My first true contact with serious academic discussion on Australian culture took place in Lecce, Italy, 24-29 September 2001: one year after the memorable 2000 Summer Olympics held in Sydney and a genuine global rebirth of interest in the Antipodes and their uniqueness. Not a very original awakening on my part, I know, but why should I refrain from admitting the truth even though it sounds so very trivial? The conference was organized by the late Professor Bernard Hickey under the auspices of European Association for the Study on Australia. (Bernard Hickey made it his life task to bring Australian writing to Europe. On his way back to Australia after taking a degree in speech and drama at Trinity College Dublin, he stopped to help out a friend who urgently needed a place filled in his language school in Rome - and stayed. Bernard Hickey tirelessly used his post at Ca Foscari in Venice and later as professor at the University of Lecce to promote Australian writing.) I still remember the opening ceremony by the Australian Ambassador from Rome whose first words referred to his wearing a suit and tie, the formal obligation he had to succumb to and on which he commented: "Excuse my being so ridiculously overdressed." I soon realized that it was a sincere, spontaneous admission, free of a tiniest hint of hypocrisy or cheap joke, of how much the Australians love informality, feeling at ease, unceremonial friendship. This immediately fascinated me and generated a question: what are they really like? Is there anything distinctly Australian? What is Australian identity? At that EASA conference organized at Lecce University I met contemporary Australian novelists, poets, scholars and a group of Aborigines who all came to represent their country and its old/ new culture. There was also a bulk of research-fans from the whole world who gathered to enjoy the exchange of views on the matters Australian: Britons, Swedes, Americans, Frenchmen, Spaniards, Germans, Danes, Hungarians. Croatians. Slovenes, and two Poles.

Spis treści:

Foreword
Andrew TAYLOR
History, Fiction and National Identity

Ryszard W. WOLNY
Hybrid Identities in Contemporary Australian Novel as Exemplified by Melina Marchetta's Looking for Alibrandi

Marzena SOKOŁOWSKA-PARYŻ
Re-Writing Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness: Intertextual Dimensions of David Malouis Fictive History in The Conversations at Curlow Creek

Marek PAM
The Correlates of Time, Space and Character in the Narrative Construction of Tentative Australian Identities in David Malouis Novel The Great World

Dominika BUCHOWSKA
The Challenge of the Antipodeans: Anti-Abstraction in Australian Art

Katarzyna MOLEK-KOZAKOWSKA
Discursive Strategies of Positive Self-Presentation in The Sydney Morning Herald in the Context of Social Identity Theory

Agata MAĆKÓW
The Ashes: How Cricket Strengthened Australian Identity

Małgorzata JANC
From "Currency Children" towards "Australian Way of Life". Australia in Search of National Identity

Renata MIZERA
The Quest for Australian Identity in Painting

Lukasz GRABOWSKI
The Aussies and Their Brass: Australia from the Socio-economic Perspective

Maciej WRÓBEL
The Importance of Australian Cinema

Tomasz GADZINA
In Search of National Identity: Changes in Contemporary Australian Cultures

Appendix. Poems by Andrew Taylor