Book Review – Symbols of Australia: Imagining a Nation

Abstract

Karen Fox has reviewed Melissa Harper and Richard White, eds., Symbols of Australia: Imagining a Nation (Sydney: NewSouth Publishing, 2021).

Symbols of Australia: Imagining a Nation (NewSouth Publishing, 2021) is a marvellous new addition to our knowledge of Australia’s national imaginings. Encompassing 28 chapters on a range of national symbols, plus an informative and thought-provoking introduction by the volume’s editors, Melissa Harper and Richard White, the collection is an updated edition of an earlier work first published in 2010. The new iteration beautifully demonstrates the editors’ contention that ‘[n]ational symbols never stand still’ (p. vii). As well as the addition of two new chapters – on the Great Barrier Reef and the democracy sausage – each existing chapter has been updated to reflect the ‘new accretions and depictions’ around each symbol, and ‘their growing or fading popularity and … shifts in their meaning’ (p. vii). Show more