Marriage and Relationships

A study of the policies and practices of marriage and family on the Seventh-day Adventist Aboriginal mission station at Mona Mona

Haunted: Claws and Teeth

A piece that explores both the concept of haunting as a textual provocateur but also the interaction between the theme and the live performance space – haunting “voiced” as much as “written”. Writers were invited to submit via invitation, but submissions were selected by the Conference creative performance curator. This piece was selected under the sub-genre of “haunted place” and performed in an urban underground space that allowed the writer (as performer) to connect voice with text and space

Sacre Couer: Deux Verites, une Mensonge

The resurgence of the oral storytelling culture has been well documented in recent years - from travelling versions of The Moth, to the rise of the creative podcast and even the resurgence of audiobooks. The story Sacre Couer: Deux verites, une mensonge, plays with the idea of the old oral game - two truths, one lie. It expresses a historical account connected to place alongside an autobiographical experience and a fictional representation. The three are connected by the spirituality inherent in the location - a cathedral

Haunted: Claws and Teeth

This piece is the written and edited version of a previously performed oral piece that was part of the creative component of Australian Association of Writing Programs Conference, 2015, Swinburne University, where they were exploring the idea of the relationship between text, place, and voice in the realm of supernatural writing. The submission criteria asked for creative texts that responded to the idea of haunted people, places and supernatural experiences with an eye to live performance of text. The written versions were then reviewed for publication in the journal Bukker Tillibul: The Online Journal of Writing and Practice-led Research. This piece explored the concept of haunting as a textual provocateur. It further explored the idea of the animal in the haunted space as an alternate spirit to that of the tradition human ghost and the roles animals play in linking humans to the past through place

A Girl and the Beats

Australian author Lynnette Lounsbury discusses her love of the Beat authors and the tension that surrounds the interactions between a woman an a generation of writers that were disconnected and disinterested in woman as equals and artists. As a writer she finds her own way to interact as an equal by writing herself into the beat narrative

The Gentle Art of Spiritual Death Cleaning or \u27What Would Jesus Chuck?\u27

This creative piece examines and plays with ideas of modern makeover and renovation tropes, using them to frame a discussion of a religious upbringing. It connects with ideas of fictive memoir and of memory and history as playmates in the context of new and experimental writing styles

A Type of Vertigo

Poetry and Short stories from the edge: A work of collaborative storytelling and thematic genre examination by the creative writing students of Avondale University College. The theme was \u27A type of Vertigo , an analysis of life post Covid-lockdown

Inertia to Action: From Narrative Empathy to Political Agency in Young Adult Fiction

Dystopic and post-apocalyptic fiction creates a false society in which youth have actual physical power to act, create and control their own destinies. While YA fiction is often lauded for modeling agency through its protagonists, here it is argued that dystopic scenarios provide a false sense of empowerment. This allows a teen protagonist not only a chance for—often violent—action, but also the chance to prove him or herself against adult authority and corruption. In YA novels such as The Hunger Games, The Maze Runners and Divergent, adult power must be destroyed and current social norms disrupted to provide a legitimate place for teen power. This paper explores the notion that dystopic YA fiction provides empowerment for its teenager readers and examines if, in fact, that fictional power creates any lasting change in the inertia of current young adulthood

Teaching YA Cancer Narratives: The Fault in Our Stars and Issues with Voicing Illness

Increasingly publishers are promoting illness as a commodifiable literary product. There is now a wide range of autobiographical and fictional texts that explore life-threatening illnesses from the embodied perspective of protagonists. This trend is also evidenced in the content of young adult literature where concepts of the diseased self, agency and mortality are explored. The aim of this paper is to provide some background context on illness narratives and offer a close reading of the young adult text, The Fault in our Stars by John Green, in order to highlight important issues such as the accurate and realistic portrayal of cancer, particularly in the lived experience of adolescent readers. It is anticipated that this discussion will allow classroom teachers to engage more fully in conversations about text selection and content, and the ways in which literature can advance realistic representation of illness that previously have been culturally taboo

What Offline and Online Technologies do Higher Education Students Use to Complete Assessment Tasks?

A Personal Learning Environment (PLE) is a system, usually self-constructed, that enables learners to manage their own learning and may include tools, services, online resources and communities. The aim of the project: to determine which technologies students use when they prepare, complete and submit assessment tasks such as assignments and examinations. The participants (n=39): 24 students from Edith Cowan University in WA and 15 students from Avondale in NSW. All students were undergraduate, on-campus students from Education and Arts courses, mainly female, most were aged between 20-24 years. Previous research has defined PLEs (Dabbagh & Kitsantas, (2012), especially in social constructivist contexts using learner-centred pedagogies (van Harmelen, 2008; Wild, Mdritscher, & Sigurdarson, 2008). Gosper et al. (2013; 2014) have outlined the use of technologies for learning in higher education in general. The methodology of the project used a mixed methods approach using a modification of Clark et al.’s (2009) methods: 1) online questionnaire; 2) focus group; and 3) mapping exercise. Students used a moderate range of formal (provided by the institution) and informal (student-selected) technologies that were used in social and individual contexts, but most technology use was informal. The range of locations in which technologies were used was wide, and reflected a high value placed on mobility and Wi-Fi connectivity