AustLit

‘Few of us who work in departments of English at colleges or universities in the United States have the opportunity to teach New Zealand Maori or Australian Aboriginal literatures in a stand-alone course. Instead, we include these texts in broader literary designations: global, comparative, postcolonial, Indigenous. I teach an upper-division undergraduate course with the general title Special Topics in World Literature once a year, alternating offerings between global Indigenous literatures and literatures of Oceania. My students, predominantly Americans who attend a large university in the Midwest, usually enter these courses unfamiliar with the geographies, histories, demographics, and contemporary cultural and political situations of either Aotearoa / New Zealand or Australia, and unfamiliar with either body of literature. Only a few arrive with a prior interest in Indigenous peoples; most register to fulfill a diversity requirement or to meet a world literature prerequisite for a master's program in English secondary education.’ (Introduction)