This collection of ten short articles indicates the range and strength of Australian Studies in the United States. There are often close connections with New Zealand Studies, and these are indicated here, but the focus in this collection is on Australian Studies. In addition, scholars in the United States and Canada work together, especially in the Australian and New Zealand Studies Association of North America; again, while these connections are mentioned, the full range of Canadian scholarship on Australian Studies deserves a section of its own. Crossings hopes to provide such a section in the future.
The articles here describe, fairly briefly, a range of activities, from the two largest centers of Australian Studies (at the University of Texas at Austin and Georgetown University) to the visiting Professorship at Harvard University, and the ongoing work at Rollins College and the University of Dayton, Ohio. The two main organisations, the American Association of Australian Literary Studies, and the Australian and New Zealand Studies Association of North America, are also here, along with a description of the important journal, Antipodes. Richard Teare also kindly provided an account of Australian Studies at Penn State, now discontinued but still recognised as a major influence on the development of Australian Studies in the US.
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While Australian Studies is still a very minor field in the vast world of American scholarship in the humanities and social sciences, so much so that graduate students are still advised not to focus on it if they want an academic career in the US, what becomes clear from the accounts produced here is that it is growing and increasingly diverse. Recent theoretical developments in the humanities and social sciences, which focus on the postcolonial, diasporic histories, transnational studies, whiteness studies, indigenous histories, the new imperial history, and the British World, and which are important in the North American context, all point to a future in which Australian Studies will necessarily feature under a variety of headings.
I wish to thank here all the contributors to this survey of Australian Studies in the US: John Higley, Richard Teare, Tim Rowse, Hoyt Edge, John Docker, Jason Pierce, John Scheckter, and Nicholas Birns. All are busy, and all responded promptly and without fuss to my call for contributions. I've included contact details at the end of each article, should readers want to make contact with the centres and organisations described here.
Ann Curthoys
Australian National University
Canberra, ACT
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