Ranging over various aesthetic forms (literature, film, music) in the period since 1960, this volume brings an antipodean perspective into conversation with the art and culture of the Northern Hemisphere, to reformulate postmodernism as a properly global phenomenon.

The Englishness of English literature had been expressed in Chaucer, Shakespeare, Wordsworth and Sir Walter Scott, those writers whose works seemed best to embody the spirit of the place or the spirit of its folk. In what writers or works would the Australianness of Australian literature be discovered? (David Carter 1997)--------This first literary Reader on Australian studies from India not only investigates this central question but explores many other facets of Australian literature and especially Australian cross-cultural relationships with India and Asia. Taking a broad view of what Australian literature is, this Reader explores the dimensions of Australian literature (national, Aboriginal, multicultural, ecocritical, postcolonial, modernist, comparative, feminist, and popular) in its varied genres of drama, poetry, autobiography, explorers' journals, short stories, literature of war, travel writing, Anglo-Indian fiction, diasporic writing, mainstream novel, nature writing, children's literature, romance, science fiction, gothic literature, horror, crime fiction, queer writing, and humour. Each paper in this Reader presents different ways of "reading down under" and "performing Australianness." Juxtaposing the varied critical perspectives of nearly 60 critics this Reader hopes to create a constructive dialogue in the fight against the dominance of an Anglo-American academic approach.

"Mark Wilson presents a highly original and broad-ranging investigation of the way we get to grips with the world conceptually, and the way that philosophical problems commonly arise from this. He combines traditional philosophical concerns about human conceptual thinking with illuminating data derived from a large variety of fields including physics and applied mathematics, cognitive psychology, and linguistics. Wandering Significance offers abundant new insights and perspectives for philosophers of language, mind, and science, and will also reward the interest of psychologists, linguists, and anyone curious about the mysterious ways in which useful language obtains its practical applicability."--Publisher's description.

The essays gathered here alternately adjust the focal length of the critical lens brought to bear upon texts and contexts in the area of Indian writing in English. They bring into view both intense engagements with major voices in this literary scene and the wider socio-historical perspectives in which they have thrived. Three clearly defined sections on the genres of poetry, prose, and drama are augmented by three incisive interviews with the diasporic Indian English poet Bashabi Fraser, the renowned Indian English fiction writer Kunal Basu, and the premier Indian English playwright Mahesh Dattani. The volume will appeal to students and teachers of postcolonial and comparative literatures. It raises crucial and timely questions about the state of culture in India and the world, the crisis of intolerance, and the loss of memory and diversity. It hones a post-millennial perspective on literature written in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

Australia has been seen as a land of both punishment and refuge. Australian literature has explored these controlling alternatives, and vividly rendered the landscape on which they transpire. Twentieth-century writers left Australia to see the world; now Australia’s distance no longer provides sanctuary. But today the global perspective has arrived with a vengeance. In Contemporary Australian Literature: A World Not Yet Dead, Nicholas Birns tells the story of how novelists, poets and critics, from Patrick White to Hannah Kent, from Alexis Wright to Christos Tsiolkas, responded to this condition. With rancour, concern and idealism, modern Australian literature conveys a tragic sense of the past yet an abiding vision of the way forward. Birns paints a vivid picture of a rich Australian literary voice – one not lost to the churning of global markets, but in fact given new life by it. Contrary to the despairing of the critics, Australian literary identity continues to flourish. And as Birns finds, it is not one thing, but many. "In this remarkable, bold and fearless book, Nicholas Birns contests how literary cultures are read, how they are constituted and what they stand for … In examining the nature of the barriers between public and private utterance, and looking outside the absurdity of the rules of genre, Birns has produced a redemptive analysis that leaves hope for revivifying a world not yet dead." - John Kinsella