Cirrus@Austlit

'This thesis explores the imaginative lives of children growing up in Australia in the half century between 1890 and the outbreak of the Second World War. The very act of imagining, whether it is the subtle embellishment of reality or the invention of an entire fantasy world, has long been one of the major enterprises of childhood. Yet although historians of Australia have readily embraced the imagination as an interpretative paradigm, little research has considered the imaginative lives of children. Focusing on children's play, writing and art, this thesis examines six imaginative worlds of Australian childhood. These are the worlds of amateur journalism, bird loving, war and adventure, dolls, the future - especially as it relates to a new aerial modernity - and monster and faery folklore. By focusing on children's own processes of meaning-making, and engaging with an older body of scholarship on children's folklore, this thesis enriches and unsettles a historiography that has long privileged the voices and experiences of adults. It reveals a wealth of children's own documentary records and recognises children as cultural, social and political actors, while also paying close attention to how their imaginative lives were connected to the adult world. At a time when the social value and material condition of children's lives were undergoing significant change across the Western world, Australian children were often acutely aware of the politics of age. They were attentive to the webs of dependency that structured their everyday lives as well as the emancipatory power of the imagination. It was a power that both settler and Aboriginal children used often and freely, and it was one of the ways they made meaning out of dynamic social change and exerted control over their lives. By charting a history of children's imaginative lives during the late nineteenth and early to mid-twentieth centuries, this study uncovers a shared world of meaning and experience that sheds new light on the history of modern Australia and childhood. It also offers a deeper understanding of the double helix of children's play and imaginations: one strand representing the universal and ubiquitous aspects of children's imaginative lives and the other the particular forms of imagining that are shaped by circumstances and cultures. Often negotiating a complex set of social and cultural expectations, children embraced the creative and contradictory power of the imagination, crafting new ways of seeing and belonging in a settler society and increasingly globalised world.'

Source: Abstract.

'Dr Anita Heiss is a Wiradjuri author from Central NSW. Heiss was one of the nine applicants in Eatock v Bolt, the 2011 court case where Justice Mordecai Bromberg found Herald Sun journalist Andrew Bolt to have contravened Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 (Cth). Heiss later published a memoir entitled Am I Black Enough for You? in which she spoke to notions of Aboriginal identity and authenticity raised by the case. As she decisively put it in the opening pages of Am I Black Enough?: “I am an urban, beachside Blackfella, a concrete Koori with Westfield Dreaming, and I apologise to no-one”. Alongside her involvement in the court case, Heiss is well known as the author of ‘choc’-lit, a distinctive brand of popular women’s fiction that retains the chick lit genre’s focus on career, friendship, sex and shopping, but with a twist: Heiss’s writing features urban Aboriginal Australian women as the main characters. Heiss’s ‘choc’-lit further differentiates itself from normatively white articulations of the genre in its intent to educate a non-Aboriginal audience.

'The memoir genre, litigation in the Federal Court and ‘choc’-lit would appear to have little in common. Yet, Heiss pursues the same argument through each: that the rich diversity of contemporary Aboriginal identity far exceeds the limited stereotypes that dominate the Australian imagination. Until now, there has been very little scholarly interest in Heiss’s writing. My thesis recognises Heiss as a unique and important author whose writing broadens the available spaces for Aboriginal writers in Australian public life. I present my doctoral research as a thesis by compilation. The main body consists of five journal articles: three have already been published and two are under review. My papers move between two modes: literary analyses of plot, theme and character; and online reception studies. By paying attention to the way Heiss puts an ostensibly escapist genre to serious political ends, my research presents the first sustained academic account of Heiss’s published writing. Equally, I focus on online reception and amateur reviewing practices to highlight new ways of thinking about engagement and impact through popular literary forms.'

Source: Abstract.

The dissertation 'traced the development of the cross-cultural world of New South Wales to 1835 by exploring key cross-cultural actions, rituals and material exchanges'.

Source: Abstract.

In 1960, those interested in the study of Australian literature were served by a number of literary magazines, including Southerly, Overland, Quadrant and Meanjin. Australian literature was not widely accepted as a valid field of academic study at this time, but this view was frequently challenged by contributors to these magazines. James McAuley, poet and teacher at the University of Tasmania saw the need for an academic periodical to professionalise the study of Australian literature and recruited Laurie Hergenhan, newly arrived at the university, to be founding editor of Australian Literary Studies.

The first issue was launched in August 1963. Aimed at teachers and students of Australian literature, the issues produced in the 1960s printed foundation research on the colonial period, and criticism of more recent literature, in an attempt to define the field of study. Articles on the works of Henry Kingsley, Marcus Clarke, Rolf Boldrewood(T), Henry Lawson, Henry Kendall and John Shaw Neilson regularly featured during the 1960s and 1970s. In addition, criticism on contemporary writers such as Patrick White]m), Judith Wright, Gwen Harwood, Francis Webb and Thomas Keneally also appeared. During the 1980s and 1990s interest in the colonial period continued and the work of more contemporary writers was discussed, the most frequent subjects including Peter CareyC)), David Malouf, Les Murray and Brian Castro.

Since 1963, the 'Annual Bibliography of Studies in Australian Literature' has been printed in the May issue. For many years it has been the most comprehensive and up-to-date printed guide on criticism on Australian literature. Special issues of Australian Literary Studies have also been produced, concentrating on subjects such as the contemporary Australian short story, Australian suburbia, and the works of Oodgeroo Noonuccal, Henry Handel Richardson and Les Murray. The Penguin New Literary History of Australia was released as a special issue in 1988.

Australian Literary Studies is often identified with its long-time editor, Laurie Hergenhan. The journal was produced at the University of Tasmania until 1975 when it was relocated to the University of Queensland where Hergenhan had moved four years earlier. Unlike other literary magazines such as Southerly and Meanjin, Australian Literary Studies publishes no creative writing, concentrating solely on the criticism of historical and contemporary Australian literature. While this concentration was at first seen as a positive element in literary grant applications, it became increasingly negative in the 1990s. With a consistent circulation of around one thousand, Australian Literary Studies was assisted by regular grants from Australian government arts agencies until 1996 when all funding was withdrawn. Since that time it has been produced with the assistance of the University of Queensland Press.

Leigh Dale became the editor in 2002. The journal was produced at the University of Wollongong. Dale continued in that role until 2015 when Julieanne Lamond became editor and the journal moved to an online only publication format. The new format journal was launched in February 2016 at the Australian National University, its new institutional home.

'This thesis examines the role of children's picture books in constructing cultural ideologies. It aims to analyse the dominant cultural ideologies inscribed in Thai and Australian children's picture books, with specific emphasis on how such identities are constructed through verbal and visual language. The analysis focuses on the changes, if any, in the construction of cultural ideologies in Thai and Australian children's picture books that won national awards from 1987 to 2006, and how the changes correspond to the impact of social change. The corpus chosen for analysis consists of 60 children's books, comprising 30 from Thailand and 30 from Australia. The picture books have either won the Thai National Book Development Committee Award or the Picture Book of the Year Award given by Children's Book Council of Australia (CBCA). The thesis is structured around three themes based on the ideological construction of power in the books, including the construction of age relations, gender relations and community relations. Despite the fact that Thai society has undergone enormous change over the last two decades, the analysis shows that award-winning Thai children's books have been written mainly from a conservative point of view. They work by providing the foundations for social harmony and respect of order in a patriarchal and hierarchical society where all members are expected to know their proper place and live their lives in ways that contribute to the benefit of the whole community. Some slight changes can be detected in the way perspectives on those cultural ideologies have shifted at certain periods. These include the way of giving more emphasis to a child's self discovery over adult authority, the attempt to create non sexist picture books, and changes in the meaning and implication of unity and cohesion. Yet the analysis reveals that an ethos of conservative discourse still informs the books. It highlights the use of representation to control the overall appearance of idealised discourse in Thai society. In contrast, there is much variety and range in the way cultural ideologies have been constructed in award winning Australian children's books. While an ethos of conservative discourse can still be detected in the corpus, a number of books show that such ways of seeing the world can be challenged, questioned and even proved to be inadequate. Unlike the Thai books, the representation of patriarchal and hierarchical society can be overturned by giving more prominence to children's sense of agency and imagination and by portraying male and female characters in a more symmetrical way. In contrast to the depiction of the smooth and harmonious relationship between people of the same cultural and community groups in the Thai books, some recent Australian picture books emphasise the conflicts and disputes between different social groups. These changes are analysed in the context of the impact of social change. Social and political topics, such as the emancipation of women through the feminist movement and issues relating to contemporary politics including refugees, border control and cultural difference are taken into account.'

Source: Abstract.

'For almost 40 years, Michael Walsh has been working alongside Indigenous people: documenting language, music and other traditional knowledge, acting on behalf of claimants to land in the Northern Territory, and making crucial contributions to the revitalisation of Aboriginal languages in NSW. This volume, with contributions from his colleagues and students, celebrates his abiding interest in and commitment to Indigenous society with papers in two broad themes. ‘Language, identity and country’ addresses the often complex relations between Aboriginal social groups and countries, and linguistic identity. In ‘Language, identity and social action’ authors discuss the role that language plays in maintaining social identities in the realms of conversation, story-telling, music, language games, and in education. ‘Language and Social Identity in Australian Indigenous Communities’ will be of interest to students of linguistics, Indigenous studies, anthropology, and sociology.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'This dissertation forms one part of the sub-thesis requirement for a Masters in Science Communication with the National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science, Australian National University. The remaining part is an 'artefact', a children's book entitled Hang On Handstand (see Appendix 1). Designed to be a combined story/information book for primary school aged children, Hang On Handstand describes the plight of Australia's first marine fish (Brachionichthys hirsutus, the spotted handfish) to be listed as 'endangered' and shows how science came to the rescue. Specifically, this particular children's book aims to communicate aspects of marine science and promote awareness of the marine environment and related conservation issues, not just to children but also to their parents, carers and teachers (ie. via reading with, or to, the children). The dissertation explores the importance of communicating science and the value of children's literature and the 'story' as an effective science communication tool (Part I) . It also provides contextual information regarding the science and legislation behind threatened species and their conservation, including the 'real' spotted handfish story (Part II). Hopefully it may also highlight the value of the children's book as a potentially important means of assisting the remediation and recovery process for threatened species.'

Source: Abstract.

Briefly outlining white Australians' attitudes to Chinese settlers in Australia, the authors note the often close relationships between Chinese and Aboriginal people, the effect of the land rights movement in motivating people of mixed race to identify as Aborigines, and the trend to increased recognition of dual and multiple ancestries.

'This thesis examines the role of the Antipodeans within the construction of Australian art history from 1956 to 1962. This thesis seeks to address some of the circumstances and myths that surround the Antipodeans and the infamous Antipodean Manifesto. The Antipodeans comprised the artists, Charles Blackman, Arthur Boyd, David Boyd, John Brack, Bob Dickerson, John Perceval and Clifton Pugh, along with the art historian Bernard Smith. This thesis re-examines the pivotal role the group played in the critical construct that located the Antipodeans’ defence of the figurative ‘image’ in Melbourne, in opposition to the apparent dominance of abstract painting in Sydney. Within this construct, the stand made by the Antipodeans presented a crucial reference point, which retrospectively validated specific events in the build-up to 1959, as well as provided the impetus for future incidents subsequently interwoven into the narrative. The inclusion of Sydney artist Robert Dickerson and potter-turned-painter David Boyd as Antipodeans is addressed in detail. The thesis argues that the critical reception of Robert Dickerson and David Boyd as individual artists, in contrast to their reception as members of the Antipodeans, highlights the exclusions, contradictions and anomalies within the narrative constructed around the Antipodeans, which undermines its authority as defining the history of Australia art at this time.' (Thesis description)