Migrant Nation: Australian Culture, Society and Identity

Abstract

Who are the hidden faces that have contributed to the formation of an Australian identity? In what ways have individuals and groups been “excluded, neglected, or simply forgotten” in the dogged drive to narrate a cohesive story of identity‐making in Australia (p.2)? Such questions are addressed in this timely and comprehensive edited collection. As the volume's editor Paul Longley Arthur notes, the book sets out to uncover the “historical blind spots” that have been persistently concealed in the quest to uphold an “Australian settler dream” (pp.2‐3). Drawing upon a wide array of historical materials and approaches, this volume brings to the page histories of people who have been cast as peripheral to, or at odds with, commonplace Australian identity narratives. The uneasy colonial and gendered politics of the “official” archive, along with the complex interplays that exist between migration, memory, biography and belonging, are explored by an assortment of talented scholars who — when assessed as a whole — reveal the methodological richness of Australian historical inquiry and how it can interact with the conceptually robust disciplines of cultural and literary studies.