Robert Clarke Robert Clarke i(A70072 works by)
Gender: Male
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Works By

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1 By Association : Crafting Mission and Values Statements for the Australian University Heads of English Robert Clarke , 2023 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , 31 October vol. 38 no. 2 2023;

'What are the values that define the profession of university English Studies in Australia, and how do those values align with what we may identify as the values of literature? And what values should a professional association of ‘English’ academics prioritise when speaking on behalf of its members and their discipline(s)? In 2021 and 2022, the Australian University Heads of English (AUHE) instigated a project to revise its mission statement and draft a statement of values. The project came about as a response to a series of public pronouncements by past and present academics, politicians and journalists about the nature of the discipline of English, on a range of matters from the very name of the field, to its economic value as the subject of education, to its impact on students and the broader community. This essay reports on the project’s results to articulate the mission and value statements for AUHE. It also seeks to open up a series of questions about the nature and identity of our profession and its place within contemporary Australia.'( Publication abstract)

1 In the Company of a Guide : Guidebooks to Indigenous Australia Robert Clarke , 2021 single work criticism
— Appears in: Studies in Travel Writing , vol. 25 no. 1 2021; (p. 65-81)

'This article examines travel guidebooks to Indigenous Australia, focussing on predominantly Aboriginal-authored texts. Acknowledging the body of work that has critiqued travel guides as mediators of oppressive cultural discourses, it is as much concerned with the risks inherent in these texts, as it is interested in their potential as sites of authorship and reading that enable anti-colonial ambitions. Two questions animate the discussion. First: to what extent are Aboriginal guidebooks consistent with conventional understandings of reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians? And second, how do these texts influence tourist activity in ways that respect Aboriginal sovereignty? While not providing a definitive answer to either of these questions, the article, nevertheless, opens up an examination of the cultural work performed by Aboriginal-authored guidebooks during a period of rapid change in the politics of race in Australia.'  (Introduction)

1 1 y separately published work icon Travel Writing from Black Australia : Utopia, Melancholia, and Aboriginality Robert Clarke , London : Routledge , 2019 21355442 2019 multi chapter work criticism 'Examines the ambivalence of travellers' engagements with Aboriginality. Concentrating on a period marked by the rise of discourses on Aboriginality championing indigenous empowerment, and reconciliation, the author analyses how travel to Black Australia has become a means of discovering new styles of interracial engagement.' (Publication summary)
1 David Carter and Roger Osborne, Australian Books and Authors in the American Marketplace 1840s–1940s Robert Clarke , 2019 single work review
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 19 no. 2 2019;

— Review of Australian Books and Authors in the American Marketplace : 1840s-1940s David Carter , Roger Osborne , 2018 multi chapter work criticism biography
'Despite its prosaic title, David Carter and Roger Osborne’s book delivers on its promise of an erudite, expansive, and engaging study of the fortunes of Australian books and authors in the American marketplace in the years spanning the 1840s to 1940s. Not simply a significant contribution to the history of Australian fiction and publishing, Carter and Osborne’s volume explores the commercial dynamics, opportunities and hurdles for Australian writers and publishing houses that sought to break into what was from the end of the nineteenth century the most lucrative publishing market in the world. Henry Lamond’s remark in 1945 was probably true for much of the period examined in this book: ‘The Yank literary market is absolutely the best in the whole blinkin’ world.’ And Carter and Osborne provide rich detail of the efforts of Australians to exploit that marketplace. More than this, Australian Books and Authors in the American Marketplace 1840s–1940s examines the world of colonial and transatlantic publishing and the complex of networks, institutions, and dispositions that Australia authors and books were required to negotiate.' (Introduction)
1 Reading in Community, Reading for Community : A Survey of Book Clubs in Regional Australia Robert Clarke , Nicholas Hookway , Rebekah Burgess , 2017 single work criticism
— Appears in: Journal of Australian Studies , May vol. 41 no. 2 2017; (p. 171-183)
'Worries about weakening community are central to assessments of modern Australia, yet it is easy to overlook the everyday ways we “do” and participate in community life. Book clubs are one area of community participation largely ignored by researchers despite the local and national proliferation of such clubs. Surveying twenty-two book groups and ninety-seven book club members, this study investigates the roles that book clubs play in the cultural and community life of a regional area of Tasmania. The results show that book clubs promote regular intellectual engagement and provide for a distinct female sociality that consolidates and creates new social connections and function as everyday “escape attempts” from the obligations of work and family. We suggest that the support and development of local book club programs may have considerable potential as a strategy for Australian governments and communities to foster a sense of community.' (Publication abstract)
1 Island Home : Returning to Tasmania in Peter Conrad's Down Home (1988) and Tim Bowden's The Devil in Tim (2005) Robert Clarke , 2016 single work criticism
— Appears in: Studies in Travel Writing , vol. 20 no. 1 2016; (p. 100-115)

'Tasmania is often spoken of domestically as a “problem”. Indeed, talk of “the problem of Tasmania” circulates through intellectual and governmental as much as everyday discourse. For writers like Peter Conrad and Tim Bowden – expatriate Tasmanians who write of their “return” to the island – the discourse on the problem of Tasmania is particularly challenging. As returnees, the narrators of Conrad’s Down Home (1988) and Bowden’s The Devil in Tim (2005) engage in reflections on identity, alterity and history in ways that exploit and resist the stereotypes, tropes and narratives that have traditionally underpinned discussion of the Tasmanian problem. This essay argues that while the texts can be read as complicit with the ideology that sustains the idea of that problem, in their turn to encounters with “ordinary” Tasmania they present alternative visions of the state that question the ideologies that position the island as limited, backward and perpetually beset by intransigent challenges.'

Source: Abstract.

1 Travelling the Sequestered Isle : Tasmania as Penitentiary, Laboratory and Sanctuary Robert Clarke , Anna Johnston , 2016 single work criticism
— Appears in: Studies in Travel Writing , vol. 20 no. 1 2016; (p. 1-16)
1 Productive Dissonance : Using Digital Narratives in the Australian Literature Classroom Robert Clarke , Sharon Thomas , 2015 single work criticism
— Appears in: Antipodes , December vol. 29 no. 2 2015; (p. 327-339)
'Discussions of the nature and fate of Australian literary studies - at least in the Australian university context - more often than not focus on what is taught and the institutional challenges that confront academics in the field...' (327)
1 Reading Groups and Reconciliation : Kate Grenville's The Secret River and the Ordinary Reader Maggie Nolan , Robert Clarke , 2014 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , November vol. 29 no. 4 2014; (p. 19-35)
'Kate Grenville's novel The Secret River was met with considerable acclaim on its publication in 2005. It has also been the subject of both historians and literary scholars. This essay avoids adopting a position in relation to these debates, an undertaking we have attempted elsewhere ...Rather, we elaborate on the findings of a reception study of book clubs that have read and discussed The Secret River. This research is part of a larger project we call 'Fictions of Reconciliation', which examines the reception of recent works of Australian fiction that focus on Indigenous and non-Indigenous relations. This essay explores how communities of ordinary or 'lay readers' respond to Grenville's novel, and what their responses might tell us about the ways in which historical fiction might or might not be mobilised in understanding contemporary race relations in Australia.' (19)
1 Book Clubs and Reconciliation : A Pilot Study on Book Clubs Reading the ‘Fictions of Reconciliation’ Robert Clarke , Marguerite Nolan , 2014 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Humanities Review , May no. 56 2014;
1 Reading The Secret River Maggie Nolan , Robert Clarke , 2011 single work criticism
— Appears in: Journal of Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies , Fall vol. 17 no. 2 2011; (p. 9-25)
1 'New Age Trippers': Aboriginality and Australian New Age Travel Books Robert Clarke , 2009 single work criticism
— Appears in: Studies in Travel Writing , vol. 13 no. 1 2009; (p. 27-43)
In the last two decades of the twentieth century Australia became an attractive travel destination for alienated middle-class Westerners in search of a spiritual utopia. In such texts Aboriginality is represented as a source of spiritual transcendence and as a remedy for the evils of modern consumerism and industrialisation. This article examines a number of books by white New Age spiritual travellers-James Cowan's Two Men Dreaming (1995), Marlo Morgan's Mutant Message Down Under (1994), and Harvey Arden's Dreamkeepers (1995) - that claim to (re)discover a lost, universal, sacred heritage within Aboriginal cosmologies. The discourses employed by recent Australian New Age travel texts are prima facie examples of postcolonial forms of cultural appropriation. Yet the involvement of indigenous agents in the production, promotion, and critique of such texts complicates the argument that these texts are simply new forms of cultural colonisation (Author's abstract).
1 Reconciling Strangers : White Australian Travel Narratives and the Semiotics of Empathy Robert Clarke , 2009 single work criticism
— Appears in: Travel Writing, Form, and Empire : The Poetics and Politics of Mobility 2009; (p. 167-179)
'In Australia, reconciliation between Aboriginal and European Australians has become a field of dominant utopian discourses in the public sphere. Not unexpectedly, reconciliation has become a significant theme for contemporary white Australian travel writers. But the meaning of reconciliation is not uniform or uncontested, and discourses of reconciliation have evolved in response to significant political events. This chapter examines how the discourse of reconciliation becomes manifest in recent travel narratives, and how the 'script' of the performance of reconciliation has changed subtly over time.' (p. 167)
1 Star Traveller: Celebrity, Aboriginality and Bruce Chatwin's The Songlines (1987) Robert Clarke , 2009 single work criticism
— Appears in: Postcolonial Studies , vol. 12 no. 2 2009; (p. 229-246)
Author's abstract: Within the international field of contemporary Anglophone travel writing Bruce Chatwin looms large as a celebrity traveller and writer. This paper tracks Chatwin's celebrity through various fields, examining his most enduring and controversial book The Songlines (1987) to analyse how its representation of Aboriginality contributes to the mythologization of the author. The essay makes two claims. The first is that the discourses through which Songlines values Aboriginality coincide with those employed to represent its narrator and author, and consequently contribute to the celebrity persona of 'Bruce Chatwin'. Moreover, the representation of Aboriginality and celebrity in Songlines is compatible with a discourse within contemporary consumer culture that putatively eschews consumerism and gestures nostalgically to romantic notions of self and other even as it exploits the exotic manifestations of Aboriginality as cultural commodity. The second and related claim is that Chatwin's celebrity performs a specific function within the context of the postcolonial field of cultural production. Chatwin's celebrity functions to resolve the dissonance created by competing regimes of value through which Aboriginality as a symbolic commodity is defined. In this regard, Chatwin, as celebrity traveller, performs a role akin to that Pierre Bourdieu ascribes to cultural intermediaries. As such, Chatwin does not necessarily provide non-Aboriginal readers with 'knowledge' about Aboriginal culture; rather, his public persona provides his readers with an example of how to manage the conflicting values attributed to Aboriginality within national and transnational postcolonial public spheres.
1 y separately published work icon Celebrity Colonialism : Fame, Power and Representation in Colonial and Postcolonial Cultures Robert Clarke (editor), Newcastle upon Tyne : Cambridge Scholars Press , 2009 17531087 2009 anthology criticism

'Celebrity Colonialism brings together studies on an array of personalities, movements and events from the colonial era to the present, and explores the intersection of discourses, formations and institutions that condition celebrity in colonial and postcolonial cultures. Across nineteen chapters, it examines the entanglements of fame and power fame in colonial and postcolonial settings. Each chapter demonstrates the sometimes highly ambivalent roles played by famous personalities as endorsements and apologists for, antagonists and challengers of, colonial, imperial and postcolonial institutions and practices. And each in their way provides an insight into the complex set of meanings implied by novel term “celebrity colonialism.” The contributions to this collection demonstrate that celebrity provides a powerful lens for examining the nexus of discourses, institutions and practices associated with the dynamics of appropriation, domination, resistance and reconciliation that characterize colonial and postcolonial cultural politics. Taken together the contributions to Celebrity Colonialism argue that the examination of celebrity promises to enrich our understanding of what colonialism was and, more significantly, what it has become.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

1 Untitled Robert Clarke , 2006 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , May vol. 22 no. 3 2006; (p. 391-393)

— Review of Imagining Australia : Literature and Culture in the New New World 2004 anthology criticism
2 1 Intimate Strangers : Contemporary Australian Travel Writing, the Semiotics of Empathy, and the Therapeutics of Race Robert Clarke , 2004 single work criticism
— Appears in: Crossings : Bulletin of the International Australian Studies Association , vol. 9 no. 3 2004;

— Appears in: Journal of Australian Studies , no. 85 2005; (p. 69-81, notes 208-209)
'Increasingly, domestic white Australian travel narratives mobilise encounters with Aboriginality as contexts for political and ethical critiques of white hegemony that, in turn, reflect different manifestations of sympathetic white liberal discourses of reconciliation.... This paper focuses on how these narratives represent performances of a white Australian postcolonial sensibility towards Aboriginality that defines itself through a semiotics of empathy ... for Aboriginality, and how the co-ordinates of this semiotics shifted over the 1990s in response to movements in the Australian public sphere vis-à-vis the politics and ethics of reconciliation.' (Introduction)
1 Distant Cousins and Ordinary Australians : Encounters with Australian Aboriginality in the 1990s Robert Clarke , 2004 single work criticism
— Appears in: Yearly Review , July vol. 12 no. 2004; (p. 115-134)
Examines a number of recent travel books that 'seek to discover ordinary Australia, and find, through encounters with Aboriginality, a place and culture that is far removed from either the stereotypes of the tourist brochures, or the friendly and quirky characters that inhabit the soap operas and films that have been recent exports of Australian popular culture' (115). The books under survey are Annie Caulfield's The Winner's Enclosure (1999), Mark McCrum's No Worries (1997), and Bill Bryson's Down Under (2000).
1 Untitled Robert Clarke , 2002 single work review
— Appears in: Journal of Australian Studies , no. 75 2002; (p. 154-156) JAS Review of Books , November no. 10 2002;

— Review of Departures : How Australia Reinvents Itself 2002 anthology criticism
1 Australia's Sublime Desert : John McDouall Stuart and Bruce Chatwin Robert Clarke , 2002 single work criticism
— Appears in: In Transit : Travel, Text, Empire 2002; (p. 149-172)
Examines The Journals of John McDouall Stuart (1865) and Bruce Chatwin's The Songlines and discusses common rhetorical strategies employed by Western travel writers of the colonial and postcolonial periods.
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