Someone Else's Zoo: Asian Australian Women's Writing

A discussion of Simone Lazaroo's The World Waiting to Be Made in the context of reception of contemporary writing by Asian Australians

(Not) being at home: Hsu Ming Teo's Behind the Moon (2005) and Michelle de Kretser's Questions of Travel (2012)

This article examines some interventions of Asian Australian writing into the debate over multiculturalism, and the shift from negative stereotyping of Asian migrants, to reification of racial divisions and propagation of a masked racism, to the creation of new alignments and the revival of pre-existing affiliations by migrant and second generation subjects. It compares the practices of not-at-homeness by Asian migrants and their descendants and white Australians in Hsu Ming Teo’s Behind the Moon with those of a Sri Lankan refugee and a white Australian traveller in Michelle de Kretser’s Questions of Travel. The changing concepts of belonging in the novels show a realignment of core and periphery relations within the nation state under the pressures of multiculturalism and globalization: where home is and how it is configured are questions as important for white Australians whose sense of territory is challenged as they are for Asian migrants who seek to establish a new belonging

Dragon tails: Re- interpreting Chinese Australian History

In 1984, NOTED historian Jennifer Cushman challenged researchers to move beyond the prevalent one-dimensional approach to understanding the Chinese presence in Australia, which primarily examined the nation’s colonialist attitudes towards the Chinese.1 Similarly, writing about Chinese families and exclusion in the United States, Adam McKeown argued in 1999 that the field needs ‘to interrogate more carefully the interactions of the Chinese with [the racist exclusion laws]’, and ‘develop a picture of migration that extends beyond American political and moral boundaries’.2 Ann Curthoys also emphasised this need for a broader vision of migratory flows, and ended her 2002 Australian Historical Studies essay with this pressing question: ‘Can historians, in their search for transnational histories and international audiences, still speak strongly and engagingly to their local national audience?’ ARC Linkage project LP066755

Dragon Tails: Re-interpreting Chinese Australian History

In 1984, NOTED historian Jennifer Cushman challenged researchers to move beyond the prevalent one-dimensional approach to understanding the Chinese presence in Australia, which primarily examined the nation’s colonialist attitudes towards the Chinese.1 Similarly, writing about Chinese families and exclusion in the United States, Adam McKeown argued in 1999 that the field needs ‘to interrogate more carefully the interactions of the Chinese with [the racist exclusion laws]’, and ‘develop a picture of migration that extends beyond American political and moral boundaries’.2 Ann Curthoys also emphasised this need for a broader vision of migratory flows, and ended her 2002 Australian Historical Studies essay with this pressing question: ‘Can historians, in their search for transnational histories and international audiences, still speak strongly and engagingly to their local national audience?’ ARC Linkage project LP066755

Working with/against imposter syndrome : research educators’ reflections

Researcher developers are agents who are often involved in the spread of ‘imposter syndrome’ discourse. However, over time Burford, Fyffe and Khoo became more curious about what ‘imposter syndrome’ means and does in their practice. This chapter is an experiment in pedagogical reflection. The authors identify four key strategies through which they address imposter syndrome: (1) contributing to the creation of conditions for belonging for all researchers, (2) setting the ‘hardness’ of becoming a researcher in context, (3) offering opportunities for researchers to trial performances of their researcher selves and (4) creating collective spaces to talk about ‘imposter syndrome’. Ultimately, their goal in writing the chapter is to offer a nuanced discussion that provides a platform for other research developers to think alongside