Odette Kelada Odette Kelada i(A105537 works by)
Gender: Female
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Works By

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1 ‘While I Knew I Was Raced, I Didn’t Think Much of It’ : The Need for Racial Literacy in Decolonising Classrooms Lilly Brown , Odette Kelada , Dianne Jones , 2021 single work criticism
— Appears in: Postcolonial Studies , vol. 24 no. 1 2021; (p. 82-103)

'International recognition of racial literacy is growing as a field of postcolonial scholarship but has yet to gain momentum in Australia. In this article, we argue for the need to develop a racial literacy approach for Australian contexts and draw on a qualitative study which engaged with university students who participated in the subject Racial Literacy: Indigeneity and Whiteness delivered at an Australian university. The experiences of these students, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, reveal the classroom to be reflective of broader tensions that manifest in relation to race as a topic and can be a critical space for racial literacy and decolonising education. We argue here that the application of racial literacy is required to address the significant anomaly that exists between critical race scholarship, common understandings of race, colonisation and the practices and impacts of racism. We contend that to develop a racial literacy approach, which does not perpetuate the limits of critical race studies, the role of race in Indigenous dispossession and the ongoing legacies of colonisation must consistently be foundational.' (Publication abstract)
1 Walking in Company Odette Kelada , 2021 single work short story
— Appears in: Overland , no. 240 2021;
1 3 y separately published work icon Drawing Sybylla Odette Kelada , Crawley : UWA Publishing , 2017 11571879 2017 single work novel fantasy

'‘Sometimes I think there are a great many women behind, and sometimes only one, and she crawls around fast, and her crawling shakes it all over.’ '                                             'The Yellow Wallpaper' ~ Charlotte Perkins Gilman

'On stage, a woman named Sybil Jones is making a speech. She is talking about the significance of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story 'The Yellow Wallpaper'. Behind her sits a panel of writers, facing their audience, and one writer drawing Sybil’s likeness in a contemplative daze.

'The Sybil in the writer’s drawing starts to move, like the women behind Gilman’s wallpaper. She shakes. She takes the writer by the hand and leads her down into the paper, into the dark recesses of her mind, and into Australia’s past — into the real and imagined lives of Australia’s women writers. 

'Drawing Sybylla is a novel about the challenges women writers have faced in pursuing the writing life.' (Publication summary)
1 Love Is a Battlefield : ‘Maternal’ Emotions and White Catharsis in Baz Luhrmann's Post-Apology ‘Australia’ Odette Kelada , 2014 single work criticism
— Appears in: Studies in Australasian Cinema , vol. 8 no. 2/3 2014; (p. 83-95) 'In Baz Luhrmann's Australia (2008), audiences encounter emotive scenes including depictions of an Indigenous child stolen from a white ‘mother’ in a time of war. Given that the film is framed with reference to the history of the Stolen Generations and the Apology, this paper explores the functions of such a narrative in constructions of the white imaginary. Inverting truths around the destruction of Indigenous families and policies of assimilation, management and control requires in this instance the appropriation of the maternal domain of the Indigenous mother by the white female body; an English woman reclaiming ‘her’ land. Through such a repositioning, anxieties around belonging and guilt may undergo a form of catharsis via the apparent empathetic engagement with a ‘stolen’ maternal love. Drawing on Ghassan Hage's insights into the possessive logic of the ‘white’ nation and Sara Ahmed's analysis of emotional politics, this article analyses the connection between the films Australia and Jedda (1955), critiquing the potential for such a cinematic catharsis to assuage shame, and reify national virtue. I contend that there is a violence inherent in colonising ‘love’ through such fantasies that inhabit the locus and stories of ‘the other’ at the moment of ‘Apology’, neutralising threats to negative conceptions of self as benevolent bodies at ‘home’ in the imaginary landscape of Australia.' (Publication abstract)
1 Falling from View : Whiteness, Appropriation and the Complicities of Desire in The Postcolonial Eye Anne Maxwell , Odette Kelada , 2012 single work review
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 12 no. 3 2012;
— Review of The Postcolonial Eye : White Australian Desire and the Visual Field of Race Alison Ravenscroft , 2012 single work criticism
1 Animal Handlers : Australian Women Writers on Sexuality and the Female Body Odette Kelada , 2012 single work criticism
— Appears in: Outskirts : Feminisms along the Edge , May vol. 26 no. 2012; 'The year 2011 saw the igniting of mass protest around the issue of sexual double standards for women with numerous marches worldwide called 'SlutWalks'. Thousands of women across a range of countries including America, Europe, Britain and Australia took to the streets to defend the right of women to dress and behave freely without stigmatisation and violence. The 'SlutWalks' started in reaction to a local policeman in Toronto telling a class of college students to avoid dressing like 'sluts' if they did not wish to be victimised (SlutWalk Toronto site). The public protest in response to this incident demonstrates resistance to historically embedded discourses that demean women's sexuality and blame women for abuse and rape they suffer. Terms such as 'slut' perpetuate a virgin/whore dichotomy fundamental to the oppression of female sexual self-expression. These marches are a recent example that follows on from a tradition of mass protests for women's sexual equality and right to safety such as 'Reclaim the Night'. Drawing on writing and conversations with poets Dorothy Porter and Gig Ryan, novelists Drusilla Modjeska, Kate Grenville, Carmel Bird and Melissa Lucashenko and playwright, Leah Purcell, this article offers insights into individual creative women's responses to this theme of women's sexuality. I argue that the work and ideas of these women are examples of the unique and powerful dialogue that can happen through a focus on creativity and female stories in Australia.' (Author's introduction)
1 The Stolen River : Possession and Race Representation in Grenville’s Colonial Narrative Odette Kelada , 2010 single work criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , no. 10 2010; 'Grenville's representations of race and power relations in The Secret River offer important insights into the strategies and performance of whiteness in Australian contemporary literature, particularly in relation to the idea of the 'reconciliation' between white Australia and Indigenous peoples. This article attempts to map a context for representations of race in The Secret River in order to contribute to critiques of literary texts as manifestations of cultural territories consistent with the places and times which produce them.' (Author's abstract)
1 Eve 1954 Odette Kelada , 2009 single work short story
— Appears in: Hecate , vol. 35 no. 1/2 2009; (p. 273-287)
1 Is the Personal Still Political? : Contemporary Australian Women Writers Waltzing to a Different Tune Odette Kelada , 2009 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Cultural History , April vol. 27 no. 1 2009; (p. 25-34) This article asks the question of whether the personal is still political in Australia. Through the 1960s, 70s and 80s, feminism was at the forefront of new ways of thinking and defining social and political relations. Making the political personal meant that women's experiences were deemed as worthy as men's of being translated into literature, politics and the public domain. Many contemporary Australian women writers produce writing encompassing this personal as political approach. As marginalised identities, female voices may offer alternative perspectives that undermine the stakes prized by dominant western powers. However as the expansive spaces forged for minority voices diminish in the current political context, with Anne Summer's The End of Equality (2003) exposing the hypocrisy of equality of opportunity, women's right to abortion back in the headlines and publications such as Keith Windschuttle's Fabrications of Australian History (2002) indicating conservative groups are re-instigating what should be long out-of-date battles, this article aims to chart the relationship between the personal and political. Drawing on interviews I conducted with women writers including Hilary McPhee, Drusilla Modjeska, Leah Purcell, Melissa Lucashenko, Gig Ryan and Hannie Rayson, it examines how some women writers have been silenced in the political public space with the 'War on Terror' and a backlash against the feminist argument that the personal is political which echoes the silencing of women's public voices from the Second World War to the Cold War. It investigates ideas of political responsibility as writers and examines the way new technology has allowed subversive voices to enter public debate as with the online publication New Matilda. (Author's abstract)
1 'As the Past Coils Like a Spring' : Bridging the History of Australian Women Writers with Contemporary Australian Women Writers' Stories Odette Kelada , 2006 single work criticism
— Appears in: Lilith , vol. 15 no. 2006; (p. 48-60) 'This article draws on interview excerpts with contemporary women writers to examine how the stories of past Australian women writers can be linked with the lives of women writing in Australia at the present time' (p. 48)
1 Skating on Thin Paper: A Journey in the Guise of a Twentieth Century Australian Woman Writer Odette Kelada , 2005 single work criticism
— Appears in: Journal of the Department of English , vol. 32 no. 1-2 2005; (p. 112-131)
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