Cirrus@Austlit

'In Suva, the bustling capital of Fiji, a tropical cyclone is looming. In this city of dazzling contradictions, three strangers are living worlds apart.

'Hannah is a young Australian expat who volunteers at a local health organisation while leading a heady life of house parties and weekend getaways. Isikeli is a teenager from the informal settlement who has given up on his childhood dream of playing professional rugby and cares for his diabetic grandmother. Rishika is an Indo-Fijian historian who put her career on hold when she got married, only to find that her once compassionate and fun-loving husband has become increasingly estranged.

'When a brutal murder causes their worlds to collide, this unlikely trio must search for answers in the cyclone-ravaged city. Along the way, they are each forced to confront uncomfortable truths about development, its darker side, and their place within it.

'Based on a combination of long-term research and lived experience, this compelling ethnographic novel reveals the hidden ways in which global inequality and violence play out in the developing world. Keenly observed and full of heart, Sugar is an intimate portrayal of grief, friendship, and culture clash that will prompt new ways of thinking about the world.'(Publication summary)

'This collaborative graphic novel explores issues of capitalism and climate change in Paraguay, raising questions about the limits of survival for humans, their food crops, and rural ways of life.

'Based in the agrarian world of commercial sesame farming in northern Paraguay, Forecasts tells a story about what happens when global insurance companies promise financial safety nets to local farmers struggling with the effects of climate change. This striking graphic novel brings together original ethnographic research and Paraguayan gothic art to confront the limitations of finance to respond to a deteriorating environment.

'Taking a human-centered approach to complex weather and financial models, Forecasts offers new ways of looking at overlapping speculative futures in a more-than-human landscape. Based on more than a year of fieldwork in Paraguay, the book follows one man’s possible journeys through a season of planting and harvesting, buffeted by losses and sustained by the hope that he can cultivate conditions that will help his family thrive. Forecasts makes a sweeping account of environmental and financial risk accessible through the intimate story of one family’s triumphs, heartbreaks, and hopes for the future.

'The graphic novel is followed by appendices that provide historical, anthropological, and methodological insights, as well as classroom guides, exercises, and questions that make this book ideal for teaching.' (Publication summary)

'In the modern world of networked digital media, authors must navigate many challenges. Most pressingly, the illegal downloading and streaming of copyright material on the internet deprives authors of royalties, and in some cases it has discouraged creativity or terminated careers. Exploring technology’s impact on the status and idea of authorship in today’s world, The Near-Death of the Author reveals the many obstacles facing contemporary authors.

'John Potts details how the online culture of remix and creative reuse operates in a post-authorship mode, with little regard for individual authorship. The book explores how developments in algorithms and artificial intelligence (AI) have yielded novels, newspaper articles, musical works, films, and paintings without the need of human authors or artists. It also examines how these AI achievements have provoked questions regarding the authorship of new works, such as Does the author need to be human? And, more alarmingly, Is there even a need for human authors?

'Providing suggestions on how contemporary authors can endure in the world of data, the book ultimately concludes that network culture has provoked the near-death, but not the death, of the author.' (Publication summary)

'Through a comparison of Canadian, Australian, and New Zealand texts published between 1840 and 1940, From Colonial to Modern develops a new history of colonial girlhoods revealing how girlhood in each of these emerging nations reflects a unique political, social, and cultural context.

'Print culture was central to the definition, and redefinition, of colonial girlhood during this period of rapid change. Models of girlhood are shared between settler colonies and contain many similar attitudes towards family, the natural world, education, employment, modernity, and race, yet, as the authors argue, these texts also reveal different attitudes that emerged out of distinct colonial experiences. Unlike the imperial model representing the British ideal, the transnational girl is an adaptation of British imperial femininity and holds, for example, a unique perception of Indigenous culture and imperialism. Drawing on fiction, girls’ magazines, and school magazine, the authors shine a light on neglected corners of the literary histories of these three nations and strengthen our knowledge of femininity in white settler colonies.'  (Publication summary)

'Alexander Pope's heroi-comical, mock-epic poem, The Rape of the Lock, continues to sparkle after three hundred years as a peerless gem in the canon of English literature. In celebration of its tercentenary, this collection brings together ten eminent scholars with new perspectives on the poem. Their approaches reflect the vast range of interpretation of Pope's text, from discussions of religion, gender, and eighteenth-century biological science to an interview with Sophie Gee about her novelization of the poem in The Scandal of the Season. These stimulating analyses will be essential reading for students and teachers of The Rape of the Lock and a valuable resource for investigating eighteenth-century culture.' (Publication summary)

'The Journal of Scholarly Publishing is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal publishing research and resources for publishers, editors, authors, and marketers in the academic publishing industry, focusing on technological changes, funding, and issues affecting scholarly publishing.'

Source: Journal of Scholarly Publishing.