1st Edition
Travel Writing from Black Australia Utopia, Melancholia, and Aboriginality
Introduction 1. Journeys to Another Country: Utopia, Melancholia, and Aboriginality in Travel Writing 2. Exotic Travellers: Aboriginality in Robyn Davidson’s Tracks (1980) and Bruce Chatwin’s The Songlines (1987) 3. Free Spirits: Aboriginality and Australian New Age Travel Books 4. "Britz Down Under": Race and Ordinary Australia 5. Journeys to Country: Sally Morgan and Ruby Langford Ginibi "Return Home" 6. Dark Places: The Ghosts of Terra Nullius Conclusion
Biography
Robert Clarke teaches English studies in the School of Humanities, University of Tasmania, Australia. His research focuses on contemporary Australian fiction and travel writing. He is editor of Celebrity Colonialism: Fame, Power and Representation in Colonial and Postcolonial Cultures (2009) and The Cambridge Companion to Postcolonial Travel Writing (forthcoming).
"This is an indispensable book to contemporary travel writing featuring Australia. Robert Clarke makes the case that Aboriginality is central to writing about travel and is indeed central to Australian identity past and future." – Simon Ryan, Australian Catholic University, Australia
"Travel writers have long used Aboriginal Australia as a test case in how to make sense of otherness: their responses may be predictable, but Robert Clarke’s illuminating investigation of their work is full of surprises." – Richard White, University of Sydney, Australia
