Issue Details: First known date: 2022... 2022 [Review] The Red Witch: A Biography of Katharine Susannah Prichard
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'Katharine Susannah Prichard is an iconic, larger-than-life figure in Australian literary culture who has been poorly served by biography, until now. When she was dubbed ‘the red witch’ by a journalist it was a term of disparagement, but it is deployed affectionately by Nathan Hobby. This book derives from Hobby’s 2019 PhD on the early life of Prichard at the University of Western Australia. His training in librarianship is evident in his confident handling of the material, which daunted earlier would-be biographers. The KSP collection at the National Library runs to 3.9 metres or approximately twenty-four boxes.'  (Introduction)

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    y separately published work icon Australian Historical Studies vol. 53 no. 4 2022 25494069 2022 periodical issue

    'At the end of the last century, Ann Curthoys outlined the history of ‘two distinct yet connected public and intellectual debates concerning the significance of descent, belonging and culture’ in Australia. The first revolved ‘around the cleavage between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples’, and especially the issue of how to grapple with the lingering effects of past colonialisms. The second centred on immigration and the challenge migrants – particularly non-Anglo migrants – have presented to Australian society at large. Curthoys argued that in public commentary and within numerous scholarly fields, including history, these debates were kept largely separate until the 1988 Bicentenary and its celebration of multicultural Australia, which included Indigenous people amongst the country’s broader diversity. Pauline Hanson’s ascendancy to Federal Parliament in 1996 pushed these debates into ‘uneasy conversation’ with each other as her public rhetoric frequently attacked both Indigenous people and migrants from Asia as groups who, in her view, were unable to assimilate. Curthoys argued that the two debates ‘can neither be conceptualised together nor maintained as fully distinct’, but rather must be situated within an understanding of Australia as a ‘society which is colonising and decolonising at the same time’. ‘All non-Indigenous people, recent immigrants and descendants of immigrants alike’, wrote Curthoys, ‘are beneficiaries of a colonial history. We share the situation of living on someone else’s land’. (Editorial introduction)

    2022
    pg. 658-659
Last amended 1 Dec 2022 11:41:07
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