Issue Details: First known date: 2017... 2017 David Unaipon's Life Stories : Aboriginal Writing and Rhetoric
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'David Unaipon (1872-1967) has been described as a scientist, author, anthropologist, preacher, inventor and public speaker. To these descriptions can be added musician, lecturer, curator, political activist, guide, and door-to-door salesman. A master of many trades, descriptions of Unaipon have struggled to merge the various aspects of his life into a single, coherent narrative. This paper focuses on Unaipon’s life stories – the stories told about him and his family and the stories he told about himself. A central argument of this paper is that, rather than describing Unaipon as a jack of all trades (or, worse, a master of none), Unaipon can accurately and productively be described as a rhetor, a person using various forms of media (and various forms of life writing) to present arguments across different social, political and cultural contexts to change beliefs about Aboriginality. Further, Unaipon’s rhetoric was fashioned from indigenous and western traditions. To describe Unaipon as a rhetor can re-energise the arguments he put forward during his lifetime, can reveal the consistency and relationship between arguments he made in various fields or disciplines, and, most importantly, can provoke debate and discussion about Unaipon’s life and writing at a time when, despite his prominence as one face on Australia’s $50 note, as the namesake of Australia’s most prestigious award for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander writing, and as an author anthologised in collections of Australian and Aboriginal writing, his writing is all but ignored in Australian culture and literary criticism.'

Source: Abstract.

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon The Authorised Theft Papers : Writing, Scholarship, Collaboration The Authorised Theft Papers : Writing, Scholarship, Collaboration : Papers – The Refereed Proceedings Of The 21st Conference Of The Australasian Association Of Writing Programs, 2016 Niloofar Fanaiyan (editor), Rachel Franks (editor), Jessica Seymour (editor), Canberra : The Australasian Association of Writing Programs , 2017 20512298 2017 anthology criticism

    'The 21st annual conference of the AAWP invited writers and academics to respond to the idea that, as writers, we are engaging in a type of ‘authorised theft’. Over 100 delegates responded enthusiastically by presenting papers that straddled genres, disciplines, modes of expression, as well as languages and cultures. Panel topics included sociologies of writing, poetry and song, narrative and narrative modes, responses to pain and trauma, digital literature and the online space, memoir/biography and travel writing, identity and voice, oral storytelling and ways of knowing, as well as translation and cross-cultural encounters.'

    Source: Introduction.

    Canberra : The Australasian Association of Writing Programs , 2017
Last amended 16 Oct 2020 09:50:22
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