Cirrus@Austlit

'This research focuses on intercultural negotiations and constructions of contemporary ethnic and cultural identity in a Western country of resettlement, through collaborative community publishing with Hazara people, a persecuted cultural and linguistic group. As a research team, primarily using interviews, we examined the multicultural children’s bookmaking project and the intercultural negotiations undertaken between 2018 and 2022 which led to the publication of an Afghanistani children’s story in three languages (English, Hazaragi and Dari) with artwork created by children. A crafted research narrative is used to present participants’ voices genuinely and respectfully as they generously engaged with our research process. We build upon Judith Butler’s analytical framework of linguistic vulnerability as the generative foundation of resistance to examine how linguistic precarity for Hazaragi speakers resettling in Australia is experienced. We found that community bookmaking and publishing involved complex processes of translation and transliteration where practical and political problems about cultural and linguistic authority were confronted. Engaging in this process of intercultural negotiation affords new possibilities for the resignification of recognisable and intelligible Hazara identities. We argue that a more liveable life for refugees in linguistically precarious resettlement contexts can be supported through culturally and linguistically responsive infrastructure that is respectful of their meaning making resources.' (Publication abstract) 

'Remembering Migration is an exciting and broad-ranging collection, primarily based in the fields of history, museum studies, and heritage studies, but with important research and insightful reflections for scholars of life writing. The twenty-two chapters in the collection cover migration to Australia from home countries across the globe, with most of the case studies and experiences examined linked to migration over the last seventy-five years. Geographically, and in varying degrees of detail, the collection covers conflict-related migration connected to the Greek Civil War, WWII, Vietnam War, civil war in Sudan, as well as wars in Afghanistan, Chile, and Iraq. It also surveys various avenues that governments and organizations developed for migration over time, including those relating to displaced persons (DP) at the end of WWII, British and European post-WWII mass migration, British child migrants, intercountry adoption as part of migration, as well as migration from Southern China between the 1850s and 1950s and from Italy in the 1920s.' (Introduction)

'This article uses cultural representations to write refugee history. It examines twenty-first-century picture books about displaced children, alongside published responses to them, to explore how refugee experiences and histories are constructed, both for and about children, in an Australian context. The visual literary form of picture books as political texts is examined as a space for discussion and dialogue. Published responses to them, however, more commonly reveal rigid interpretations of imagined readers, invoking binary divisions between displaced and non-displaced children. Through these sources, questions of humanisation and (de)politicisations in refugee history are considered.'  (Publication abstract)

'Beyond the Silver Screen tells the history of women’s engagement with filmmaking and film culture in twentieth-century Australia. In doing so, it explores an array of often hidden ways women in Australia have creatively worked with film. Beyond the Silver Screen examines film in a broad sense, considering feature filmmaking alongside government documentaries and political films. It also focuses on women’s work regulating films and supporting film culture through organising film societies and workshops to encourage female filmmakers. As such, it tells a new narrative of Australian film history.

'Beyond the Silver Screen reveals the variety of roles film has in Australian society. It presents film as a medium of creative and political expression, which women have engaged with in diverse ways throughout the twentieth century. Gender roles and gendered ideologies operating within society at large have influenced women’s opportunities to work with film and how their filmwork is recognised. Beyond the Silver Screen shows women’s sustained involvement with film is best understood as political and cultural action. '  (Publication summary)

'Diversity in Leadership: Australian women, past and present provides a new understanding of the historical and contemporary aspects of Indigenous and non-Indigenous women's leadership in a range of local, national and international contexts. It brings interdisciplinary expertise to the topic from leading scholars in a range of fields and diverse backgrounds. The aims of the essays in the collection document the extent and diverse nature of women's social and political leadership across various pursuits and endeavours within democratic political structures. ' (Source: TROVE)