The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.
'This article considers the divide between popular and academic history, especially
as perceived by popular and academic historians. It argues that the two forms of
history, though clearly connected to one another, have different priorities and audiences.
In particular, where academic historians prize originality of research, popular
historians will tend to prize powerful storytelling. The article suggests that popular
historians could acknowledge more handsomely that many do owe their debt to the
research findings of academic historians, while in their turn academic historians
have much to learn from popular historians about how to communicate the pleasures
and importance of understanding the past.' (Author's abstract p. 7)
'The critical acclaim enjoyed by such recent Australian graphic novels as Shaun Tan's
The Arrival (2006) and Nicki Greenberg's adaptation of The Great Gatsby (2007)
suggested that Australia had finally 'caught up' with the United States and Britain,
by embracing the graphic novel as a legitimate creative medium, on a par with literature
and cinema. The media interest generated by a succession of Australian graphic
novels during recent years often implied that their very existence was a relatively new
phenomenon. Accepting this premise without question, however, overlooks the evolution
of the graphic novel in Australia, early examples of which - such as Syd Nicholls'
Middy Malone: A Book Pirates (1941) - date back to the 1940s. Documenting how
historical changes in the production and dissemination of graphic novels in Australia
have influenced their critical and popular reception therefore creates new opportunities
to explore a largely overlooked facet of Australian print culture. Furthermore, the study
of the graphic novel in an exclusively Australian context provides a new perspective for
re-examining the origins, definitions and, indeed, the limitations of the term 'graphic
novel', and extends the parameters of the academic literature devoted to the medium
beyond the traditionally dominant Anglo-American focus.' (Author's abstract)