Australian Studies Journal Zeitschrift für Australienstudien / Emerging Research in Australian Studies

What exactly are or counts as Australian studies? Usually, the answer will read something like research related to the continent of Australia; however, beyond this basic assumption, not much else is certain. It would be presumptuous to try and compress the manifoldness, the intricacies, and the dynamics of Australian studies into a few sentences. Instead of providing an unwieldy and unrewarding definition in the space of this editorial, we have opted for appending five textual examples of what current investigations in Australian studies look like. Jointly considered, the articles in this special issue display astonishing synergies and coherences. They highlight the disruptive forces of violence and racism, the importance of community and relationships, the dynamics of identities and belonging, as well various connections between social, cultural, and political spheres. In sum, then, the five authors featured in this special issue attest to the productivity and versatility of Australian studies, and to its refusal to be pressed into neat categories. This is precisely our hope for the future: That the discipline (if it can be called that) remains uncontainable and creative beyond bounds. This work can be downloaded as open-access at the ASJ ZfA website: asj.australienstudien.org