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Coolabah, Vol.4, 2010, ISSN 1988-5946 Observatori: Centre d’Estudis 

Australians, Australian Studies Centre, Universitat de Barcelona 

 

 

 

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Introduction 

 

I have been teaching in High Schools for about eight years now, both in the United 

States and Spain. When I ask myself what is the task of the teacher in general, I 

remember Derrida’s words in the University Without Condition: “the profession of the 

professor is to devote himself to the truth, unconditionally”. I am quoting from memory. 

In that text Derrida is talking about truth in both a theoretical and moral sense, in a 

theoretic-moral sense, if I remember correctly. At bottom I believe they are 

indistinguishable. I still remember the faces and names of my first students at my High 

School in Salt Lake City.  

There is something about beginnings that makes them unforgettable, especially when 

they have to do with your vocation, in my case teaching. I am saying this because this 

issue of Coolabah is the result of my first experience teaching at University level, in 

2008. I owe this first experience to Susand Ballyn. Since then I have been collaborating 

with the Australian Studies Centre, and it has always been and continues to be a great 

intellectual and personal experience. Three contributors to this issue, Giada Cacciavilni, 

Victoria Dimitrova and Pedro Fernández were some of my students in that first class. A 

teacher who begins is a student of his pupils, he has a lot to learn from them. I have to 

thank them for bearing with me. So I was also present when Stephanos Stephanides and 

Gloria Montero came to talk about their work. Susan was back to teaching again, but I 

continued attending the classes. Stephanos Stephanides mentioned something about 

Heidegger I can’t remember, but I do remember that his words illuminated my mind and 

I felt elated (in a theoretic-moral sense). I felt I knew more than everybody else about 

whatever it was he was talking about. Some people have that gift, they “touch” you. I 

have also met Gloria Montero several times since then. I like the way she calls 

everybody “darling” and her gypsy look. I always have the feeling that she can see 

inside things and people. I am also thankful to Susan because that first class I taught at 

Barcelona University will have a visual outcome with this issue, a “sign” that will 

always remind me of that beginning. 

 

I would like to thank all the contributors for their work, and also Bill Phillips, Laura 

López, Kate Russell and María Isabel Seguro. Giada’s incisive article analyzes how 

Katherine Philips, Aphra Behn, and Sylvia Plath subvert the stereotypical role assigned 

to women in society, especially regarding marriage. My own contribution is on the role 

of writing in the constitution of culture. Then follows Lachalns Brown and Stephanos 

Stephanides poetry, translated by Bill Phillips (Catalan), Laura López (Spanish) and 

Victoria Dimitrova (Bulgarian). Lachaln Brown’s and Stephanos Stephanides’ 

contributions were the result of their visit to the Centre d’Estudis Australians in 

Barcelona, and we are all very grateful to them for their generosity and contribution. 

Next there comes an extensive interview with Gloria Montero, skilfully carried out by 

Pedro Fernández, where Gloria Montero talks about his autobiographical novel All 

These Wars and also about his fictional novel Villa Marini. Finally, there follow three 

book reviews: An Exercise In Google, by Bill Philips; Australia and Galicia: Defeating 

the Tyranny of Distance/Australia e Galicia: vencendo a tiranía do afastamento, by 

Kate Russell; and Joan London, The Good Parents, by María Isabel Seguro. 

 

Carles Serra Pagès, Barcelona 2010