Dr Elizabeth McMahon is an Associate Professor in the School of the Arts and Media. Her research interests are in Australian literature, Island Studies and Gender studies. Her recent monograph, Islands, Identity and the Literary Imagination (New York and London: Antehm, 2016) is the culmination of research funded by an ARC Discovery grant titled Our Island Home: The Shifting Map of Australian Literature. She has also published widely on the representation of gender and sexuality in Australian writing, and recently edited, with Dr Brigitta Olubas, a new collection on Australian author Elizabeth Harrower. Since 2008 she has co-edited Southerly, Australian oldest literary journal and co-edits a book series titled Rethinking the Island for Rowman and Littlefield International.

Section 1. Islands Real and Imaginary; Introduction; Chapter One. What's in a Metaphor: 'No Man is an Island'; Section 2. Islands: Making the Planet, World, Globe; Chapter Two: The First and Last Of New Worlds: The Caribbean and Australia; Chapter Three: Insular and Continental Interiors: The Shifting Map of Literary Universalism after the War; Section 3. Dreams and Nightmares; Chapter Four: Accidents of Empire: Shipwrecks and Castaways; Chapter Five: The Best and Worst of Times: Utopias, Dystopias, Archipelagos.

Australia is the planet's sole island continent. This book argues that the uniqueness of this geography has shaped Australian history and culture, including its literature. Further, it shows how shifting understandings of the island continent shed new light on the relationship between islands and continents in the mapping of modernity.