Issue Details: First known date: 2022... 2022 [Review] Good for the Soul : John Curtin’s Life with Poetry
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'In the introduction to this excellent study, Toby Davidson defines his subject as ‘the curious nexus between the servants of the Muse and those of Australian democracy’, a nexus exemplified in the life and career of John Curtin (xiii). Davidson is a great-grandson of Curtin. As the author of two volumes of poetry, Beast Language (2012) and Four Oceans (2020), and a critical monograph, Christian Mysticism and Australian Poetry (2013), he is perhaps uniquely qualified to explore this topic. With this book he has produced a notable contribution to the study of Australian political rhetoric and to the history of poetry in Australia, amply and rewardingly exploring connections between them.'  (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. 659-660
Last amended 1 Dec 2022 11:42:25
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