'Alexander Sutherland (1852-1902) was a polymath who at various stages in his very short life was among other things a teacher, poet, writer, artist, mathematician, musician, journalist, politician, philosopher, historian and scientist. He wrote several books, many short stories, innumerable journal and newspaper articles, at least two novels and produced dozens of paintings and sketches. He is the author of the first volume of the celebratory work Victoria and its Metropolis and with his younger brother George wrote the first best-selling textbook on Australian history. Overseas he was lauded by some of the best scientific minds of the nineteenth century for his most important and pioneering work entitled The Origin and Growth of the Moral Instinct. Despite such distinctions, Sutherland has not been the subject of serious study in over a century.
This article begins to address this issue by providing a very brief biography of Sutherland, with particular reference to his interpretation of Darwinian evolution as elaborated in his magnum opus. This article shows how Sutherland influenced Russian philosophical thought at the turn of the nineteenth century and attempts to argue that Sutherland's interpretation of Darwinian evolution had more in common with its Russian variation than with the popular British interpretation advanced by Thomas Henry Huxley, Herbert Spencer and others. This article concludes that Sutherland's rehabilitation is long overdue not just because he is a forgotten important and influential intellectual but because it sheds light on philosophical thought in Australia during this period. (Author's abstract)
'The essay engages with ongoing debates about the validity of comparing Holocaust memory, situating these in the context of Australia's History Wars. Looking at Markus Zusak's The Book Thief (2005) as a recent fictional attempt to confront the effects of both Holocaust memory and German perpetrator trauma, it also considers the novel's status as a displaced (Australian-authored) German survivor's account. Arguing against a facile assimilation of the novel to the contemporary 'Holocaust industry', the essay asserts the value of a transnational approach that insists on the cultural and historical specificity of the Holocaust while showing its continuing usefulness in energising discourses of traumatic memory not necessarily related to the Shoah itself. At the same time, it sounds a cautionary note against using the Holocaust, either as a form of screen memory to avoid confronting colonial violence or as a negative analogy to assert the relative innocuousness of the Australian past.' (Author's abstract)
'Elizabeth Jolley is one of Australia's most significant writers: she published some two dozen books of fiction, essays and radio dramas, won every major Australian literary award, received four honorary doctorates, was awarded the Order of Australia for service to Australian Literature in 1988, and was named an Australian 'National Living Treasure' in 1997.
Her career has its roots in the UK, the place of her birth, schooling and early marriage. In 1959 she travelled with her three children and her husband to Perth, Western Australia, where Leonard Jolley took up a position as foundation Librarian of the University of Western Australia. She brought with her a trunk full of unpublished/rejected manuscripts which provided the initial materials from which she developed her published fictions and essays in Australia.
This article explores the institutional frameworks in Australia which enabled Jolley - a constant writer from childhood - to develop, in David Carter's phrase, 'a career in writing' from the mid-1970s onwards. It argues that Jolley rewrote her foundation manuscripts (written in another country) both to imagine Australian lives and to conform to Australian publishers' requirements. In doing so, it traces how the fiction and essays translate the experience of migration/exile, often thematised through the recurrent image of being 'on the edge,' into the particular and powerful ethic of love that informs Jolley's writing.' (Author's abstract)
'Ludovic de Beauvoir's 1868 published account of his discovery of Australia during his round-the-world journey provides a fascinating picture of the British colonies of the mid-1800s. This article examines his observations about the Australian colonies within the broader context, taking into account reports in contemporary local newspapers and other sources. Depicted is a young society viewed through the prism of the author's native country, France, and his adopted country, England, and reflects the class and racial divisions, general attitudes and prejudices of the time. These are especially commented upon as he visits each town and its district — from Melbourne to Hobart, then Sydney, Newcastle and Brisbane. As an outsider's perspective of the past, 'Australie' contributes to the growing historiography of the country.
De Beauvoir's last book published in 1931 testifies to his life-long admiration for Australia and Australians.' ' (Author's abstract)
