JASAL Special Edition – Emily Potter & Brigid Magner

Faculty member Dr Emily Potter, working with collaborator Dr Brigid Magner (RMIT), has co-edited a special edition of the literary journal JASAL (the Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature). The special issue, titled “Australian Literature and Place-Making” (JASAL 1:18), features a collection of works exploring literature’s participation in the production, or making, of place.

As Emily and Brigid write in their guest editorial, “This special issue showcases the diverse ways in which Australian literature and place-making are brought together in contemporary literary scholarship. The seven essays, as well as the creative work by artist and scholar Ross Gibson, illuminate place as intimately constituted by narrative practice, and reflexively, show how geographies and environments inform literary forms, modes and, to use Jennifer Hamilton’s productive term, ‘tones’.”

Included in the edition is Emily and Brigid’s essay “Murray-Mallee Imaginaries: Towards a literary history of a region“, part of their ongoing “Reading/Writing the Mallee” project; the creative piece “Bluster Town”, an animated poem by Professor Ross Gibson (University of Canberra); and essays by Jennifer Hamilton (University of New England), David Harris (Deakin University), Toby Davidson and Donna Houston (Macquarie University), Tony Hughes-d’Aeth (University of Western Australia), Catherine Noske (University of Western Australia), and Meg Mundell (Deakin). The edition also includes an image by Vanessa Berry, author of Mirror Sydney (Giramondo, 2018).

The special issue of JASAL is dedicated to the memory of Peter Pierce, eminent and influential critic of Australian Studies.