Tseen Khoo

Locating Asian Australian Cultures is a timely and challenging interdisciplinary compilation that sets a contemporary benchmark for Asian Australian studies and its future directions. In the dynamic field of diasporic Asian studies, Asian Australian Studies is an emerging and contentious area. While cognisant of issues and critical developments in North America, Europe, and Asia, Asian Australian studies forges its own specific engagements with questions of identity, racialization, and nationalisms in a world of globalized cultures and movements. This book deliberately engages with international perspectives on Asian Australian studies that offer contingent connections and address crucial questions for fields that are rapidly 'de-nationalizing'. The volume focuses on Asian Australian cultural production and identity, presenting work that interrogates notions of belonging and citizenship, representational politics, and disciplinarity in the academy. The broad-ranging essays examine the politics of Asian Australian art and literature, as well as the area's significant interventions in disciplinary formations nationally and internationally. Other essays discuss the Vietnamese War memorial in Cabramatta, notions of the 'sacrificial Asian' in contemporary films, and Chinatown sites in Australia. This book will be essential reading not only for researchers in Asian Australian studies but also for those with an interest in Asian diaspora and Australian studies.

Locating Asian Australian Cultures

Kam Louie

Culture, Identity, Commodity is a pioneering work focused on diasporic Chinese literary production in English. It provides broad-ranging, critically-engaged textual analyses that address the dynamic area of diasporic Chinese literary studies from American, Australian, and Canadian perspectives. The innovative research in this collection comes from established and emerging scholars who draw on threads of transnational, postcolonial, globalization, and racialization theories to engage with a broad range of texts including novels, autobiographies, plays and Chinese cooking shows. In so doing, the authors examine issues of cultural and racial identity, the politics of Chinese-ness and the commodification of race/ethnicity, and negotiations of belonging in contemporary Western society. The breadth and depth of the volume's twelve chapters and critical introduction encapsulate vital components of this active research field. The book is a handy reference and critical work for researchers and students and others interested in diasporic Chinese literatures in English, contextualizing national conditions and interrogating the thematics of diasporic and transnational experiences. The volume will be of interest to those researching in diasporic Asian studies, Chinese and English literatures, Australian, Canadian or American literary studies, as well as lay readers interested in intercultural creative and cultural issues.

Tseen Khoo

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