The editors of the Australian Studies Journal are inviting contributions to a Special Issue on Black Australian author Mudrooroo (1938–2019), to be published October 2024. It will be guest-edited by Gerhard Fischer, UNSW Sydney.

Nearly 30 years after Mudrooroo's publicly rejected claim to Indigenous ancestry, and five years after the author's death in Brisbane (20 January 2019) following a decade of exile in India and Nepal, the proposed Special Issue will provide a first opportunity to re-appraise the complete oeuvre of one of Australia's most prolific, innovative and internationally renowned writers.

Topics to be addressed in the Special Issue may include an evaluation of his work within the corpus of Australian and, specifically, Aboriginal literature; his contributions to literary and postcolonial theory; the international reception of his work; analyses of the voluminous Nachlass (literary estate), notably the comprehensive diaries included in the collection at the National Library of Australia; interpretations of the most recent works published after the author's return to Australia. Mudrooroo's claim to Aboriginal 'belonging' on the basis of his life experiences and his work may be of secondary importance to a consideration of the impact of his writing, yet it does constitute the decisive caesura in his life-long odyssey. New evidence or arguments to advance the discussion on this topic are welcome.

See the full Call-of-Papers here: https://australienstudien.org/2022/08/24/cfp-asj-mudrooroo/

Deadline for abstracts: 16 Dec. 2022