Cirrus@Austlit

'This documentary is hard to watch. While I was expecting the content, there was real power in the relentless accumulation of disrespect and abuse uttered in gendered, often violent and sexualised terms against Labor politician Julia Gillard. When she first became leader of the ALP and Australia’s 27th prime minister, Gillard acknowledged the milestone but wanted to downplay her status as the first woman in the role. Others, however, did not. Strong Female Lead explores how Gillard’s political legitimacy and integrity as a national leader were increasingly challenged in overtly gendered terms.'(Introduction)

'New Gold Mountain is a ‘revisionist Western’ drama series, aired on SBS TV in October 2021 and currently available via SBS On Demand. Set in 1857, in the Victorian goldfields town of Ballarat, it tells a story of Chinese mining endeavour and paints this community as a central part of the gold rushes. The body of a murdered European woman is discovered, suspicion falls on the Chinese community, and simmering racial tensions come to the fore. The lead character, Leung Wei Shing, the headman of the Chinese camp, navigates through the murder investigation, keeping the white authorities at bay, yet delving within the Chinese community to uncover the circumstances of the death.'(Introduction)

'This well-researched and highly readable book is a wonderful contribution to a growing body of Australian feminist-inspired studies that have delved into the archives of broadcasting. Based on the author’s PhD thesis, the core of the book is the story of women’s widening access to the public sphere through the affordances of mass media.' (Introduction)

'This is a book with an axe to grind. Specifically, the author is very aggrieved at the way in which Melbourne’s colonial sex work and sex workers are represented in what she calls ‘tabloid histories’, especially historical tours and websites relating to Little Lonsdale Street’s brothels. She characterises this tabloid history as history that ‘prefers titillation to truth, and values sales above respect for its subjects, breathing sensationalism and the colourful language of denigration’ (2). Curiously, though, she provides few specific examples of the target of her annoyance – in the case of offending websites she states that she ‘refuses to dignify any of these efforts with references’ (279). As a result, the argument has a very ‘straw man’ feel. This reader was irritated by the approach, and the frequent chastising meted out to ‘historians’ (without the earlier qualification of ‘tabloid’) throughout the book, again with few specific examples. Although Minchinton’s published work in refereed journals indicates that she is aware of the broader academic historiography of sex work in Australia as a subject that has attracted solid research and subtle analysis, very little of this historical scholarship is referred to, leaving the reader with the impression that she is the only writer with valid historical skills. And her claims to focus on the ‘facts’ rather than the sensational are belied by the very cover of the book, which features a raunchy photo of a sex worker in Vienna, not Melbourne or even Australia.'(Introduction)

'Colin Clark, the subject of this biography, was regarded as one of Australia’s most profound thinkers. The Economic Society of Australia chose him as the joint winner (with Trevor Swan) of its inaugural Distinguished Fellow award in 1987. The University of Queensland, where Clark held an honorary appointment in his final years, had such a high opinion of him that it named both the building housing its Economics Faculty and an annual public lecture in his honour. John Maynard Keynes referred to Clark as ‘a bit of a genius: almost the only economic statistician I have ever met who seems to me quite first class’ (Moggridge (ed.), The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes, vol. XXIX, 1979, 57). Several universities, including Monash, Queensland, Milan and Tilburg, awarded him honorary degrees. Among his major contributions to economics was the concept of Gross National Product or GNP. He was also a founder of development economics: the World Bank included Clark among its top 10 pioneers of development economics.'(Introduction) 

'Among the vast number of books on the history of the Black War, there are virtually no biographies of the guerrilla leaders on the other side of the frontier. Instead, historians have relied on convict artist Thomas Bock’s compelling portraits of these men and women, to gain insights into their bravery and humanity. The biographies that do exist of Truganini, Woorraddy and Pevay tend to foreground their experiences as part of G.A. Robinson’s friendly mission on the settler side of the frontier. Apart from a short study of Walyer, the woman guerrilla leader in northern Tasmania, there have been no major studies of the guerrilla leaders who led the resistance at the height of the Black War.' (Introduction)

'I read Too Much Cabbage and Jesus Christ in the week that a jury in Darwin found a police constable not guilty of murdering a Warlpiri teenager named Kumanjayi Walker. The constable, an ex-soldier, shot Walker three times, claiming that the boy resisted arrest. In 1928, as this book recounts, less than 100 kilometres from where Walker was killed, more than 60 Warlpiri and Anmatyerr men, women and children were killed by gangs led by police constable William Murray. Murray, an ex-soldier, claimed the victims had resisted arrest. A public enquiry into the deaths exonerated Murray and his fellow murderers.' (Introduction)

'Today she haunts popular iconography on multiple digital and visual platforms. In Rebecca, the definitely monochrome film of 1940 directed by Alfred Hitchcock, she is gaunt, implacable, insidious: her black frock as dark as her intentions, luring her terrified victim towards self-annihilation among flickering firelight, transparent drapes, vertiginous cliffs and turbulent waves. In the cultural memory of the twenty-first century, Judith Anderson’s complex multi-media career has almost become subsumed into her portrayal of Mrs Danvers. Despite her eight decades of professional international performance as a tragedienne in stage, film, television, radio and recorded word, this major Australian cultural figure has hitherto received no comprehensive career biography.' (Introduction)