Meaghan Morris: Cultural Historian

Abstract

Meaghan Morris was celebrated at the Meaghan Morris Festival as a mentor, a cultural theorist, a much-loved colleague, a lecturer, a polemicist and a stirrer, a teacher, an internationalist, a translator and much else besides. Here, I want to add to that chorus by making a very specific case: that Meaghan Morris is the most significant and innovative living Australian cultural historian. This characterisation is, in part, rooted in my own investments in work at the intersections of cultural studies and cultural history but it is of much greater significance. An influential contemporary characterisation of cultural studies is that it was a boomer reaction to existing disciplinary constraints,..