AustLit

'In the context of sustained interest in the mobilization of Muslimness beyond generic and hence immobile identity tropes, I consider how Australian mainstream television and film productions work to challenge and disrupt essentialist representations of Muslimness. Case studies feature two television series and a feature film, examined through the lens of transnational mobility theory and in the context of mediated anti-racism. The productions I discuss, ‘The Spice Journey’, ‘The Mosque Next Door’, and ‘Down Under’, all turn on intra- and inter-communal mobility of Muslim identities. They are part of a larger trend in popular media productions in current Australian film and on television, which reacts to Islamophobic sentiments in the country by drawing attention to embodied multiple subjectivities. Findings suggest that Australian entertainment media can add meaningful input to the diverse and complex negotiations of culture and identity among Muslims in Australia but may sidestep other forms of racism like anti-Indigeneity in the process.' (Publication abstract)

'It must have been difficult to collect academic essays on a novel received with such a wide range of reactions as Alexis Wright’s Carpentaria. This applies to many books, but Wright’s case is remarkable. It took a while for Australians and the global readership to warm up to a 500-plus-page story about the uneasy relations between Indigenous and white culture in Australia’s Gulf of Carpentaria in northern Queensland. With sales and reprints pointing to the literary exceptionalism of Wright’s second novel, one may be surprised that Australia’s major publishing houses rejected the book; only for the small literary house of Giramondo to publish a milestone of Australian Literature in 2006. In their own ways, the invited contributions to Indigenous Transnationalism explain why that is.' (Introduction)