AustLit

'This year’s issue of Humanities Australia continues the tradition of showing the range and vitality of humanities research through articles by Fellows of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. The articles in this issue cover a wide range of topics and, typically for contemporary research in the humanities, they often extend beyond one discipline to interdisciplinary study. We are also proud to feature in this issue articles by the joint recipients of the 2016 Max Crawford Medal, awarded by the Academy to an Australia-based early career scholar for outstanding achievement in the humanities.'  (Graham Tulloch : Editor's Introduction)

'Once again it is a pleasure to welcome readers to a new issue of Humanities Australia and a sample of the outstanding research and writing being carried out by Australian humanities scholars. While the contributors to this issue come from a broad range of the disciplines represented in the Academy, including linguistics, philosophy, the arts, history and Asian studies, some common themes have emerged, especially in relation to questions of human rights, both in the past and today.' (Introduction)

'From early in his life Walter Scott had strong personal relations with India but his contacts with Australia came much later in his life and were fewer in number. However, even though India was not, like New South Wales, a penal colony, and the British had been in India for centuries whereas they had colonized Australia within Scott's own life time, Scott's personal relations with India and Australia are remarkably similar in kind, though not in quantity. They take place in a well-defined context of imperial patronage which Scott used with skill and success to support a number of young Scots including, in the case of Australia, convicts. On the other hand Scott's imaginative involvement with the two countries differs considerably: India figures quite prominently in his fiction, but in all his published writing there is only one passage on Australia and it deals with quite different issues from those concerning India. This article considers a number of individual cases of Scott's patronage in India and Australia and examines the similar ways in which he was able to further the careers of his protégés. It also compares his writing about India and Australia and suggests that, though the themes in his writing about each country are quite different, in each case the dominant theme is one that was taken up by Scott in his early years.' (Publication abstract)

'Crossing borders, breaking boundaries, going beyond the limits, entering new territories - today these take many forms and are major preoccupations of our world. Whether the borders are real or imagined, historical or contemporary, physical or psychological, they continue to fascinate us. The twenty-two chapters in this book explore the phenomenon of border crossing in some of its manifold forms. The chapters range across a wide spectrum of border crossings from the ages of chivalry, Dante, Shakespeare and Darwin, through to the era of comics, world music, transcultural writing, mash-up novels, and digital libraries. Studies of life writing, the performing arts, language, history, migration and literature all contribute to the exploration of the central theme and open up for readers some of the many ways in which border crossings inform and revitalise our lives.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.