciplines and disciplinarity within the interdisciplinary formation of Australian Studies
We also welcome other proposals and suggestions. Please note that we are open to a wide range of lengths and formats in this context, as appropriate to the form of your contribution, and we invite contributors to specify a nominal word count in their proposal, noting that this cannot exceed 8000 words (inclusive of footnotes).
We invite all contributors to provide a 300-500 word
abstract proposal for their article by 30 March 2026
. This is to allow us to identify and remedy any potential overlaps, and to identify peer reviewers in advance.
Outcomes and feedback on abstracts will be provided by 3 April
at the latest. Please submit your abstracts to:
journalofaustralianstudies@gmail.com
with the subject line:
Attn: JAS at 50 Special Issue.

Initial manuscripts are due in ScholarOne by 17 July 2026
; however, we welcome early submissions.
All manuscripts will be peer reviewed. In the spirit of collaboration, we ask that contributors to the special issue also assist with peer reviewing other contributions. After revisions based on the peer review are made, manuscripts will undergo an editorial review, after which they may be returned for further revisions. After this round of editorial revisions, the manuscripts will then be forwarded to our copyeditor by no later than 28 August. Final manuscripts (including peer review, revision, copyediting, and revisions after copyediting) are due by 9 October 2026.
If you have any questions, please email the Editors:
jess.carniel@unisq.edu.au
and
chris.hay@flinders.edu.au
Production timeline at a glance
Abstracts:
30 March 2026
Notification of acceptance:
3 April 2026
Initial manuscript submission:
17 July 2026
Peer review and revision process completed by:
28 August 2026
Final manuscripts (including peer review and copyediting)
: 9 October 2026
Publication:
December 2026

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Journal of Australian Studies @jas-jozstudies.bsky.social · 19/01/2026

Megarrity reviews Quanchi's Thomas McMahon’s Search for Fame: Photographer, Journalist and Patriot (Sidharta Books and Print) www.thenile.com.au/books/max-qu...

A squat man in a safari suit stands in a desert landscape. To his right is a Pacific Islander carrying a camera and equipment back. Behind him, various Pacific Islanders dance.

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Journal of Australian Studies @jas-jozstudies.bsky.social · 19/01/2026

Margolis reviews Moore et al's Fringe to Famous: Cultural Production in Australia After the Creative Industries (Bloomsbury). www.bloomsbury.com/au/fringe-to...

A cartoon image by Reg Mombassa depicting a long-haired bearded man standing in a flooded landscape, reading a book. He is surrounded by houses and icons of Australian culture, such as a Hill Hoist, cricket stumps, a football, the Sydney Harbour Bridge, and the Opera House.

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Journal of Australian Studies @jas-jozstudies.bsky.social · 19/01/2026

Henderson reviews Regan's “I Buy This Piece of Ground Here”: An Italian Market-Gardener Community in Adelaide, 1920s–1970s (ANU Press). press.anu.edu.au/publications...

A black and white image of a middle aged Italian couple stand in front of a car and home. The book title reads: ‘I buy this piece of ground here’
An Italian market-gardener community in Adelaide, 1920s–1970s.

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Journal of Australian Studies @jas-jozstudies.bsky.social · 19/01/2026

We start our book reviews with...not a book review! @sighmonger.bsky.social reviews the ABC's "Eat the Invaders", hosted by Tony Armstrong.

Tony Armstrong, an Indigenous man with a mustache and goatee wearing a yellow jacket decorated with cactus and rabbits, sits at a table. Before him is an empty plate and several cane toads apparently hopping about the table. He has speared one with his fork. Will he eat it??

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Journal of Australian Studies @jas-jozstudies.bsky.social · 19/01/2026

Last but not least, a thread of the book reviews published in 49.4. If you have a book you would like us to review, please contact out reviews editors @jonpiccini.bsky.social and Nycole Prowse.

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Journal of Australian Studies @jas-jozstudies.bsky.social · 18/01/2026

In our final article for 49.4, Kerby, Tualaulelei, Ryan, Baguley and Bedford use Joseph Campbell's "hero's journey" to explore how Captain Cook has been portrayed in children's books from the 1950 to the 2010s. #KidsLit #OzHistory #CaptainCook #OzStudies #OpenAccess tinyurl.com/pcxfbeuv

Screenshot of journal article. Title: Old Wine in New Bottles for Australian Readers: Captain Cook and Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey in Children’s Picture Books. Authors: Martin Kerby, Eseta Tualaulelei, Lisa Ryan, Margaret Baguley, and Alison Bedford (University of Southern Queensland). Abstract: This article explores a famous but controversial figure in the Australian imaginary, Captain James Cook, and his representation in children’s books over different periods. We examine three representative examples of children’s books that explore James Cook and his first voyage to the South Pacific: The Story of Captain Cook: An Adventure from History (Ladybird Books, 1958), Excuse Me, Captain Cook: Who Did Discover Australia? (Salmon, 1988) and Meet … Captain Cook (Murdie and Nixon, 2011). Each book was created by the respective authors and artists at different points in time, so we analyse the stories using Joseph Campbell’s three-stage metaphor of the “Hero’s Journey”, a canonical structure that he identified in mythological narratives or monomyths that resonate across cultures and epochs. Our analysis demonstrates that representations of Cook in children’s picture books are largely conservative, drawing the reader’s attention away from contentious alternative perspectives of his story.

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Journal of Australian Studies @jas-jozstudies.bsky.social · 15/01/2026

The penultimate article of 49.4: Maxwell examines George Turner's Down There In Darkness as a critical dystopia on the cusp of a postcolonial turn in science fiction. #OzLit #SciFi #FirstNations #posthumanism #dystopia #OpenAccess tinyurl.com/3amcr3e8

Screenshot of journal article. Title: George Turner's Down There in Darkness and the Future of Humanity. Author: Anne Maxwell (University of Melbourne). Abstract: This article proposes that Australian author George Turner's posthumous novel Down There in Darkness (1999) belongs to the category of science fiction novels recently labelled “critical dystopias” by Tom Moylan. I argue that Turner's novel can be situated in the context of the Anthropocene in its exploration of the disappearance of the human both to climate catastrophe and to our own technologies in storytelling inspired by events occurring during Turner's own lifetime. I then explore Turner's novel in the context of the “postcolonial turn” to show how it anticipates many aspects of the critical dystopian trajectories explored by Indigenous science fiction writers today.

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Journal of Australian Studies @jas-jozstudies.bsky.social · 14/01/2026

Next in 49.4: Smyth argues that Naish's That Men Should Fear reshapes the genre of the farm novel through its portrayal of women and class. #class #LitStudies #OzLit #OzStudies tinyurl.com/2rbbcute

Screenshot of journal article. Title: Subverting Social Order: Recovering the Intelligent Woman Farmer in John Naish’s That Men Should Fear (1963). Author: Elizabeth A. Smyth (James Cook University). Abstract: In a 1985 lecture, Australian literary scholar Bruce Bennett said that people associated with farming are commonly regarded as intellectually impoverished. John Naish’s farm novel That Men Should Fear (1963) subverts the literary social order that Bennett described by portraying a farmer who is characterised as highly educated. Naish’s first novel, The Cruel Field (1962), has appeared in recent georgic studies and ecocritical scholarship, and in analyses of the migrant experience and labour systems. In this article, I recover his second novel, That Men Should Fear, and argue that Naish’s characterisation of the farmer as university educated subverts the literary “scale of civilisation” noted by Bennett while enabling insights into a class division based on ownership of farmland. This article centres on Naish’s portrayal of a strong and independent woman farmer at a time when women felt sidelined in Australian literature and society. I argue that Naish’s That Men Should Fear reshapes the genre of the Australian farm novel by expanding traditional representations of women and class. It also enriches the farmer’s perspective offered in Naish’s The Cruel Field.

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