Overland 254 is the first in a set of four special editions dedicated to commemorating 70 years of Overland. This issue also launches a new design and format by Common Room Editions, inspired by Overland’s trove of radical literature spanning from 1954 to today. Andrew Brooks and Astrid Lorange consider the asymmetrical responses to two events: the wearing of keffiyehs by three cast members during the Sydney Theatre Company’s production of Anton Chekov’s The Seagull, and, on the same day in the US, the shooting of three Palestinian men wearing keffiyehs. Jeff Sparrow uncovers the Sydney Herald’s legacy of Terra Nullius, and Daniel Lopez writes on Marx, Meredith and the festival as an inversion of modern life.
James Godfrey is a PhD researcher in Law at Birkbeck College, University of London and visiting at Australian National University. His research examines the Prevent requirement to report perceived radicalisation and its impacts on freedom of speech regarding Israeli Occupied Palestine in universities in England. James has been active in a range of campaigning organisations fighting for social justice, locally and internationally, including as Legal Officer of City of London Anti-Apartheid Group and helping to establish and maintain the Non-Stop Picket of the South African Embassy in London. James has worked as a trade union organiser in Sydney and London for more than a decade and in the last few years has been employed casually as an academic at Birkbeck, UNSW and University of Sydney.
