Associate Professor Robin Gerster
- BA, Ph.D (Monash)
- Associate Professor
- Contact details
- Full Curriculum Vitae
(PDF)
Background
A graduate of Monash University, Assoc. Prof. Robin Gerster was the inaugural C.E.W. Bean Scholar at the Australian War Memorial (1982-85). His PhD thesis, published as Big-noting: The Heroic Theme in Australian War Writing, won the Age ‘Book of the Year’ for Non-Fiction in 1988. From 1996-1998 he held the Chair in Australian Studies at the University of Tokyo, and has also taught as Visiting Professor at Keio University (Tokyo). He is author of several influential books, and has published many articles in Australian and international scholarly journals, as well as numerous book reviews, commentaries and travel pieces in newspapers and magazines. He has also spoken frequently on topical matters pertaining to his research in the electronic media.
Research Interests
Robin Gerster is regarded as a leading Australian critic on war literature, travel literature, and Western cultural and political relationships with and literary representations of the Asia-Pacific (especially Japan), and is available as a postgraduate supervisor on these and related subjects.
He is planning to embark, in 2009, on a major study of Australian responses to nuclear warfare and the nuclear industry generally.
Selected Publications
Big-noting: The Heroic Theme in Australian War Writing (1987). This controversial book is widely regarded as the benchmark critical study of Australian war literature, and is a consistently-cited work.
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Seizures of Youth: ‘The Sixties’ and Australia (1991, with Jan Bassett). An illustrated satirical critique of the social and political ferment of Australia in the 1960s, this has been set as recommended reading on several Australian Studies university courses over the past fifteen years.
Hotel Asia: Australian Literary Travelling to ‘the East’ (1995) remains a highly influential and widely prescribed critical anthology of Australian engagements with Asia as revealed in a variety of narrative discourses.
Legless in Ginza: Orientating Japan (1999) is an autobiographical travel book resulting from Gerster’s two years as Chair of Australian Studies at the University of Tokyo in the 1990s. Listed as ‘particularly recommended reading’ for intending travellers to Japan in the ‘Rough Guides’ to Japan and Tokyo, published in London and New York for wide international distribution.
On the War Path: An Anthology of Australian Military Travel (2004, co-edited with Peter Pierce) examines and showcases the inter-relationship of war and travel in the Australian national experience. The work received excellent reviews in publications as diverse as the Times Literary Supplement (‘intriguing and enjoyable’), to the Melbourne Age (‘absorbing’, ‘first rate’) and the Journal of Australian Studies ‘Review of Books’ (‘beautifully balanced and conceived’).
Travels in Atomic Sunshine (2008) is a cultural study of Australia’s role in the post-war occupation of Japan. ‘troubling, significant’ (The Age); ‘elegant and sardonic history’ (Sydney Morning Herald).
Occupying the Other: Australia and Military Occupation from Japan to Iraq, a collection of essays co-edited with Christine de Matos, will be published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing (UK) in 2009.