Troy Potter Troy Potter i(A109263 works by)
Gender: Male
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.

Works By

Preview all
1 5 Books for Kids and Teens That Positively Portray Trans and Gender-diverse Lives Troy Potter , 2023 single work review
— Appears in: The Conversation , 31 March 2023;
— Review of My Shadow Is Purple Scott Stuart , 2020 single work picture book ; Euphoria Kids Alison Evans , 2020 single work novel
1 Teen Summer Reads : How to Escape to Another World After a Year Stuck in This One Troy Potter , 2020 single work column
— Appears in: The Conversation , 22 December 2020;
1 The Kids Are Alright : Young Adult Post-disaster Novels Can Teach Us about Trauma and Survival Troy Potter , 2020 single work column
— Appears in: The Conversation , 1 June 2020;

'COVID-19 is changing the way we live. Panic buying, goods shortages, lockdown – these are new experiences for most of us. But it’s standard fare for the protagonists of young adult (YA) post-disaster novels.' (Introduction)
1 1 y separately published work icon Books for Boys : Manipulating Genre in Contemporary Australian Young Adult Fiction Troy Potter , Trier : WVT : Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier , 2018 17399647 2018 multi chapter work criticism

'Populist rhetoric regarding a "crisis in masculinity" has seen concerns raised about the twinned issues of boys and reading, which has culminated in a call for more "books for boys" in the fields of children's and young adult literature. Books for Boys examines the ways masculinity is both represented in Australian young adult literature and representative of wider gender discourses. Focusing on texts produced since the 1990s, and adopting a generic approach, Troy Potter shows how genre is implicated in books for boys to respond to and shape public perceptions of masculinity. While some novels may rethink and reconfigure genre and gender, the author demonstrates through close readings that the majority of books for boys reinscribe traditional constructions of both in order to model "appropriate" gendered practices.'   (Publication summary)
1 Identifying with Trauma : Reframing Anzac in Contemporary Australian Young Adult Literature Troy Potter , 2016 single work criticism
— Appears in: Bookbird , vol. 54 no. 3 2016; (p. 37-43) 'This article examines how Anzac (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) is reimagined in two recent Australian young adult historical novels, David Metzenthen’s Black Water (2007) and Robert Newton’s When We Were Two (2012). Both novels are set during the First World War and participate in recent trends to recast the Australian soldier as victim. The authors’ use of trauma functions as a unifying force, enabling contemporary readers to feel some empathy for, and thus identify with, fictional soldiers. However, this use of trauma becomes problematic when it is figured as a male rite of passage, as trauma then functions to include certain masculinities while excluding other subjectivities. Moreover, while reframing the experience of war through the lens of trauma encourages reader identification with Anzac, it nevertheless effaces many of the social and political aspects of war, thereby promoting romanticized notions of war and providing only a superficial understanding of its causes.' (Abstract)
1 Ghosts of Australia Past : Postcolonial Haunting in Australian Adolescent Mystery Novels Troy Potter , 2015 single work criticism
— Appears in: International Research in Children's Literature , December vol. 8 no. 2 2015; (p. 185-200) 'This essay explores the use of haunting in two Australian adolescent mystery novels, Victor Kelleher's Baily's Bones (1988) and Anthony Eaton's A New Kind of Dreaming (2001). Both novels mobilise the mystery genre as a means to interrogate Australia's colonial past and neocolonial present. The function of the spatial environments in which the novels take place and the construction and function of haunting in each novel is interrogated. It is argued that haunting is figured as a disruptive process whereby the repressed colonial scene intrudes on the present, such that the haunting the teenage protagonists experience encourages them to enquire into the past. While on the one hand the novels advocate a renewed interrogation of Australia's past in order to develop a more comprehensive understanding of the present, a closer reading of the texts reveals that the novels fail to sustain their postcolonial endeavours. Thus, while adolescent mystery fiction is a genre that can be mobilised in the name of postcolonial enquiry, the difficulty of doing so effectively is illustrative of the wider challenge of achieving decolonisation.' (Publication summary)
1 Abject Magic : Reasoning Madness in Justine Larbalestier's Magic or Madness Trilogy Troy Potter , 2014 single work criticism
— Appears in: Children's Literature in Education , September vol. 45 no. 3 2014; (p. 255-270)

'This paper explores the representation of magic and madness in Justine Larbalestier’s Magic or Madness trilogy (2005–2007). Throughout the series, magic is constructed as an abject and disabling force that threatens to disable magic-wielders, either through madness or death. Despite being represented as a ubiquitous force, the consequences of magic are gendered, and the female protagonist of the trilogy, Reason, sets out to remove the threat of magic. The intersections between ableist, magical and feminine discourses are explored via a feminist disability politics and Kristeva’s concept of abjection. While, at times, the trilogy challenges the ability/disability binary schism, the narrative closure reaffirms dualistic constructions of reason/madness, ability/disability, reality/fantasy and masculine/feminine. Thus, rather than redressing social attitudes towards mental illness and critiquing normative constructions of disability and the other, Larbalestier’s trilogy reaffirms dualistic and normative constructions of mental illness.'
1 (Re)constructing Masculinity : Representations of Men and Masculinity in Australian Young Adult Literature Troy Potter , 2007 single work criticism
— Appears in: Papers: Explorations into Children's Literature , May vol. 17 no. 1 2007; (p. 28-35) Potter is concerned with analysing how representations of masculinity draw upon 'multiple masculine discourses present within a culture at any given time', in ways which ultimately support the dominant configuration of hegemonic masculinity (p.28). He looks at two Australian realist fictions for young adults, Boys of Blood and Bone (Metzenthen) and Burning Eddy (Gardner), arguing that they are 'constrained by elements of the normative and to some extent mythic Australian masculinity' in ways that reinforce Australian masculinist traditions (p.34). Potter contends that both texts maintain and perpetuate patriarchal systems of dominance and oppression by constructing the notion of masculinity at the expense of women's subordination. However, he makes the point that Gardner's use of hybridization introduces the possibility of challenging masculine biased discourses by privileging an alternative sexuality that is a 'hybrid of masculine and feminine traits' (p.33).
X