Tanya Dalziell Tanya Dalziell i(A16782 works by)
Born: Established: 1973 ;
Gender: Female
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Works By

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1 y separately published work icon London Tanya Dalziell , Melbourne : Melbourne University Press , 2024 28051709 2024 single work biography

'A revealing portrait of Joan London's intimate writings about family, love and loss.

'Joan London's remarkable body of work, including the award-winning novels and short fiction The Golden Age, Gilgamesh and Sister Ships, tells everyday stories of family, love and loss, with her signature poetic vision. London's stories portray how ordinary people get caught up in extraordinary circumstances and come to live in a world of violence and fear, of beauty and hope.

'In London Tanya Dalziell takes the reader through the literary career of the Western Australian living treasure, journeying through space and time to offer a unique insight into the development of Australian literature and women's writing across the past four decades.

'London engages deeply with Joan London's work to reflect on its artistry and the conversations it provokes with the changing times. Dalziell invites readers to traverse London's writing and discover the significant contributions she has made to the contemporary literary landscape.' (Publication summary)

1 The Charismatic, Enigmatic Charmian Clift: a Writer Who Lived the Dream and Confronted Its Consequences Tanya Dalziell , Paul Genoni , 2023 single work column
— Appears in: The Conversation , 30 August 2023;
1 Writing, Women and the Australian Novel Tanya Dalziell , 2023 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Cambridge History of the Australian Novel 2023;
1 Sleep’s Sweet Relief Tanya Dalziell , 2022 single work criticism
— Appears in: Inner and Outer Worlds : Gail Jones' Fiction 2022;
1 From the Origins of Gallipoli to an Orange Head : Incidents in the Friendship between Sidney Nolan and George Johnston Paul Genoni , Tanya Dalziell , 2021 single work criticism
— Appears in: Journal of Australian Studies , vol. 45 no. 1 2021; (p. 76-93)

'This article presents results of research using the diaries of Sidney Nolan, recently made available by the National Library of Australia. In particular, it focuses on two matters relating to Nolan’s lengthy friendship with Australian journalist and novelist George Johnston: clarifying the origin of Nolan’s Gallipoli series, which is strongly associated with a period in 1955 and 1956 that Nolan spent with Johnston on the Greek island of Hydra; and secondly, providing evidence regarding a curiosity with the series of portraits known as the Adelaide Ladies, which Nolan painted after spending time with Johnston at the Adelaide Festival of Arts in 1964. With regard to the Gallipoli series, Nolan’s diaries establish that the origin of this series is considerably later than has previously been believed; likewise, our research suggests that the diaries support the contention that a portrait that has long been included among the Adelaide Ladies is in fact a portrait of Johnston.' (Publication abstract)

1 Australia’s Long Relationship with Romance Tanya Dalziell , 2020 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Routledge Companion to Australian Literature 2020; (p. 365-373)

'Romance is a highly contested field in Australian literary studies. It is around romance that debates over national identity, and literary form and value, have taken place. Romance has also been recognised as a repository for the colonial ideologies that saw indigenous people denigrated, and violently displaced from their land, in the name of empire, adventure and progress. At the centre of much romance is white heterosexual femininity, a flashpoint for concerns and desires relating to not only nation-building and colonial undertakings but also the role of white women in these social projects. Yet, as close readings of romance suggest, its reputation as formulaic is misleading. A historical view recognises that romance adapts to the contexts in which it is written and read; it has been called on to challenge settler colonialism and question heteronormativity. What unites scholarship on the popular romance is the recognition that it is a genre, with complex relationships to practices of readership, meaning-making, systems of value (both economic and aesthetic) and broader sociocultural interests and anxieties.' 

Source: Abstract. 

1 3 y separately published work icon Gail Jones : Word, Image, Ethics Tanya Dalziell , Sydney : Sydney University Press , 2020 19560808 2020 multi chapter work criticism

'Gail Jones: Word, Image, Ethics is an accessible guide to the writings of Gail Jones, the award-winning Australian author, essayist and academic.

'Drawing together ideas from literature, art, philosophy and photography, the volume presents a compelling analysis of Jones’ literary commitment to the political and the personal, and reflects on how and why we interpret literary texts.

'An essential contribution to the intersecting fields of Australian studies and international literature, Gail Jones: Word, Image, Ethics offers innovative insights into the writing of one of Australia’s most accomplished authors.' (Publication summary)

1 y separately published work icon Tom Morison's Golden Christmas and Other Lost Australian Goldmining Stories Tanya Dalziell (editor), Braddon : Obiter Publishing , 2019 18349732 2019 anthology short story

'Tom Morison is a reluctant freeholder in South Australia and unsuited to farming. But Tom is redeemed when his education in geology and chemistry finally gives the family their best Christmas ever – a ‘golden’ one. In this and eight other ‘lost’ stories of gold mining in colonial-era Australia, a colourful cast of characters star in stories of love and crime, loyalty and betrayal, spirituality and avarice. And the eternal lure of gold and its corrupting influence are ever-present.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

1 Humanitarian Aid Among Aegean Neighbours : Joice NanKivell Loch’s A Fringe of Blue Tanya Dalziell , 2019 single work criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 19 no. 1 2019;

'Joice NanKivell Loch’s life was dedicated to helping others. It was a role she wrote about in her autobiography, A Fringe of Blue (1968), which she completed with assistance from friends while recovering after a bad fall from a worm-eaten balcony of the Byzantine tower on the Athos peninsula in eastern Greece where she had lived for most of the preceding four decades. This essay thinks concurrently about her two commitments—to writing and to humanitarian work—as they come together in A Fringe of Blue. Of particular interest are long sections of NanKivell Loch’s autobiography that have as their focus her experiences in the Aegean, where she made her home and found herself a neighbour to refugees she had initially set out to assist.'  (Publication abstract)

1 'A Woman Ahead of Her Time' : Remembering the Australian Writer Charmian Clift, 50 Years On Tanya Dalziell , Paul Genoni , 2019 single work column
— Appears in: The Conversation , 8 July 2019;
1 9 y separately published work icon Half the Perfect World : Writers, Dreamers and Drifters on Hydra, 1955–1964 Paul Genoni , Tanya Dalziell , Clayton : Monash University Publishing , 2018 14983146 2018 multi chapter work biography

''Their years in the Aegean may have been half perfect at best, but it was on Hydra that they connected to a place, a lifestyle and a community that allowed them to live and express themselves intensely, and as they wished. They refused to believe their dreams were an illusion, or that boldness, ambition and a leap-of-faith might not allow them to reach beyond the constraints of their birthright'.

'Half the Perfect World tells the story of the post-war international artist community that formed on the Greek island of Hydra. Most famously, it included renowned singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen and his partner Marianne Ihlen, as well as many other artists and writers including the Australian literary couple, Charmian Clift and George Johnston, who fostered this fabled colony.

'Drawing on many previously unseen letters, manuscripts and diaries, and richly illustrated by the eyewitness photographs of LIFE magazine photo-journalist James Burke, Half the Perfect World reveals the private lives and relationships of the Hydra expatriates. It charts the promise of a creative life that drew many of them to the island, and documents the fracturing of the community as it came under pressure from personal ambitions and wider social changes. For all the unrealised youthful ambitions, internal strife and personal tragedy that attends this story, the authors nonetheless find that the example of these writers, dreamers and drifters continues to resonate and inspire.' (Publication summary)

1 Review of Elizabeth Harrower: Critical Essays, Edited by Elizabeth McMahon and Brigitta Olubas Tanya Dalziell , 2018 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , 9 July vol. 33 no. 2 2018;

— Review of Elizabeth Harrower : Critical Essays 2017 anthology criticism
1 The Case of a Very Loose Canon: The Shane Martin ‘Pot-boilers’ of George Johnston Paul Genoni , Tanya Dalziell , 2017 single work criticism
— Appears in: Southerly , vol. 77 no. 1 2017; (p. 50-76)

' We are first introduced to the character of Professor Ronald Challis in Shane Martin's detective fiction Twelve Girls in the Garden (1957) as he walks idly beside the River Thames, which "on this particular evening" the third person narration informs us, "was the of Turner rather than Whistler" (3). As Challis strolls from Pimlico to Chelsea, he muses on the circumstances that have recently led him from an archaeological dig in Greece to London. For "no reason at all" he then begins to think about past friends and he dwelling they once inhabited in Tite Street (4). (It was in this street in Chelsea, and in the same house once owned by James McNeill Whistler, that the Australian artist Colin Colahan and his wife Ursua lived during World War Two. Twelve Girls in the Garden is dedicated to them both "for fun.") (Introduction)

1 Relearning Whiteness : David Malouf's Remembering Babylon Tanya Dalziell , 2016 single work criticism
— Appears in: Teaching Australian and New Zealand Literature 2016; (p. 155-164)

‘David Malouf’s novel Remembering Babylon (1993) enjoys a prominent place in the contemporary Australian literary landscape and raises a number of intriguing ideas about pedagogy and whiteness, which this essay explores. The essay does so on the premise, admittedly open to examination, that literature has a role to play in enabling connections across cultures, even cultures (or perhaps particularly cultures) that would seem to have much in common, like Australia and the United States: the English language, a history of British colonization, democratic forms of government, popular cultures promoted by global corporations. By focusing on Malouf’s novel through the calibrated lens of critical whiteness pedagogy, students are offered some distance, or difference, that will allow discussions of whiteness that can then be interrogated in the students’ own learning and social contexts, including but also extending beyond personal experience. This approach aligns with observations in pedagogical literature that an emphasis on individual circumstances alone ‘effectively limits any systematic challenge of the systemic structures’ (Solomon et al. 161). Engagement with Malouf’s novel additionally provides students with the opportunity to enter into a fictional space that invites extratextual immersion in a culture or cultures other than their own. This challenge raises the issues of power and knowledge that Malouf’s novel subtly thematizes and that can be a close reading of the text coupled with contextual material.’ (Introduction)

1 'Taking the Flowery Bed Back to Australia' : The Repatriation of Charmian Clift and George Johnston Tanya Dalziell , Paul Genoni , 2016 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , 1 June vol. 31 no. 3 2016;
'Since coming to national attention in the immediate post-World War II years Charmian Clift and George Johnston have remained an enigmatic and almost ‘mythical’ Australian literary couple. At the heart of their shared biographies is the near-decade they spent on the Aegean island of Hydra between 1955 and 1964 where they were at the centre of an international community of writers and artists, and their eventual repatriation to Australia when their years abroad culminated in the triumphant publication of Johnston’s classic novel My Brother Jack. This paper examines aspects of these years on Hydra, exploring the co-dependent but often difficult relationship the Clift and Johnston shared with other expatriates at the same time as their own marriage endured many crises amid the struggle to write fiction of lasting importance.'
1 Australians in Aspic : Picturing Charmian Clift's and George Johnston's Expatriation Tanya Dalziell , Paul Genoni , 2015 single work criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 15 no. 3 2015;
'This paper considers how the expatriation of Australian authors Charmian Clift and George Johnston on the Greek island of Hydra has been represented photographically in a recently uncovered archive of over 1500 images. The photographs were taken by Life Magazine staff photographer James Burke in the summer of 1960. The analysis of the photographs is juxtaposed at key points with text from Clift's memoir Peel Me a Lotus, and the discussion focuses on the way the interplay between image and text produces supportive and/or contested representations of this particular experience of Australian literary expatriation.' (Publication abstract)
1 Desperately Seeking Suzanne : Photographs in Suzanne Chick's Adoptee-narrative Searching for Charmian Tanya Dalziell , Paul Genoni , 2015 single work criticism
— Appears in: Life Writing , vol. 12 no. 4 2015; (p. 385-399)

'In 1994, Suzanne Chick published Searching for Charmian, an adoptee autobiography that relates Chick's discovery of her birth-mother's identity. Chick had been aware from a young age that she was adopted, but only discovered in middle age that her birth-mother was well-known Australian author and journalist, Charmian Clift.

'Unlike the reconciliation trajectory that many adoption autobiographies take, a physical reunion between Clift and Chick was impossible as Clift committed suicide in 1969. In the absence of any prospect of physical reunion, Searching for Charmian relies upon other narrative structures. Resemblance as a marker of familial relationship becomes the text's organising principle, one that is thrown into relief with the numerous photographs Chick encounters in the course of her search, and a number of which are reproduced in the text. Significantly, the photographs of Clift are not only, or merely, the person they represent; Chick's narrative insists on the specific context of her adoption in order to create and read these photographs anew. The photographs are integral components of the life-narrative that turns around the importance of resemblance and difference in establishing this adoptee's identity. They are also potent markers of the ways in which visual media can transform ideas of family, of social relations and of the self.' (Publication abstract)

1 [Review] Domestic Fiction in Colonial Australia and New Zealand Tanya Dalziell , 2015 single work review
— Appears in: Journal of Australian Studies , July vol. 39 no. 2 2015; (p. 274-275)

— Review of Domestic Fiction in Colonial Australia and New Zealand 2014 multi chapter work criticism
1 Writing Childhood in Tim Winton’s Fiction Tanya Dalziell , 2014 single work criticism
— Appears in: Tim Winton : Critical Essays 2014; (p. 183-198)

Tanya Dalziell examines 'the complex representations of childhood and storytelling in Winton's work.'

1 Charmain Clift and George Johnston, Hydra 1960 : The 'Lost' Photographs of James Burke Paul Genoni , Tanya Dalziell , 2014 single work criticism
— Appears in: Meanjin , vol. 73 no. 1 2014; (p. 18-37)

'In one of her many essays, Charmian Clift writes of the melancholic experience of feeling like a photograph. She has been asked to address a group of students at Wollongong High School, a school she had attended, and in preparing her speech she turns to a photograph that appears in the school's fiftieth-anniversary commemorative booklet. The photograph depicts a class from Clift's time at the school, 'formally posed with the boys lined up behind the girls and their hands resting on the girls' shoulders' ('On Turning slightly Sepia', p. 48 (see References below)), and as photographs do it evokes in Clift's memory small details that are not evidenced in the image itself: 'I can still see one of those girls arched in a perfect swallow dive, and remember precisely a collar of little pearl buttons on a blue crepe dress that another of them wore to an end-of-term dance that year'(48). The photograph also prompts Clift to consider how different her teenage circumstances were from those of the students she is to speak to, their faces shining with the confidence that faith in the goodness of the future affords. Before those faces now momentarily turned to her, she thinks of herself as the past, and wonders, 'if they realized that standing up before them I knew myself to be curling at the edges and turning slightly sepia' (51).' (Publication abstract)

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