Introduction

This first issue of 2014 illustrates just how transnational, multidisciplinary and diverse in approach the field of Australian studies has become. It also reflects the astonishing quality of the research being published in this journal. We don't think it is overstating the case to argue that the essays that comprise this issue have the potential to alter the way we think about key events and icons in Australian culture and history. Phillip Deery's 'Securing justice? The Australian campaign to save the Rosenbergs' adds to the global literature on the Rosenberg case by examining the Australian component of the protest movement to Save the Rosenbergs in the 1950s. He challenges the orthodoxy that the Communist Party of Australia (CPA) initiated the movement, which 'remained widely based and nonsectarian'. With its emphasis on 'cross-currents, patterns and dissonances between Australia and other countries', this paper makes a key contribution to transnational historiography and reminds us of the 'raw passion' of the transnational solidarity that the Save the Rosenbergs campaign generated