143 research outputs found

    Reading (in/and) Miranda

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    "Australian fiction, like that of all nations, is written, published, received and read in the context of a literary canon, both national and transnational. In regards to women's fiction in Australia, this canon is predominantly composed of writers from two particular eras: authors of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (like Henry Handel Richardson, Miles Franklin, Katharine Susannah Prichard and Christina Stead) and women writers who came to prominence during the 1980s (like Helen Garner, Kate Grenville, Elizabeth Jolley, Barbara Hanrahan, Jessica Anderson and Beverley Farmer ... The second-wave feminist movement was responsible for the creation of this dual canon: in the first case, due to a desire to recover and reclaim women writers of the past, and in the second, due to a desire to celebrate and explore contemporary Australian women's fiction. Indeed, it is the preoccupation of second-wave feminism with uncovering and celebrating women's occluded stories that underlies the current critical focus on realist and experiential aspects of Australian women's fiction ... Among those whose work has been occluded by the critical attention given to the canonical figures of Australian women's writing, Wendy Scarfe is indicative in various ways.

    'We're not truckin' around': On and off-road in Samuel Wagan Watson's Smoke Encrypted Whispers

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    Cars and roads traverse the poetry of Samuel Wagan Watson, a self-identified Aboriginal man of Bundjalung, Birri Gubba, German and Irish ancestry. The narrator/s of the poems in 'Smoke Encrypted' Whispers are repeatedly on the road or beside it, and driving is employed as a metaphor for everything from addiction and memory to the search for love. Road kill litters the poems, while roads come to life, cars become men, and men have 'gas tanks that can't see empty'. Watson's poetry has received significant critical attention and acclaim: his 'haunting, uncanny, layered poetics of history' and depiction of 'colonial degradation' have been explored, and his poems-including those featuring cars and roads-have been analysed in relation to such themes as the sacred, locatedness, and creative processes. Given the extent to which cars and roads dominate Watson's poetry, it is notable, however, that his use of both to explore and resist 'colonial degradation' has not received sustained attention

    From British domination to multinational conglomeration? A revised history of Australian novel publishing, 1950 to 2007

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    I chose to focus on Australian novels because of the significant and illuminating hinge this fictional form provides between debates about cultural nationalism on the one hand, and publishing on the other. The historic relationship of the novel and nationalism was explicitly fostered in Australia by critics like the Palmers who, in the 1920s and 1930s, emphasised the importance of the novel to national identity. This established relationship between the novel and Australian nationalism accounts for, and in recent times has been compounded by, the strong associations drawn between the fate of this fictional form, and the fate of the Australian publishing industry. At present, this association is most commonly expressed in the idea that both industry and book are dying. I aim to resist and complicate this narrative of decline, while exploring some of the complex ways in which both the novel and the industry are Janus-faced: turned to the national and the transnational, the cultural and the commercial

    [Review of] Divergent convergences : Manifesting Literary Feminisms conference, Monash University and University of Queensland, 13-14 December 2007

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    Over the past three decades, feminism has been a major force in literary studies, while literary studies have represented an important strand of academic feminism. This interrelationship has been reflected in the prevalence of feminist papers at literature conferences, and literary papers at feminist conferences. Few conferences, however, have focused exclusively on feminist literary criticism. The Manifesting Literary Feminisms conference therefore offered a rare opportunity for feminist literary scholars to come together with the purpose of listening and responding to, and being challenged by, the stimulating diversity of work in progress in the field. For this opportunity, participants at the conference repeatedly thanked the convenors, Margaret Henderson from the University of Queensland and Ann Vickery from Monash

    Graphically gendered: a quantitative study of the relationships between Australian novels and gender from the 1830s to the 1930s.

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    This paper aims to continue and expand, while critiquing aspects of, previous feminist analyses of authors and authorship in Australia in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The majority of such studies have focused on particular women writers and/or on aspects of their fiction. I consider the number and proportion of published novel titles by Australian men and women from 1830 (when publication of Australian novels effectively began) to 1939 to determine whether and what gender trends emerge. This study also departs from the majority of previous explorations of Australian literary history (including feminist accounts of that history) in not pre-emptively selecting the authors or texts considered. Rather, I explore gender trends in relation to all Australian novel titles published before 1939..

    Publishing and Australian literature: crisis, decline or transformation?

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    The globalisation and consolidation of book publishing is widely seen as having negative consequences for Australian literature. Some commentators argue that this shift is detrimental to Australian literature as a whole; others identify the growth of multinational publishing conglomerates with a specific decline in Australian literary fiction. I explore both positions, first identifying and investigating trends in Australian novel publication and comparing these to trends in the publication of novels from other countries as well as other Australian-originated literature (specifically, poetry and auto/biography). Following this, I consider the specific case of Australian literary fiction, before looking in detail at the output of large publishers of Australian novels. This analysis reveals a recent decline in Australian novel and poetry titles, but offers a more complex picture of this trend than dominant expressions of nostalgia and alarm about the fate of Australian literature and publishing would suggest

    Digital Scholarship Futures.

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    Beyond the colonial present: quantitative analysis, “Resourceful Reading” and Australian literary studies

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    The revival in cultural nationalism suggested by current debates about Australian history and literature represents (to borrow from Gillian Whitlock) both a potential pleasure and a danger for Australian literary studies. While the injection of funds augured by this shift in government policy could resuscitate and reinvigorate the discipline, at present, such funds seem to be contingent upon reviving a canonical approach to the teaching and researching of Australian literature. This situation places Australian literary studies at a crossroad. Rather than following the path of least resistance and reinstituting the canon, I advocate a move towards innovation: that is, an extension and realisation of the principles and insights of cultural materialism through quantitative methodologies and resourceful readings, as well as through eResearch more generally. This direction would propel Australian literary studies beyond its current crisis of confidence - by reinvigorating the discipline and offering it renewed institutional, political, social and critical relevance, and alternative funding opportunities - without reinvoking the canon, and hence rejecting the cultural materialism that has shaped and positioned Australian literary studies since the 1980s

    Along gender lines: reassessing relationships between Australian novels, gender and genre from 1930-2006.

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    "In 1998, Elizabeth Webby professed a widely accepted account of contemporary Australian literary history. During the 1970s, Australian literature emerged from a period of 'masculinist' conservatism into a 'golden age', manifested in a marked increase in 'Australian publishing and the promotion of Australian literature' and the proliferation of authors other than White Anglo-Celtic Males or 'WACMs'. By the late 1990s, however, the combined impact of 'economic rationalism' and 'globalisation' had rendered this golden age 'well and truly over'. According to Webby, 'WACMs' lost their dominance on literature courses and publishers' lists, but 'reasserted control via the doctrine of economic rationalism at the political level'. But is this accepted - and gendered - account of contemporary Australian literary history accurate? I reconsider this history from a quantitative perspective, drawing on AustLit database records to ask simple but broad questions about the relationships between gender, genre and Australian novels from 1930 to 2006. What number and proportion of Australian novel titles published during this time were by wo/men? What genre were these novels? What trends, if any, are revealed?
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