August 2007

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• Cultural Studies, Literary Studies, Postcolonial Studies

  Antipodean Myths Transformed

  25.08.07 | Permalink | Comments Off on Antipodean Myths Transformed

  Australia and the South Pacific held a special status in the eighteenth century: this was the farthest region from Europe and the last part of the earth remaining for Europeans to explore and chart. In the context of European nations’ own histories of discovering and exploring the world beyond Europe’s borders, this region is unique in the sense that no other part of the earth had such a substantial and well-documented body of European thought devoted to it over such a long period of time prior to its physical discovery. The ‘antipodes’ existed in the European imagination for approximately two thousand years before Europeans set foot on antipodean lands. Myths inspired explorers to go searching for the genuine antipodes, and voyages were often undertaken with the specific aim of finding the uncharted places that punctuated otherwise formless maps.

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Paul Arthur is Vice-Chancellor’s Professorial Research Fellow and Chair in Digital Humanities and Social Sciences, at Edith Cowan University, Western Australia. He speaks and publishes widely on major challenges and changes facing 21st-century society, from the global impacts of technology on culture and identity to migration and human rights. His latest book is Border Crossings: Essays in Identity and Belonging (ed. 2019, with Leena Kurvet-Käosaar). Since 2017 he has been Director of the Edith Cowan Centre for Global Issues. Click here for full Profile

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