AustLit

'Many readers of this volume will have their own memories of the Myall Creek Memorial and the massacre it commemorates. Mine is of seeing the Governor of New South Wales, Marie Bashir’s official low-slung black car inch its way through the dry grass to the Myall Creek Memorial Hall (built to commemorate those killed in the so-called ‘First World War’, a war which was neither Australia’s first nor the first time that people had travelled the world enacting wars). I thought then about how fitting it was that a Governor, the figure that was historically so powerful in what unfolded then, was present. The hall is the starting point for the commemorative walk that follows but also where refreshments are served afterwards and where school children, the ancestors of perpetrators and victims, locals and visitors of all orders, will share food.' (Introduction)

'My aural introduction was Peter Allen’s song, ‘Tenterfield Saddler’. And most of you will know that ‘At Henry Parkes Motel’, Meaghan’s famous essay on mobility, comfort, desire and banality, is situated in Tenterfield where Meaghan’s early childhood took place.' (Introduction)

'It had to be ‘Meaghan’. The title of this edition of Cultural Studies Review is our salute to the work of Meaghan Morris and her lasting influence. That legacy is directly addressed in the collection of written works that emerged from the Meaghan Morris Festival held in 2016 but it is also echoed in the essays and reviews that are gathered within, that in their very mix speak to the particular tradition of cultural studies, Australian and otherwise, that Meaghan Morris helped so much to create.'  (Introduction)

'In this issue of Cultural Studies Review, Sean Sturm considers Ruth Barcan’s book, Academic Life and Labour in the New University: Hope and Other Choices, in which she describes the contemporary university as a ‘a palimpsest: a scholarly community, a bureaucracy and a transnational corporation’. It would seem that academic journals might be similarly palimpsestic. Publications in refereed journals offer an opportunity to share original scholarly research, to review and debate research published elsewhere, and (in this journal at least) occasions for intellectual creativity and exploration. At the same time, articles in refereed journals are subject to relentless systems of quantification which both measure individual productivity and are fed into metrics of aggregation which, in turn, are harvested to produce rankings which are then key marketing messages for the promotion of particular corporate entities. And, more often than not, the journals we read and publish in are themselves products of transnational corporations. Although not this journal.' (Introduction)

'Inspired by the conference theme of ‘Looking Back to Look Forward’ this paper examines the multiple ways in which the Prussian explorer of northern Australia, Ludwig Leichhardt, provides possible new directions for rethinking contemporary concepts such as transnationalism and nationalism. While the paper in its genealogical fashion assumes that the past is not simply available to us to be looked upon but rather is made to appear to us through various, material and ideological productions; it is still inspired by the possibility that re-imagining the past in the present can produce alternative and better futures. ' (Author's abstract)

In this essay, the authors review 'a selection of the more influential writings about Leichhardt to demonstrate both the enduring

interest in his life and the vastly different perspectives held in the texts.' (537)

'This paper is concerned with a very violent incident that was carried out by the perpetrators of the Myall Creek Massacre after that massacre in 1838 and when the party was still on their killing spree. I apologise for the particular distress writing about such things may cause for the Wirrayaraay peoples, for other Indigenous peoples and for women in particular, but also for others who may have experienced direct violence. It is very understandable that you would not want to read again the detail of such events. I do not see my decision to write about such things as at all straightforward and I remain anxious about my ability to tread a path between ideas of testimony, wanting to write it differently and wanting to expand what writing can do for a hopeful postcolonialism.'  (Introduction)