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.
Ken Gelder is Professor of English at the University of Melbourne. His books include Uncanny Australia: Sacredness and Identity in a Postcolonial Nation (1998, with Jane M Jacobs) and Subcultures: Cultural Histories and Social Practice (2007). His most recent book, with Rachael Weaver, is The Colonial Kangaroo Hunt (2020).
