The Transnational Turn in Australian Literary Studies

Abstract

A significant number of critical and analytical articles by leading scholars in Australian literary studies have recently drawn attention to the transnational dimensions of the discipline. Amongst these calls for the internationalising of Australian literary studies, however, multicultural literature appears to have been given short shrift. This article traces the mainstream enthusiasm for transnational research, notes the work of critics who have identified aspects of multicultural literature that have been overlooked in Australia, and then provides examples of two further areas of transnational literary production that have been critically neglected. The journal Kalimat which published in Arabic and English and the online Spanish-language newsletter Hontanar are discussed as illustrative of this transnational literature, as are works by Yahia al-Samawi, Juan Garrido-Salgado and Mario Licón Cabrera, overseas-born poets now residing in and writing from Australia.