Cirrus@Austlit

An overview of the different kinds of work on culture that are contained in the term 'the new empiricism'. Carter emphasises the status of the new empiricism as 'post-' rather than 'anti-theoretical'.

Discusses scholarly editing, the oldest empirical form of literary scholarship, and explores the different problems involved in print and e-editions.

Hetherington argues 'for the need to reinstate bibliography as the cornerstone of literary studies, with central importance not only in literary scholarship but in teaching, specifically in the undergraduate curriculum' (71).

Dixon applies the techniques of close and 'distant' reading to explore contemporary Australian literature in the 'translation zone' with other languages. He discusses the influences, national and international, which lead to translations, and the significance of translators.

'Drawing on the large collection of papers held at the National Library of Australia, this chapter explores the first editions of Kylie Tennant's The Battlers in New York, London and Sydney during the 1940s.' (106)

Focusing on newspapers, the essay reports on an element of the Resourceful Reading inquiry, 'a project which aims to bring large-scale empirical data collection and analysis to the study of Australian literature' (119). The authors are examining the ways in which books are represented as cultural and commercial objects in newspapers in the interwar period, choosing as an example the month of December, 1930. The findings in relation to Australian literature 'point to the previously under-reported significance of the regional press, as well as the enormous diversity and range of books discussed in Australian newspapers' (120). The collected data also suggests that the book trade in Australia at the time was dominated by English publishers.

The essay looks at the profitability of literary books for publishers, taking as examples data from the University of Queensland Press and some other publishers. The empirical research finds as the baseline reality of literary publishing 'its unprofitability, its fundamentally uncommercial nature' (147). Three case studies reveal that factors other than literary criteria tend to contribute to a book's commercial success.

The article examines the role the University of Queensland Press played in publishing and promoting black writing since the late 1970s, and some of the difficult issues involved.

This essay examines the publication process and publication history of Reynold's classic book, The Other Side of the Frontier (Penguin, 1982). It also looks at Aboriginal publishing programs of several other publishers during the past decades, and at the socio-historical issues involved in their development.

Examining the publishing history of Australian novels based on data from AustLit, Bode distinguishes three phases: British Domination 1950-1970, National Awakening 1970s and 1980s, and Multnational Domination 1990-. Resisting the frequent argument that the book and the book industry are dying, the essay explores 'some of the complex ways in which both novel and industry are Janus-faced: turned to the national and the transnational, the cultural and the commerical' (196).

'One reason critics have been arguing for a more empirical approach to Australian literary studies is that we have access to new and much broader kinds of data than ever before. Data, however, are of little use in and of themselves. The key question when approaching literary studies with empirical methods is how to move between the generalisations involved in empirical research and the attention to the particular that characterises literary analysis: in other words, how such data could be made useful to literary analysis? This chapter examines one such approach. Specifically, it uses a collaboration between Australian literary studies and statistical machine learning to suggest how, in practice, empirical modes of research can speak to, enhance, or even help to direct more traditional modes of literary analysis.' (223-224)

'This chapter will explore the work behind the charting. This will include the necessary apologetics and methodological uncertainties that contextualise analytic labour, and it will put forward an alternative reading of new empiricism which suggests that internet and computing technologies are shaping the cultural grammar of the domain of Australian literature in ways yet to be fully understood but which need to be corralled methodologically. It will propose that in the contemporary humanities environment new empiricism should continue to provide important "reference points from which qualitative data can be understood" and a way for literary scholars to visualise quantitative research but from within the framework of an Australian Charter for the Computer-Based Representation of Literary History.' (244)

Seeing the anthology as a particularly useful tool to address some issues about gender, writing and empirical critique, Whitlock returns to her eighties anthology 'to re-engage with my former self at work as an editor, critic and anthologiser', using data which 'has the potential to bring a different approach to bear on Australian women's writing in what...I confidently described as "a phase in the national literary history when women writers and readers entered the mainstream".' (274)

The chapter discusses some of the requirements the layers of technical and institutional support impose upon the emerging landscape of eResearch practice in literary studies. It also considers some of the larger, global issues around scholarly communication within the research sector. Finally it outlines the innovative ways in which AustLit 'is trying to address emergent eResearch needs of scholars of Australian literary culture through the Aus-e-Lit project, funded by the Australian Federal Government's National E-Research Architecture Taskforce, an NCRIS Platforms for Collaboration program' (300).

Discusses the Literature of Tasmania Research Community of AustLit, focusing on the literary representation of place.

This chapter briefly outlines the history of the AusStage database before 'articulating the ways in which it has attempted to provide new ways to intersect with its community of researchers and contemporary technological developments' (326).

Outlines the history of APRIL: The Australian Poetry Resources Internet Library and the issues involved in its development.

'An Australian reading experience database has the potential to unite the benefits of large-scale historical synthesis with those of intensive qualitative analysis of the act of reading. What follows is an account of the present state of the project, together with some consideration of the questions of design and definition that have already come to light.' (340)