Issue Details: First known date: 2008... 2008 'Esprit de Nation' and Popular Modernity : Aussie Magazine 1920-1931
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'This article examines the intersection of the populist nationalism and popular modernity in Aussie (1920-1931), a commercial magazine of opinion, review and entertainment that flourished in Sydney between the wars. Aussie has been overlooked in comparison to its better-known contemporaries Smith's Weekly and the Bulletin, despite occupying the same public-commercial sphere and same discursive space as those magazines.

Aussie had a significant past as the main soldiers' paper of the First World War; in its post-war format it built a sizeable circulation on both sides of the Tasman; and for more than a decade it published the major Australian writers and cartoonists of the day. This article seeks not only to restore the magazine to its position as a significant player in the print culture of its period but also to use this case study to explore methodological questions about the historical interpretation of magazines as complex texts and the nature of Australian modernity. In particular it explores the gap between the nationalist editorial platform of the magazine and the investment in new forms of consumer and gender modernity found elsewhere in its pages. The magazine's ambivalence towards the modern was institutional, not merely ideological, a function of its position in a modernising print marketplace'. Source: David Carter.

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon History Australia vol. 5 no. 3 December 2008 Z1596507 2008 periodical issue 2008 pg. 74.1-74.22
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Always Almost Modern : Australian Print Cultures and Modernity David Carter , Melbourne : Australian Scholarly Publishing , 2013 6479433 2013 multi chapter work criticism

    'Was Australian culture born modern or has it always been behind the game, never quite modern enough? Was it always already or only always almost modern? David Carter’s essays examine the complex engagements of Australian writers, artists, editors and consumers with 20th-century modernity, social and political crisis, and the impact of modernisms. Always Almost Modern ranges from the great mid-century novels of authors such as Eleanor Dark and M. Barnard Eldershaw to the unprecedented bestseller that was They’re a Weird Mob, from famous to largely forgotten local magazines and to film and television, and from the avant-garde to nationalism, communism and the middlebrow. Chapters engage with key themes in contemporary literary and cultural studies, exploring new ways of understanding Australian culture in terms of its modernity and transnationalism.' (Publisher's blurb)

    Melbourne : Australian Scholarly Publishing , 2013
    pg. 67-80
Last amended 13 Mar 2014 11:01:29
74.1-74.22 'Esprit de Nation' and Popular Modernity : Aussie Magazine 1920-1931small AustLit logo History Australia
67-80 'Esprit de Nation' and Popular Modernity : Aussie Magazine 1920-1931small AustLit logo
Subjects:
  • Aussie 1918 periodical (97 issues)
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