Cirrus@Austlit

'As a published writer who applies magic realism to my works of fiction, I undertook this practice-related research project to contribute to existing global research on magic realism in literature, and to better understand my own creative practice. This research focused on two questions: what are key attributes of magic realist literature? And to what extent can magic realism be identified in Aboriginal authored novels?'

Source: Abstract.

'This thesis examines the careers of women who attained positions of authority in the privileged environment of Australian public broadcasting between the 1940s and 1970s, and reimagines the nature of women’s work at the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC). It counteracts the widespread assumption that women were largely absent in post-war broadcasting, and reveals how and why a group of women, each with their own issues and ideologies to contribute to national debates, used the ABC as a vehicle for their activism. Framed primarily through group biography, this history details how certain ABC women manifested their own agency within the limitations of the time and place, in both the messages they produced as radio and television producers, and through their positions within the gendered post-war workplace. It details the industrial strategies that female broadcasters activated in order to succeed – their transmedial methods, transformative departures, transnational exchanges and technical training – and the key industrial alliances they utilised to traverse previously inaccessible avenues of opportunity. Taking an intersectional approach, this thesis also juxtaposes the careers of elite female producers against the majority of women workers at the ABC, contextualising the barriers, both official and unofficial, that prevented most women from sharing the same authority, opportunity and privilege that their male counterparts experienced. Challenging the male-centric narratives that dominate broadcasting historiography, this thesis examines the systems of exclusion and discrimination in the ABC workplace and highlights the nature of women’s work in public broadcasting; it enriches the historical landscape of women’s experiences and contributions within Australian broadcasting.'

Source: Abstract.

'This thesis explores the Aboriginal presence in Australian narratives. It is a study of continuities and discontinuities between what is known and what is unknown about Aboriginal people and communities, and particularly of how authors bring new terrains into the fold of meaning for consumption by a mostly non-Aboriginal audience. The study's focus on such transitions is to investigate what pedagogical opportunities lay within these textual formations for re-engaging higher education students with narratives that relate to Aboriginal people.' (Source: Epress website: epress.lib.uts.edu.au)

'This is a collection of stories, poetry and prose from the students of the creative writing program at the University of Technology, Sydney.'

Source: Trove.

'This thesis discusses the influence of elements of Bakhtinian camivalesque in selected contemporary Australian children’s literature. Many of the Bakhtinian ideas are centred on the work of Franqois Rabelais, particularly his five books collectively entitled Gargantua and Pantagruel. Aspects of the complex field of Bakhtinian camivalesque that have been considered include: attitudes to authority, the grotesque body and its working, the importance of feasting and the associated concepts of bodily functioning, customs in relation to food, and ritual and specific language such as the use of curses and oaths. The role of humour and the manifest forms this takes within carnival are intrinsic and are discussed at some length. These central tenets are explored in two ways: first, in relation to their connection and use within the narrative structures of a selection of books short listed (and thus critically acclaimed) by the Australian Children’s Book Council from the early 1980s to the early 2000s, and second, by means of contrast, to the commercially popular but generally less critically acclaimed works of other Australian writers such as Paul Jennings and Andy Griffiths. The thesis concludes by considering the ways in which camivalesque freedom is encouraged through and by new media.'

Source: Abstract.

'This Doctorate of Creative Arts thesis consists of a raft of creative arts projects bound together by a critical essay which examines their intersections and situates them within the evolving body of the artist’s creative work and a broader context of critical thinking and creative ideas and practices. In particular, the essay focuses on the spiritual as a throughline between a group of art works which explore the media of poetry, dance, film, digital media, performance, and poetic fiction. Addressing some of the artistic and critical challenges arising out of working across this range of different forms, the philosophy and practice of Yoga is the primary system of thinking utilised to articulate a linking or underlying aesthetics. Six works make up the whole: 1. A critical overview essay 2. An anthology 3. A poetry book 4. A comic dance film 5. A dance drama film 6. A work of poetic fiction By placing these works in relationship to each other in one larger presentation, the aim is to create, in its overall structure, as well as in the interrelations between and within its multi-layered parts, a thesis which suggests a model of knowledge, experience and consciousness characterised by the movement between things rather than the static stand- aloneness, separate wholeness, of things. Given that this approach implies that meaning is in the spaces between things – or in the energies across the spaces between things - as much as in things themselves, it is not necessarily linear, obvious or direct, but just as often lateral, oblique or circular. The content, form and mode of address of each of the works is individuated, but by collecting them into a cluster of hybridised artistic works and their critical commentary, this thesis proposes a dialectic between knowing, intuiting and becoming. The juxtaposition of art works seeks to demonstrate how seeming oppositions and contradictions are brought together into a larger, dynamic, multi- dimensional, and never finally resolved art practice, animated by paradox. This Doctorate of Creative Arts thesis is an invitation for the reader and audience to participate in a multi-directional spaciousness in which there ultimately are no boundaries to the dynamics of creativity. The critical essay, in particular, which reviews the artist’s evolution as a writer, performer, choreographer and filmmaker, and which explores themes in his current interests in Yoga and meditational philosophy, addresses core issues in a multi-form idea of creative practice.'

Source: Abstract.

'The analytic component of the thesis approaches major questions in Cultural Studies, Philosophy and Social Theory through an investigation of various forms of creative practice ... My thesis is that the experimental method of modern scientists, and the creative method of modern writers, both geared toward the production of things that are at once new and true, is largely the same ... My three portfolio pieces are: Cube Root of Book: a series of one hundred and thirty two poems set at intervals along the descending spiral of a Fibonacci number sequence. The 14th Floor, an Hypothesis, an experimental novel, written quite literally as an experiment; i.e. having written the novel, I then wrote up a prac-report detailing what I had learnt about the performance of writing, including the above. Unaustralia, a Study of Heads, an attempt to show the relevance of these findings to Cultural Studies and other related practices. It centres on my new reading of Althusser, and is flanked by mini-ethnographies of creative practice, including the above. The poetry is presented as a major new creative work. The experimental novel/ book of philosophy as a substantial contribution to knowledge.' (Paul Magee, quoted from thesis abstract.)

Source: Australian Digital Theses Program website, http://adt.lib.uts.edu.au/public/adt-NTSM20051018.172819/
Sighted: 01/11/2005