Reading Walkabout

Research Seminar: Reading Walkabout

Associate Professor Anna Johnston

Friday 9 September

Room 601, Michie Building (#9)

3pm - 4pm

Walkabout (1934-74) was an extremely popular magazine that sought to introduce armchair readers to remote Australian regions and the Asia-Pacific, and to encourage them, through travel, to develop a sense of belonging and place. Lavishly illustrated with black and white photographs, and featuring some of the most interesting mid-century writers across a variety of fields, Walkabout addressed a diverse range of topics: geology; flora and fauna; the outback and its people; the Pacific region; and a distinctively Australian modernity. The magazine also played a central role in mid-century Australian cultural life, publishing and featuring key writers and inculcating a community of engaged and informed general readers. This paper focusses on the literary culture of Walkabout within the broader context of the magazine.

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Join us for a drink, after the seminar, at St Lucy’s

Bio:
Anna Johnston is an ARC Future Fellow in the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, and Associate Professor in English Literature in the School of Communication and Arts. A graduate of the University of Queensland, Anna has worked at the University of Tasmania, where she was Director of the Centre for Colonialism and Its Aftermath (2013-16) and an ARC Queen Elizabeth II Research Fellow (2007-14). In 2014-15, Anna was Visiting Professor of Australian Studies at the University of Tokyo. She has published widely in the field of colonial and postcolonial studies, focussing on literary and cultural history: her most recent monograph is The Paper War: Morality, Print Culture, and Power in Colonial New South Wales (UWA Press 2011). She has particular interests in settler colonialism, travel writing, and missionary writing and empire.