Sydney University Press Sydney University Press i(A38167 works by) (Organisation) assertion
Born: Established: 1962 Sydney City, Inner Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, ;
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1 y separately published work icon Phoenix : The University of Sydney Writers Journal Adrienne Jerram (editor), Roberta Lowing (editor), Julianne Wargren (editor), 2006- Sydney : The University of Sydney Creative Writing Program Sydney University Press , Z1334945 2006- periodical (3 issues) Poetry and fiction by students graduating from the Sydney University's Master of Creative Writing Program.
1 1 y separately published work icon Australian Literary Reprints G. A. Wilkes (editor), Sydney : Sydney University Press , Z840650 series - publisher
The AustLit Series Sydney University Press (publisher), series - publisher
Australian Historical Reprints Sydney University Press (publisher), series - publisher
1 y separately published work icon Time, Tide and History : Essays on the Writing of Eleanor Dark Brigid Rooney (editor), Fiona Morrison (editor), Sydney : Sydney University Press , 2024 27819737 2024 anthology essay

'Time, Tide and History: Essays on the Writing of Eleanor Dark is the first book-length edited collection of scholarly essays to treat the full span of Eleanor Dark’s fiction, advancing a recent revival of critical and scholarly interest in Dark’s writing.

'This volume not only establishes a new view of Dark’s fiction as a whole, but also reflects on the ways in which her fiction speaks to our present moment, in the context of a globally fraught, post-pandemic, Anthropocene era. Above all, the revisiting of Dark’s fiction is mandated by a desire to recognise the ways in which it anticipates vital debates in Australian literary and national culture today, about settler colonialism and its legacies, and with regard to the histories, condition and status of Australia’s First Nations people.

'This volume interweaves varied topical themes, from formal debates about modernism, historical realism and melodrama, to questions about modernity’s time and space, about gender and cultural difference, and about the specifics of built and natural environments. Time, Tide and History intentionally loosens the conventions of literary scholarship by including other kinds of work alongside critical and scholarly readings: a written dialogue between two contemporary historians about Dark’s legacy, and a biographical piece on the life and role of Eleanor Dark’s husband, Eric Payten Dark.

'Bringing together the interwar fiction’s feminist and modernist dimensions with the historical turn of The Timeless Land trilogy, the essays in Time, Tide and History collectively pursue ethical and political questions while teasing out the distinctive thematic, formal and aesthetic features of Dark’s fiction.' (Publication summary)

1 y separately published work icon Yuupurnju : A Warlpiri Song Cycle Carmel O'Shannessy , Jampijinpa , Henry Cook Jakamarra , Steven Dixon Japanangka , Myfany Turpin , Jerry Patrick Jangala , Sydney : Sydney University Press , 2024 27659536 2024 single work lyric/song criticism

'Yuupurnju: A Warlpiri song cycle documents a ceremonial song cycle situated within the traditional kurdiji “shield” ceremony, as sung by Warlpiri Elder Henry Cooke Anderson Jakamarra at Lajamanu, Northern Territory, in 2013.

'The song cycle relates to a women’s jukurrpa Dreaming narrative, and tells the story of a group of ancestral women on a journey across the country. Jakamarra performed the songs (recorded by Carmel O’Shannessy) to make them available to the Warlpiri community and the wider public.

'Yuupurnju: A Warlpiri song cycle includes the words of the songs in Warlpiri, interpretation in English as given by the singer, Jakamarra, and Warlpiri Elders Jerry Patrick Jangala OAM, Wanta Stephen Patrick Pawu-Kurlpurlurnu Jampijinpa and Steven Dixon Japanangka, and detailed musical notation by ethnomusicologist Myfany Turpin. It includes a foreword by two senior custodians, Jerry Patrick Jangala OAM, and Wanta Jampijinpa' (Publication summary)

1 1 y separately published work icon Vitality and Change in Warlpiri Songs Georgia Curran (editor), Linda Barwick (editor), Nicolas Peterson (editor), Valerie Napaljarri Martin (editor), Simon Japangardi Fisher (editor), Sydney : Sydney University Press , 2024 27280751 2024 anthology essay

'Warlpiri songs hold together the ceremonies that structure and bind social relationships, and encode detailed information about Warlpiri country, cosmology and kinship. Today, only a small group of the oldest generations has full knowledge of ceremonial songs and their associated meanings, and there is widespread concern about the transmission of these songs to future generations.

'While musical and cultural change is normal, threats to attrition driven by large-scale external forces including sedentarisation and modernisation put strain on the systems of social relationships that have sustained Warlpiri cultures for millennia. Despite these concerns, songs remain key to Warlpiri identity and cultural heritage.

'Vitality and Change in Warlpiri Songs draws together insights from senior Warlpiri singers and custodians of these song traditions, profiling a number of senior singers and their views of the changes that they have witnessed over their lifetimes. The chapters in this book are written by Warlpiri custodians in collaboration with researchers who have worked in Warlpiri communities over the last five decades.

'Spanning interdisciplinary perspectives including musicology, linguistics, anthropology, cultural studies, dance ethnography and gender studies, chapters range from documentation of well-known and large-scale Warlpiri ceremonies, to detailed analysis of smaller-scale public rituals and the motivations behind newer innovative forms of ceremonial expression.

'Vitality and Change in Warlpiri Songs ultimately uncovers the complexity entailed in maintaining the vital components of classical Warlpiri singing practices and the deep desires that Warlpiri people have to maintain this important element of their cultural identity into the future.' (Publication summary)

1 y separately published work icon The Letters of Charles Harpur and His Circle Charles Harpur , Paul Eggert , Chris Vening , Sydney : Sydney University Press , 2023 26842075 2023 selected work correspondence

'This is the first collection in print of the letters of Australian colonial poet Charles Harpur (1813–68) and his circle. Supported by extensive annotation newly prepared for this edition, the 200 letters and life-documents open up successive phases of colonial culture from the 1830s to the 1860s in a newly focused way. Harpur’s two-way correspondence with poet Henry Kendall, and with poet and future premier of NSW Henry Parkes, is especially impressive.

'The letters selected for this edition document Harpur’s life in a previously unavailable way. They reveal the intriguing struggle of a high-minded young man to pursue a serious vocation as a poet amidst the unpromising contours of colonial New South Wales society. Despite bearing the taint of a convict family background, Harpur took his vocation with utmost seriousness and had much to endure before he would find recognition as a poet, mainly in colonial newspapers where his poems made over 900 appearances.

'This edition captures the process in detail, as well as the production in 1883 of his Poems in book form. Even though editorially mangled, Poems confirmed his reputation and led to his presence in dozens of anthologies down to the present day.' (Publication summary)

1 2 y separately published work icon Shooting Blanks at the Anzac Legend : Australian Women’s War Fictions Donna Coates , Sydney : Sydney University Press , 2023 26646838 2023 multi chapter work criticism

'War is traditionally considered a male experience. By extension, the genre of war literature is a male-dominated field, and the tale of the battlefield remains the privileged (and only canonised) war story.

'In Australia, although women have written extensively about their wartime experiences, their voices have been distinctively silenced. Shooting Blanks at the Anzac Legend calls for a re-definition of war literature to include the numerous voices of women writers, and further recommends a re-reading of Australian national literatures, with women’s war writing foregrounded, to break the hold of a male-dominated literary tradition and pass on a vital, but unexplored, women’s tradition.

'Shooting Blanks at the Anzac Legend examines the rich body of World Wars I and II and Vietnam War literature by Australian women, providing the critical attention and treatment that they deserve. Donna Coates records the reaction of Australian women writers to these conflicts, illuminating the complex role of gender in the interpretation of war and in the cultural history of twentieth-century Australia.

'By visiting an astonishing number of unfamiliar, non-canonical texts, Shooting Blanks at the Anzac Legend profoundly alters our understanding of how Australian women writers have interpreted war, especially in a nation where the experience of colonising a frontier has spawned enduring myths of identity and statehood.' (Publication summary)

1 y separately published work icon Jakarda Wuka (Too Many Stories) Liam M. Brady , John Bradley , Amanda Kearney , Yanyuwa Elders , Sydney : Sydney University Press , 2023 26415884 2023 single work prose Indigenous story

'…ngabaya painted all this, you know when we were kids we would come here and look and sometimes the paintings would change, they were always changing.” Annie a-Karrakayny

'Fully illustrated, Jakarda Wuka (Too Many Stories) draws on a combined 70+ years of collaborative research involving Yanyuwa Elders, anthropologists, and an archaeologist to tell a unique story about the rock art from Yanyuwa Country in northern Australia’s southwest Gulf of Carpentaria.  

'Australia’s rock art is recognised globally for its antiquity, abundance, distinctive motifs and the deep and abiding knowledge Indigenous people continue to hold for these powerful symbols. However, books about Australian rock art jointly written by Indigenous communities, anthropologists, and archaeologists are extremely rare.

'Combining Yanyuwa and western knowledge, the authors embark on a journey to reveal the true meaning of Yanyuwa rock art. At the heart of this book is the understanding that a painting is not just a painting, nor is it an isolated phenomenon or a static representation. What underpins Yanyuwa perceptions of their rock art is kinship, because people are kin to everything and everywhere on Country.

'Jakarda Wuka highlights the multidimensional nature of Yanyuwa rock art: it is an active social agent in the landscape, capable of changing according to different circumstances and events, connected to the epic travels and songs of Ancestral Beings (Dreamings), and related to various aspects of Yanyuwa life such as ceremony, health and wellbeing, identity, and narratives concerning past and present-day events.

'In a time where Indigenous communities, archaeologists, and anthropologists are seeking new ways to work together and better engage with Indigenous knowledges to interpret the “archaeological record”, Jakarda Wuka delivers a masterful and profound narrative of Yanyuwa Country and its rock art.' (Publication summary)

1 y separately published work icon Moments in Between : University of Sydney Anthology 2022 Sydney : Sydney University Press , 2023 25539885 2023 anthology prose short story prose 'When difficult days come rolling in, it is the nature of human beings to turn to the things that keep us afloat. Sometimes, they're small, so dismissible that to put weight on them seems a fool's errand: the smell of baking bread; the joy you feel when, finally, your home garden begins to sprout; the moments we don't appreciate when life is going right, only when it's going wrong. But it is these simple pleasures that make us who we are. In a world of chaos, complications and controversy, it is these thoughts that calm, cultivate and connect. These pages contain the scribbles of pleasure, a look into the simplest of joys, the wildest of passions, found in the moments in between.' (Publication summary) 
 
1 1 y separately published work icon The Old Songs Are Always New : Singing Traditions of the Tiwi Islands Genevieve Campbell , Sydney : Sydney University Press , 2023 25427823 2023 multi chapter work criticism lyric/song

'Approximately 1300 ethnographic field recordings of Tiwi songs, made between 1912 and 1981, are archived at the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) in Canberra.

'In November 2009, Genevieve Campbell and eleven Tiwi colleagues travelled to Canberra to reclaim these archived songs and song texts. The Old Songs are Always New explores their return home to the Tiwi Islands and reveals that the fundamentally contemporary, topical and current nature of the Tiwi song culture has resulted in the preservation of a rich social, cultural and historical oral record.

'Campbell describes the melody, rhythm, vocal technique, language, performance context and function of the twelve Tiwi song types, and gives an overview of the language and poetic devices used in song composition.'(Publication summary)

1 2 y separately published work icon Middlebrow Modernism : Eleanor Dark's Interwar Fiction Melinda Cooper , Sydney : Sydney University Press , 2022 24744452 2022 multi chapter work criticism

'Eleanor Dark (1901-85) is one of Australia's most innovative 20th-century writers. Her extensive oeuvre includes ten novels published from the early 1930s to the late 1950s, and represents a significant engagement with global modernity from a unique position within settler culture. Yet Dark's contribution to 20th-century literature has been undervalued in the fields of both Australian literary studies and world literature. Although two biographies have been written about her life, there has been no book-length critical study of her writing published since 1976.

'Middlebrow Modernism counters this neglect by providing the first full-length critical survey of Eleanor Dark's writing to be published in over four decades. Focusing on the fiction that Dark produced during the interwar years and reading this in the context of her larger body of work, this book positions Dark's writing as important to the study of Australian literature and global modernism.

'Melinda Cooper argues that Dark's fiction exhibits a distinctive aesthetic of middlebrow modernism, which blends attributes of literary modernism with popular fiction. It seeks to mediate and reconcile apparent binaries: modernism and mass culture; liberal humanism and experimental aesthetics; settler society and international modernity. The term middlebrow modernism also captures the way Dark negotiated cosmopolitan commitments with more place-based attachments to nation and local community within the mid-20th century.

'Middlebrow Modernism posits that Dark's fiction and the broader phenomenon of Australian modernism offer essential case studies for larger debates operating within global modernist and world literature studies, providing perspectives these fields might otherwise miss.'  (Publication summary)

1 2 y separately published work icon The Life of Such is Life : A Cultural History of an Australian Classic Roger Osborne , Sydney : Sydney University Press , 2022 23610532 2022 multi chapter work criticism

'Since its publication in 1903, Joseph Furphy’s Such is Life has become established as an Australian classic. But which version of the novel is the authoritative text, and what does its history reveal about Australian cultural life?

'From Furphy’s handwritten manuscript through numerous editions, a controversial abridgement for the British market (condemned by A.D. Hope as a “mutilation”), and periods of obscurity and rediscovery, the text has been reshaped and repackaged by many hands. Furphy’s first editors at the Bulletin diluted his socialist message and "corrected" his Australian slang to create a more marketable book. Later, literary players including Vance and Nettie Palmer, Miles Franklin, Kate Baker and Angus & Robertson all took an interest in how Furphy’s work should be published.

'In a fascinating piece of literary detective work, Osborne traces the book’s journey and shows how economic and cultural forces helped to shape the novel we read today.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

1 y separately published work icon Networks : Being a Part and Apart Sydney : Sydney University Press , 2022 23610455 2022 anthology poetry short story

'Our world is built around the people, groups and communities we surround ourselves with. They form networks of connections, beliefs and ideas that can help to shape the people we become. These networks have become vital in a time where lockdowns have pushed us apart, and reinforced the need to be a part of something whole.

'This anthology examines the ways we find joy in lockdown, keep people and places alive through memory, and search for connection in an increasingly digital age. Featuring poetry, short stories and visual art, it introduces bold new voices that will command your attention and prompt you to think differently about the relationships that make everyday life worthwhile.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

1 2 y separately published work icon Inner and Outer Worlds : Gail Jones' Fiction Anthony Uhlmann (editor), Sydney : Sydney University Press , 2022 23609989 2022 anthology criticism

'Gail Jones is one of Australia’s foremost contemporary novelists. Her books have won or been shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Literary Award, the Miles Franklin Award, the Stella Prize, and numerous state literary awards. They are taught in high schools and universities across the country.

'This collection of essays offers reflections on Jones’ fiction by leading Australian and international literary critics. For readers who loved Sixty Lights, Five Bells, Sorry and Jones’ other novels, and for students of Jones’ work, this book will be an illuminating companion. With chapters on her use of language, her thematic preoccupations, and her place in local and global literary culture, it is a timely guide to the work of an exceptional Australian writer.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

1 3 y separately published work icon South Flows the Pearl : Chinese Australian Voices Mavis Yen , Siaoman Yen (editor), Richard Horsburgh (editor), Sydney : Sydney University Press , 2022 23091550 2022 selected work interview biography

'South Flows the Pearl is a fascinating journey through the history of Chinese Australia. Taking the reader from Shanghai and the Pearl River Delta to Sydney, Perth, Cairns, Darwin, Bendigo and beyond, it explores the struggles and successes of Chinese people in Australia since the 1850s, as told in their own words.

'This unique book was written by an insider. Mavis Yen was born in Perth in 1916, the daughter of a Chinese father and an Australian mother. She lived in both countries and understood what it meant to navigate two worlds, to live through war and revolution, and to experience racial discrimination. In the 1980s she began interviewing elderly Chinese Australians, recording hours of conversations. Her intimate understanding of their languages and life experiences encouraged them to share their stories. Published here for the first time, they will change how you think about Australian history.'

Source : publisher's blurb

1 4 y separately published work icon Patrick White's Theatre : Australian Modernism on Stage, 1960-2018 Denise Varney , Sydney : Sydney University Press , 2021 21650143 2021 multi chapter work criticism

'One of the giants of Australian literature and the only Australian writer to have won the Nobel Prize for Literature, Patrick White received less acclaim when he turned his hand to playwriting.

'In Patrick White’s Theatre, Denise Varney offers a new analysis of White’s eight published plays, discussing how they have been staged and received over a period of 60 years. From the sensational rejection of The Ham Funeral by the Adelaide Festival in 1962 to 21st-century revivals incorporating digital technology, these productions and their reception illustrate the major shifts that have taken place in Australian theatre over time. Varney unpacks White’s complex and unique theatrical imagination, the social issues that preoccupied him as a playwright, and his place in the wider Australian modernist and theatrical traditions.'

Source: Abstract.

1 1 y separately published work icon Eliza Hamilton Dunlop : Writing from the Colonial Frontier Anna Johnston (editor), Elizabeth Webby (editor), Sydney : Sydney University Press , 2021 21649381 2021 anthology criticism poetry

'Eliza Hamilton Dunlop (1796–1880) arrived in Sydney in 1838 and became almost immediately notorious for her poem “The Aboriginal Mother,” written in response to the infamous Myall Creek massacre. She published more poetry in colonial newspapers during her lifetime, but for the century following her death her work was largely neglected. In recent years, however, critical interest in Dunlop has increased, in Australia and internationally and in a range of fields, including literary studies; settler, postcolonial and imperial studies; and Indigenous studies.

'This stimulating collection of essays by leading scholars considers Dunlop's work from a range of perspectives and includes a new selection of her poetry.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

1 1 y separately published work icon Animal Dreams David Brooks , Sydney : Sydney University Press , 2021 21213307 2021 selected work essay criticism

'Animal Dreams collects David Brooks’ thought-provoking essays about how humans think, dream and write about other species. Brooks examines how animals have featured in Australian and international literature and culture, from ‘The Man from Snowy River’ to Rainer Maria Rilke and The Turin Horse, to live-animal exports, veganism, and the culling of native and non-native species. In his piercing, elegant, widely celebrated style, he considers how private and public conversations about animals reflect older and deeper attitudes to our own and other species, and what questions we must ask to move these conversations forward, in what he calls ‘the immense work of undoing’.

'For readers interested in animal welfare, conservation, and the relationship between humans and other species, Animal Dreams will be an essential, richly rewarding companion.'

Source : publisher's blurb

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