This second number of the Journal of the European Association for Studies on Australia (JEASA) has taken longer than expected to appear, largely on account of the time taken to set up smoothly-functioning processes in the case of a new journal. From now on issues will appear more regularly, with the next, guest-edited by Lars Jensen and Anne Brewster, following relatively hard on the heels of this one.

The mix of contributions in the present volume includes two absorbing interviews with Brian Castro and Margo Lanagan, work on the complexities that ensue when the anthropological term “culture” enters discourses of rights and resistance in settler nations, on jockeying between England and France in early Australian history, on the reception and marketing of First Peoples literature from Australia and New Zealand in Germany and the Netherlands, analysis of Kim Scott’s Benang from a less-usual linguistics perspective, and of Alexis Wright’s Carpentaria alongside the Northern Territory Federal intervention, a reading of fiction by Drusilla Modjeska and Kate Llewellyn in terms of the cultural history of discourses of gardens and gardening, and a survey of Vietnam protest novels by Australian women writers. The sole review which closes the issue will, one hopes, be a minimum easily superseded in future numbers.

Copyright © David Callahan 2011. This text may be archived and redistributed both in electronic form and in hard copy, provided that the author and journal are properly cited and no fee is charged.