123044 PS Proseminar Literature / Cultural Studies (2012S)

Tales of frontier settlement, possession and dispossession have deeply inscribed themselves in Australia’s story-telling nation. Violent encounters between the settler/invader community and Indigenous Australians have partly been misremembered and silenced. To what extent did the perpetrators participate in the continual reshaping of troubled memory? How have the oppressed become the dispossessed and excluded of history? These questions will form the focus of this introductory seminar as we will set out to examine the difficult relationship between the settler/invader and the Indigenous Australian.