Robert Kenny Robert Kenny i(A7266 works by) (a.k.a. Robert John Kenny)
Born: Established: 1952 Melbourne, Victoria, ;
Gender: Male
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Works By

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1 [Review Essay] Edward M Curr and the Tide of History Robert Kenny , 2015 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Aboriginal Studies , June no. 1 2015; (p. 125-127)

— Review of Edward M. Curr and the Tide of History Samuel Furphy , 2013 single work criticism

'As much scholarship has shown over the past decades, settler attitudes to Indigenous peoples thrived on difference and righteousness — the latter not in a religious sense (necessarily) but in an absolute conviction, one sunk deep into the settler heart, of the moral and material justness of their usurpation of Indigenous country. This conviction sanctioned settler violence and outlawed Indigenous resistance. Difference not only denied the humanity in the Indigenous face; it made the people objects of curiosity, to be quickly described, analysed and catalogued for science before they ‘disappeared’ as naturally as one season disappears into another. There arises in this a paradox: genocidal practice combined with the apparent sympathy of curiosity. In the Australian colonies of the last half of the nineteenth century this paradox was no more greatly manifest than in the person of Edward M Curr — enough in itself to make him the subject of analysis, but Curr is even more ripe for study since, as Samuel Furphy shows in this biography, he has had a particularly potent afterlife.'  (Introduction)

1 Walking as Thought Robert Kenny , 2015 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , October no. 375 2015; (p. 18)

— Review of On Track : Searching Out the Bundian Way John Blay , 2015 single work prose
1 6 y separately published work icon Gardens of Fire : An Investigative Memoir Robert Kenny , Crawley : UWA Publishing , 2013 6152043 2013 single work autobiography

'The Black Saturday bushfires of 7 February 2009 were the most catastrophic in Australia’s history. One hundred and seventy three people lost their lives and over two thousand homes were destroyed.

'Award winning historian and writer Robert Kenny had a sound fire plan and he was prepared. But the reality of the fire was more ferocious and more unpredictable than he could have imagined. By the end of the day, his house and the life contained within were gone.

'Gardens of Fire extends his experience of being engulfed by flames to an investigation of the human relationship with fire. This extraordinary and compelling history explores European and Aboriginal mythologies of fire along with the pragmatics of the fire in the hearth.

'This is at once an intimate memoir and a meditative analysis of the reality that, as humans, we are children of fire.' (Publisher's blurb)

1 Sunday 8 February 2009 - The Morning After Robert Kenny , 2012 single work autobiography
— Appears in: Meanjin , Spring vol. 71 no. 3 2012; (p. 174-177)
1 9 y separately published work icon The Lamb Enters the Dreaming : Nathanael Pepper and the Ruptured World Robert Kenny , Carlton North : Scribe , 2007 Z1429990 2007 single work biography

'Traces the life of Nathanael Pepper of the Wotjobaluk people, who was born as the first pastoralists were driving cattle and sheep into Victoria's Wimmera region. In their wake came Christian missionaries, who were just as hostile to the settlers' violence as they were to the traditional beliefs of Aboriginal people. Nevertheless, Pepper converted to Christianity in 1860. The extraordinary story of Pepper's conversion, and his subsequent attempts to reconcile the apparently irreconcilable, reveals much about the deeper symbolic and moral forces at work in this collision of cultures. Robert Kenny challenges many orthodoxies in this profound reconsideration of how indigenous people and Europeans thought about each other. He traces Aboriginal attempts to accommodate the 'people of the sheep' and their pastoralist totem, Jesus, while arguing that it was European animals more than the settlers themselves that ruptured the Dreaming. On the European side, Kenny argues, increasingly powerful scientific and philosophical challenges undermined evangelical Christianity's belief that all humanity was of 'One Blood'. And behind it all lurked the spectre of slavery and the question of the moral order of imperialism. Brilliantly original in conception, and written with a rare lucidity and lightness of touch, The Lamb Enters the Dreaming is a detailed and sensitive exploration of a life, a meditation on the matter of culture and conversion, and a major reappraisal of the relations between Aboriginal and European societies in the first decades of contact in southern Australia.' (Back cover.)

1 Faith i "Patience is winter's hardest gift:", Robert Kenny , 1993 single work poetry
— Appears in: Meanjin , Summer vol. 52 no. 4 1993; (p. 765) The Winter Bridge : Poems and Drawings 1991-94 1993; (p. 4)
1 The Winter Bridge i "They satisfied me in no way at the Winter Bridge.", Robert Kenny , 1993 single work poetry
— Appears in: Meanjin , Summer vol. 52 no. 4 1993; (p. 765) The Winter Bridge : Poems and Drawings 1991-94 1993; (p. 3) Australian Poetry Library 2004-;
1 Preface to Continuance i "The journey began as most journeys do, with a destination presumed.", Robert Kenny , 1993 single work poetry prose
— Appears in: The Winter Bridge : Poems and Drawings 1991-94 1993; (p. 16)
1 For Retta at the Death of Jim i "'There is something you who love me", Robert Kenny , 1993 single work poetry
— Appears in: The Winter Bridge : Poems and Drawings 1991-94 1993; (p. 14) Australian Poetry Library 2004-;
1 Prayer i "When will the sky not brighten at the sight of morning?", Robert Kenny , 1993 single work poetry
— Appears in: The Winter Bridge : Poems and Drawings 1991-94 1993; (p. 13)
1 Hope i "I have had enough of Struggle.", Robert Kenny , 1993 single work poetry
— Appears in: The Winter Bridge : Poems and Drawings 1991-94 1993; (p. 12)
1 For Theresa i "You enter my dreams", Robert Kenny , 1993 single work poetry
— Appears in: The Winter Bridge : Poems and Drawings 1991-94 1993; (p. 10)
1 The Rumour i "Here is a list of tragedies,", Robert Kenny , 1993 single work poetry
— Appears in: The Winter Bridge : Poems and Drawings 1991-94 1993; (p. 9)
1 The Enormous Doors i "The Guardian drew back the enormous doors:", Robert Kenny , 1993 single work poetry
— Appears in: The Winter Bridge : Poems and Drawings 1991-94 1993; (p. 8)
1 Now i "Now that the bomb has ceased to be our Eschaton,", Robert Kenny , 1993 single work poetry
— Appears in: The Winter Bridge : Poems and Drawings 1991-94 1993; (p. 8)
1 The Approaching Steps i "They demanded I list my victims", Robert Kenny , 1993 single work poetry
— Appears in: The Winter Bridge : Poems and Drawings 1991-94 1993; (p. 7)
1 y separately published work icon The Winter Bridge : Poems and Drawings 1991-94 Robert Kenny , Fitzroy North : Eaglemont Books , 1993 Z1207119 1993 selected work poetry
1 Innocence i "If I give back to God all I stole in my youth,", Robert Kenny , 1993 single work poetry
— Appears in: The Winter Bridge : Poems and Drawings 1991-94 1993; (p. 5) Overland , Spring no. 136 1994; (p. 38)
1 From Fear (the Shadows) Robert Kenny , 1988 single work short story
— Appears in: Otis Rush , February no. 2 1988; (p. 5-13)
1 Gerald Murnane's Travels into Regions Assumed to Be Known : The City of Dreams and the Sexuality of Illusion Robert Kenny , 1987 single work criticism
— Appears in: Murnane 1987; (p. 36-38)
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