Robin Gerster

Robin Gerster is an Australian author and academic. He is a Professor at the School of English, Communications and Performance Studies at Monash University. His major fields of expertise are the cultural histories of war and travel. As a postgraduate, he won the Australian War Memorial's inaugural C.E.W. Bean Scholarship, for his research project on the heroic theme in Australian war writing. The PhD-thesis which emerged from this research was subsequently published as Big-noting: The Heroic Theme in Australian War Writing, which remains the landmark study in its field. In 1988, it won the prestigious Age-Book of the Year Award in the non-fiction category. In the 1990s he held the Chair in Australian Studies at the University of Tokyo - an experience which led to the controversial travel book, 'Legless in Ginza: Orientating Japan' (1999). His book, 'Travels in Atomic Sunshine: Australia and the Occupation of Japan', won the New South Wales Premier's Prize for Australian History in 2008.

Bibliography

• Occupying the Other: Australia and Military Occupations from Japan to Iraq, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle UK, 2009. (Co-editor with Christine de Matos.)
• Travels in Atomic Sunshine: Australia and the Occupation of Japan', Scribe, Melbourne, 2008.
• On the Warpath: A Critical Anthology of Australian Military Travel, Melbourne University Publishing, Melbourne, 2004. (Co-editor with Peter Pierce)
• Legless in Ginza: Orientating Japan, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1999.
• Hotel Asia: Australian Literary Travelling to 'the East' , Penguin, Ringwood, 1995.
• Seizures of Youth: 'The Sixties' and Australia, Hyland House, Melbourne, 1991.
• Big-noting: The Heroic Theme in Australian War Writing, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1987. Revised paperback ed., MUP, 1992.