Recovery, Collaboration and Oceanic Flows

Abstract

Welcome to the final issue of the Journal of Australian Studies for 2022. We are pleased to finish the year with a wide-ranging, robust issue that includes a special section focusing on China–Australia relations—which remains a dynamic and transforming terrain in Australian studies—as well as three general contributions that collectively demonstrate the diversity and strength of contemporary research in and beyond the field. We hope that after the last challenging years of lockdowns for so many, 2022 has seen new horizons opening, and projects, writings and thoughts gaining momentum once more. From our perspective, the journal has been looking fresh after a cover makeover by designer Anna Zagala, beginning with the Tsiolkas special issue earlier this year: the energy that radiates from these covers is definitely matched by the scholarship within them. This past year has also brought with it the possibilities that arise from a new government in Australia, which we also hope will renew support for, and investment in, the universities that sustain so much of what Australian studies scholars strive to do. Australian studies is all about transdisciplinarity and multicultures, and this spirit of collaboration across culture and practice is exemplified by this issue’s special themed section, the result of several years of work by the guest editors, Mitchell Rolls and Xu Daozhi. The articles collected in this section testify to the close ties between scholars from both countries, and they showcase the range of research underway in this area right now. Our general essays extend on a number of themes that emerge in the special section, with a focus from Anne Pender on the growth of interest in Australian theatre in China, through the initiatives of the Whitlam government during the 1970s. Pender traces the strong trajectory of Australian theatre in China that flourished in this decade, exploring the ongoing cross-cultural legacy of this formative period in Australia’s international theatrical life. The more recent phenomenon of hashtag awareness-raising and digital activism forms the focus of Tania Leimbach and Jane Palmer’s article on the 2019–2020 “Black Summer” bushfires as a particularly revealing case study that demonstrates the entanglement of social media performance with action on climate crisis. The authors argue that these catastrophic bushfires mobilised a social media community and, through a “transversal event”, heightened a multispecies awareness that generatively highlighted the deep connections between the human and non-human that demand recognition in the face of environmental disaster.