Patrick D. Nunn Patrick D. Nunn i(12341017 works by)
Gender: Male
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Works By

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1 Rising Seas and a Great Southern Star : Aboriginal Oral Traditions Stretch Back More Than 12,000 Years Duane Hamacher , Greg Lehman , Patrick D. Nunn , Rebe Taylor , 2023 single work essay
— Appears in: The Conversation , 14 August 2023;
1 Of Bunyips and Other Beasts : Living Memories of Long-extinct Creatures in Art and Stories Patrick D. Nunn , 2019 single work column
— Appears in: The Conversation , 15 April 2019;

'On many continents during the last ice age, typically from about 50,000 to 12,000 years ago, species of megafauna that had lived there for hundreds of thousands of years became extinct. Comparatively abruptly, it appears, in most instances.' (Introduction)  

1 Drowning Islands : Climate Change Imperatives in the Asia-Pacific Region Patrick D. Nunn , Paul Williams , 2018 single work criticism
— Appears in: TEXT Special Issue Website Series , October no. 52 2018;

'a) The researched topic Climate change poses massive and varied challenges to the ways in which people live throughout the Asia-Pacific region. And despite the earnest requests of many of its most vulnerable peoples, emissions of greenhouse gases over the past few decades have made many climate-change impacts unavoidable, whatever action the world now takes to reduce these emissions. Emissions reductions and the clean energy initiatives that underpin them are still desirable since they will affect the world our descendants inherit in fifty or sixty years’ time but within that period – at least – we have no choice but to adapt to the changes we have brought upon ourselves.

'b) Creative response A ficto-critical piece that seeks to represent the scientific ‘reality’ of ‘drowning islands’ / ‘global warming’ in narrative form through the eyes of a narrator and a Torres-Strait islander whose people fled the drowning island of Saibai in the 1940s. This piece includes song lyrics, Biblical verses, post-apocalyptic images of drowning islands, literary motifs, and a narrative scenario which serves as a microcosm of this impending crisis.' (Publication abstract)

1 y separately published work icon The Edge of Memory Ancient Stories, Oral Tradition and the Post-Glacial World Patrick D. Nunn , London : Bloomsbury Sigma , 2018 14073328 2018 multi chapter work criticism

'In today's society it is generally the written word that holds the authority. We are more likely to trust the words found in a history textbook over the version of history retold by a friend – after all, human memory is unreliable, and how can you be sure your friend hasn't embellished the facts? But before humans were writing down their knowledge, they were telling it to each other in the form of stories. 

'The Edge of Memory celebrates the predecessor of written information – the spoken word, tales from our ancestors that have been passed down, transmitting knowledge from one generation to the next. Among the most extensive and best-analysed of these stories are from native Australian cultures. These stories conveyed both practical information and recorded history, describing a lost landscape, often featuring tales of flooding and submergence. These folk traditions are increasingly supported by hard science. Geologists are starting to corroborate the tales through study of climatic data, sediments and land forms; the evidence was there in the stories, but until recently, nobody was listening.

'In this book, Patrick Nunn unravels the importance of these tales, exploring the science behind folk history from various places – including northwest Europe and India – and what it can tell us about environmental phenomena, from coastal drowning to volcanic eruptions. These stories of real events were passed across the generations, and over thousands of years, and they have broad implications for our understanding of how human societies have developed through the millennia, and ultimately how we respond collectively to changes in climate, our surroundings and the environment we live in.' (Publication summary)

1 Friday Essay: Monsters in My Closet – How a Geographer Began Mining Myths Patrick D. Nunn , 2017 single work essay
— Appears in: The Conversation , 8 December 2017;

'So you think the Loch Ness Monster never existed? That the story is a cunningly cobbled-together fiction intended to boost tourist interest in an otherwise unrelentingly dull (only to some) part of mid-Scotland? Think again. The embryonic science of geomythology is breathing new life into such stories, legitimising the essence of some and opening up the possibility that other such folk tales might not be pure fiction but actually based on memories of events our ancestors once observed.' (Introduction)

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