Robin Gerster

Robin Gerster
Robin Gerster
Born	1953 (age 70–71); Melbourne,Victoria
Awards	The AgeNon-Fiction Award(1988); New South Wales Premier's Australian History Prize(2009)
Academic background
Alma mater	Monash University(BA [Hons], MA, PhD)
Thesis	Big-noting the Promotion of an Heroic Theme in Australian War Prose(1985)
Academic work
Institutions	Monash University; University of Tokyo
Main interests	Cultural histories of war and travel, Japan
Notable works	Big-noting(1987); Travels in Atomic Sunshine(2008)

Robin Gersteris an Australianauthorwho was born in Melbourne and educated in Melbourne and Sydney. Formerly a professor in the School of Languages, Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics atMonash University,Gerster has written extensively on the cultural histories of war and travel, and on Western representations ofJapan.^[1]As a postgraduate, he won theAustralian War Memorial's inaugural C.E.W. Bean Scholarship, for a research project on Australian war literature. The PhD thesis that emerged from this research was later published asBig-noting: The Heroic Theme in Australian War Writing,^[2]^[3]which remains the landmark study in its field.^[4]In 1988, it wonThe AgeBook of the Year Awardin the non-fiction category. It has been criticised for not discussing women's roles in the war.^[5]

In the 1990s he held the Chair in Australian Studies at theUniversity of Tokyo– an experience which led to the "provocative" travel book,Legless in Ginza: Orientating Japan(1999).^[6]His book,Travels in Atomic Sunshine: Australia and the Occupation of Japan,won theNew South Wales Premier's Prize for Australian Historyin 2009, and was shortlisted for theQueensland Premier's Non-Fiction Book Awardand thePrime Minister's Prize for Australian History.It was republished in a new paperback edition, with an afterword, in 2019. Published in 2020,Hiroshima and Here: Reflections on Australian Atomic Cultureis a cultural history of Nuclear Age Australia, focusing on the reverberating impact of the atomic bombings of August 1945, and the complexity of Australian responses to the fact and possibility of nuclear destruction.

Major works: author

— (1987).Big-noting: The Heroic Theme in Australian War Writing.Carlton, Victoria: Melbourne University Press.ISBN 0522843360.
- — (1992).Big-noting: The Heroic Theme in Australian War Writing.Revised paperback ed. Carlton, Victoria: Melbourne University Press.ISBN 0522845010.
—; Bassett, Jan (1991).Seizures of Youth: The Sixties and Australia.South Yarra, Victoria: Hyland House.ISBN 0947062750.
— (1999).Legless in Ginza: Orientating Japan.Carlton, Victoria: Melbourne University Press.ISBN 052284863X.
— (2008).Travels in Atomic Sunshine: Australia and the Occupation of Japan.Melbourne: Scribe.ISBN 9781921215346.
- — (2019).Travels in Atomic Sunshine: Australia and the Occupation of Japan.New paperback ed. with afterword. Melbourne: Scribe.ISBN 9781925849370.
—; Miles, Melissa (2018).Pacific Exposures: Photography and the Australia–Japan Relationship.Canberra: ANU Press.ISBN 9781760462543.
_ (2020).Hiroshima and Here: Reflections on Australian Atomic Culture.Lanham, Md: Lexington Books/Rowman and Littlefield.ISBN 978-1-4985-8759-4.

Major works: editor

—, ed. (1995).Hotel Asia: Australian Literary Travelling to 'the East'.Ringwood, Victoria: Penguin.ISBN 0140245421.
—; Pierce, Peter, eds. (2004).On the Warpath: An Anthology of Australian Military Travel.Carlton, Victoria: Melbourne University Press.ISBN 0522850871.
—; de Matos, Christine, eds. (2009).Occupying the "Other": Australia and Military Occupations from Japan to Iraq.Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.ISBN 9781443803397.

References

^Stockings, C. (2009).Bardia: Myth, Reality and the Heirs of Anzac.A UNSW Press book. UNSW Press. p. 301.ISBN 978-1-921410-25-3.Retrieved6 June2024.
^Bourke, R. (2006).Prisoners of the Japanese: Literary Imagination and the Prisoner-of-war Experience.University of Queensland Press. p. 2.ISBN 978-0-7022-3564-1.Retrieved6 June2024.
^Hirst, J. (2015).Sense & Nonsense in Australian History.ReadHowYouWant.com, Limited. p. 224.ISBN 978-1-4587-9857-2.Retrieved6 June2024.
^Das, D.; Dasgupta, S. (2017).Claiming Space for Australian Women's Writing.Springer International Publishing. p. 42.ISBN 978-3-319-50400-1.Retrieved6 June2024.the first and only major twentieth-century monograph exploring Australian literary responses to the war
^Coates, D. (2023).Shooting Blanks at the Anzac Legend: Australian women's war fictions.Sydney Studies in Australian Literature. Sydney University Press. p. 27.ISBN 978-1-74332-925-2.Retrieved6 June2024.
^Darian-Smith, K.; Lowe, D. (2023).The Australian Embassy in Tokyo and Australia–Japan Relations.ANU Press. p. 222.ISBN 978-1-76046-540-7.Retrieved6 June2024.the provocative Legless in Ginza

This article about an Australian writer is astub.You can help Wikipedia byexpanding it.

[a247-1] Stockings, C. (2009).Bardia: Myth, Reality and the Heirs of Anzac.A UNSW Press book. UNSW Press. p. 301.ISBN 978-1-921410-25-3.Retrieved6 June2024.

[k825-2] Bourke, R. (2006).Prisoners of the Japanese: Literary Imagination and the Prisoner-of-war Experience.University of Queensland Press. p. 2.ISBN 978-0-7022-3564-1.Retrieved6 June2024.

[f638-3] Hirst, J. (2015).Sense & Nonsense in Australian History.ReadHowYouWant.com, Limited. p. 224.ISBN 978-1-4587-9857-2.Retrieved6 June2024.

[t203-4] Das, D.; Dasgupta, S. (2017).Claiming Space for Australian Women's Writing.Springer International Publishing. p. 42.ISBN 978-3-319-50400-1.Retrieved6 June2024.the first and only major twentieth-century monograph exploring Australian literary responses to the war

[k932-5] Coates, D. (2023).Shooting Blanks at the Anzac Legend: Australian women's war fictions.Sydney Studies in Australian Literature. Sydney University Press. p. 27.ISBN 978-1-74332-925-2.Retrieved6 June2024.

[b671-6] Darian-Smith, K.; Lowe, D. (2023).The Australian Embassy in Tokyo and Australia–Japan Relations.ANU Press. p. 222.ISBN 978-1-76046-540-7.Retrieved6 June2024.the provocative Legless in Ginza

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