This volume of essays assembles perspectives on Australian

and Canadian fiction and culture from recognised scholars in

the fields. Resolutely interdisciplinary in focus, it engages

with these two nations through an examination of the discourses of

`passage' that reflect their status as postcolonial cultures. Through a

variety of approaches - epistemological, historicist, biofictional,

socio-semiological or poetic - grounded in postcolonial and gender

theory, the contributions deal in concerns ranging from the sexual

politics of New World contact to that of film, from celebrity as a

construct to the poetic hybridity of First Nations writing. The

collection as a whole raises pertinent questions about Canadian and

Australian self-representations: in particular in terms of the

gendered aspect of such representations and the place of the

indigenous populations within them.

Design on the cover: Marian Steen "Charlie's Letter", 2002, Passage

Series (31"x60")