[csaa-forum] New issue of Australian Humanities Review out now!

[Russell Smith]

Monique Rooney and I take great pleasure in announcing that Issue 58 of Australian Humanities Review is now online here: http://www.australianhumanitiesreview.org<http://www.australianhumanitiesreview.org/>.

This issue features a special treat: we publish a provocative short talk given by Prof Simon During at the MLA Convention in Chicago 2014 on 'Precariousness, Literature and the Humanities Today<http://www.australianhumanitiesreview.org/archive/Issue-May-2015/during.html>'. During suggests the humanities should face up to the challenge of 'attuning' themselves to the conditions of precariousness increasingly characteristic of knowledge work under the neoliberal restructuring of higher education institutions and management practices. We invited eight academics from different parts of the world and at different stages of their careers to respond to During's essay: the outcome is a compelling spectrum of insights into the ongoing radical transformations of both academic careers and intellectual work more broadly, suggesting that an adherence to the traditional Idea of the University as a shelter for academic freedom and curiosity-driven inquiry-even in terms of a founding myth or sustaining illusion-is increasingly irrelevant if not actually dangerous for writing and thinking in the twenty-first century.

In our essays section, Kay Anderson and Colin Perrin<http://www.australianhumanitiesreview.org/archive/Issue-May-2015/anderson&perrin.html> take on New Materialism's reluctance to subject its principal intellectual adversaries-religious and scientific accounts of human exceptionalism-to truly materialist analysis; Ken Gelder<http://www.australianhumanitiesreview.org/archive/Issue-May-2015/gelder.html> pays tribute to the role of the nomadology of Stephen Muecke, Krim Bentarrak and Paddy Roe's landmark publication Reading the Country (1985) in prompting a reconsideration of the 'homeliness' of indigenous dwelling; and Jini Kim Watson<http://www.australianhumanitiesreview.org/archive/Issue-May-2015/watson.html> draws on the fictional resources of Pacific literature to reflect on the shifting relations of colonialism, neo-colonialism, sovereignty and dependency in Australia's relations with its Pacific neighbours.

Finally, I wish to note that this will be my last issue as co-editor of AHR. I'm enormously proud of what Monique and I have achieved together: this is our 15th issue together since 2008; we've published over 150 essays and book reviews; we achieved an 'A' ranking in the now-defunct ERA journal rankings (despite publishing several stringent criticisms of the ranking process itself!) and we have become affiliated with the truly inspiring publishing initiatives at the Open Humanities Press. I wish to thank our contributors, our readers, and especially the anonymous academic referees who have given their time and expertise to ensuring the work published in AHR is of the highest standard.

I am confident that, under Monique's capable leadership, AHR will continue to play an innovative and influential role in humanities research and scholarship.

Sincerely

Russell Smith
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