AustLit logo

AustLit

Issue Details: First known date: 2009... 2009 The Transnational Turn in Australian Literary Studies
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.

AbstractHistoryArchive Description

A significant number of critical and analytical articles by leading scholars in Australian literary studies have recently drawn attention to the transnational dimensions of the discipline. Amongst these calls for the internationalising of Australian literary studies, however, multicultural literature appears to have been given short shrift. This article traces the mainstream enthusiasm for transnational research, notes the work of critics who have identified aspects of multicultural literature that have been overlooked in Australia, and then provides examples of two further areas of transnational literary production that have been critically neglected. The journal Kalimat which published in Arabic and English and the online Spanish-language newsletter Hontanar are discussed as illustrative of this transnational literature, as are works by Yahia al-Samawi, Juan Garrido-Salgado and Mario Licón Cabrera, overseas-born poets now residing in and writing from Australia.

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon JASAL Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature; Australian Literature in a Global World Special Issue Antonio Jose Simoes Da Silva (editor), Wenche Ommundsen (editor), 2009 Z1605155 2009 periodical issue This Special Issue of JASAL is based on the 2008 ASAL conference 'Australian Literature in a Global World' held at the University of Wollongong. The conference aimed to 'explore the effects, on the national literature, of different aspects of globalisation: transnational flows of people, ideas and cultural forms; globalisation in the publishing and education industries; the global marketplace for cultural production'. (Editor's introduction.) 2009

Works about this Work

‘Waltzing St. Kilda’ : Writing in Polish in Australia Mary Besemeres , Katarzyna Kwapisz Williams , 2021 single work criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 21 no. 1 2021;

'This article is an overview of literature in Polish produced in Australia. As Michael Jacklin has argued (2009), LOTE (Languages Other Than English) writing in Australia ‘has yet to be recognised’. Multilingual writing constitutes a hidden history within Australian literary studies. Polish-language writing is one such hidden history. The two largest waves of emigration from Poland to Australia took place in the decade after the Second World War (ca. 1947-1956), and in the 1980s and 1990s, in the wake of the martial law imposed by General Jaruzelski in 1981 to suppress the opposition movement, Solidarity (Kujawa 142). Our primary focus in this article is the literature in Polish created by authors who came to Australia as part of these two waves. We also discuss the work of Liliana Rydzyńska, who arrived in Australia in 1969, i.e. between the two waves. We then offer a brief survey of more recent Australian writing in Polish, from 2000 till the present. We close with reference to work produced in English by Australian authors of Polish-speaking heritage. Our research on Polish-language writing in Australia traces an evolution from post-WWII writing, on the one hand dominated by traumatic memories of war and experiences of alienation, on the other characterized by exuberant satirical impulses, to post-Solidarity-era writing, largely reflective of a closer engagement with Australian landscapes and culture, and often, a sense of cosmopolitan and transnational identity.' (Publication abstract)

Towards a Multilingual National Literature : The Tung Wah Times and the Origins of Chinese Australian Writing Zhong Huang , 2015 single work criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 15 no. 3 2015;
'A large and important body of Australian writing has until now remained excluded from histories and anthologies: literature in languages other than English. A new research project entitled 'New transnationalisms: Australia's multilingual literary heritage' traces the history of Australian writing in Chinese Vietnamese, Arabic and Spanish. The case study in this article presents a survey of the earliest Chinese language literary publications in the Sydney newspaper the Tung Wah Times (1898-1936): historical contexts, themes and genres, cultural function within the Chinese Australian community.' (Publication abstract)
Transnational (Il)literacies : Reading the "New Chinese Literature in Australia" in China Wenche Ommundsen , 2011 single work criticism
— Appears in: Antipodes , June vol. 25 no. 1 2011; (p. 83-89)
'Ommundsen talks about the transnational in Australian literary studies which was the lively critical debate at the time when her colleagues Alison Broinowski, Paul Sharrad and she in 2008 embarked on the ARC-supported project "Globalizing Australian literature: Asian Australian writing, Asian perspectives on Australian literature." As organizers of the 2008 conference of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature conference, the Wollongong team decided to focus on this articulation between the transnational/global and the national in Australian literary studies, hoping that the papers would shed further light on these debates, at the same time enriching the theoretical arguments underpinning their own project.' (Publisher's abstract)
Transnational (Il)literacies : Reading the "New Chinese Literature in Australia" in China Wenche Ommundsen , 2011 single work criticism
— Appears in: Antipodes , June vol. 25 no. 1 2011; (p. 83-89)
'Ommundsen talks about the transnational in Australian literary studies which was the lively critical debate at the time when her colleagues Alison Broinowski, Paul Sharrad and she in 2008 embarked on the ARC-supported project "Globalizing Australian literature: Asian Australian writing, Asian perspectives on Australian literature." As organizers of the 2008 conference of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature conference, the Wollongong team decided to focus on this articulation between the transnational/global and the national in Australian literary studies, hoping that the papers would shed further light on these debates, at the same time enriching the theoretical arguments underpinning their own project.' (Publisher's abstract)
Towards a Multilingual National Literature : The Tung Wah Times and the Origins of Chinese Australian Writing Zhong Huang , 2015 single work criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 15 no. 3 2015;
'A large and important body of Australian writing has until now remained excluded from histories and anthologies: literature in languages other than English. A new research project entitled 'New transnationalisms: Australia's multilingual literary heritage' traces the history of Australian writing in Chinese Vietnamese, Arabic and Spanish. The case study in this article presents a survey of the earliest Chinese language literary publications in the Sydney newspaper the Tung Wah Times (1898-1936): historical contexts, themes and genres, cultural function within the Chinese Australian community.' (Publication abstract)
‘Waltzing St. Kilda’ : Writing in Polish in Australia Mary Besemeres , Katarzyna Kwapisz Williams , 2021 single work criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 21 no. 1 2021;

'This article is an overview of literature in Polish produced in Australia. As Michael Jacklin has argued (2009), LOTE (Languages Other Than English) writing in Australia ‘has yet to be recognised’. Multilingual writing constitutes a hidden history within Australian literary studies. Polish-language writing is one such hidden history. The two largest waves of emigration from Poland to Australia took place in the decade after the Second World War (ca. 1947-1956), and in the 1980s and 1990s, in the wake of the martial law imposed by General Jaruzelski in 1981 to suppress the opposition movement, Solidarity (Kujawa 142). Our primary focus in this article is the literature in Polish created by authors who came to Australia as part of these two waves. We also discuss the work of Liliana Rydzyńska, who arrived in Australia in 1969, i.e. between the two waves. We then offer a brief survey of more recent Australian writing in Polish, from 2000 till the present. We close with reference to work produced in English by Australian authors of Polish-speaking heritage. Our research on Polish-language writing in Australia traces an evolution from post-WWII writing, on the one hand dominated by traumatic memories of war and experiences of alienation, on the other characterized by exuberant satirical impulses, to post-Solidarity-era writing, largely reflective of a closer engagement with Australian landscapes and culture, and often, a sense of cosmopolitan and transnational identity.' (Publication abstract)

Last amended 9 Feb 2016 07:18:56
http://nla.gov.au/nla.arc-63067-20090910-1633-www.nla.gov.au/openpublish/index.php/jasal/article/view/1421/1755.html The Transnational Turn in Australian Literary Studiessmall AustLit logo JASAL
X