Marcus Clarke's Bohemia: Literature, Popular Culture and Urban Experience in Colonial Melbourne. This study will contextualise Marcus Clarke's career in terms of the material culture of nineteenth-century Melbourne, producing the first complete and theoretically informed monograph on Australia's most important colonial prose writer. Clarke's self-conscious bohemianism highlighted the increasingly commercialised nature of nineteenth-century writing, the centrality of mass entertainment to urban l ....Marcus Clarke's Bohemia: Literature, Popular Culture and Urban Experience in Colonial Melbourne. This study will contextualise Marcus Clarke's career in terms of the material culture of nineteenth-century Melbourne, producing the first complete and theoretically informed monograph on Australia's most important colonial prose writer. Clarke's self-conscious bohemianism highlighted the increasingly commercialised nature of nineteenth-century writing, the centrality of mass entertainment to urban life, the circulation of cultural capital between Europe and Australia, and the emergence of Australian literary nationalism in a larger imperial context. His career is thus uniquely positioned to elucidate the hitherto under-explored but pivotal relationship between literature and commodified popular culture in the specific context of an Australian settler-colony. Read moreRead less
PACIFISM IN ENGLISH LITERATURE. 'Pacifism in English Literature' will be a single author monograph examining and analysing English literature from the point of view of classical pacifist thought. It will be a development from my two former ARC-funded books, 'Natural Law in English Renaissance Literature' (1996) and 'Natural Rights in English Romanticism of the 1790s' (2001). This will be achieved by the same successful research process as the other books - by ARC funding giving teaching relief f ....PACIFISM IN ENGLISH LITERATURE. 'Pacifism in English Literature' will be a single author monograph examining and analysing English literature from the point of view of classical pacifist thought. It will be a development from my two former ARC-funded books, 'Natural Law in English Renaissance Literature' (1996) and 'Natural Rights in English Romanticism of the 1790s' (2001). This will be achieved by the same successful research process as the other books - by ARC funding giving teaching relief for one semester per year for three years.Read moreRead less
The transition from print to electronic textuality in the scholarly editing of Australian literature: practice and theory. Scholarly editions of Henry Lawson's While the Billy Boils and colonial poet Charles Harpur's Complete Poems will afford access to authenticated texts of classic works of Australian literature. The editions complete the Academy Editions of Australian Literature series, a long-term project of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. The analysis of versions will allow a newl ....The transition from print to electronic textuality in the scholarly editing of Australian literature: practice and theory. Scholarly editions of Henry Lawson's While the Billy Boils and colonial poet Charles Harpur's Complete Poems will afford access to authenticated texts of classic works of Australian literature. The editions complete the Academy Editions of Australian Literature series, a long-term project of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. The analysis of versions will allow a newly informed study of the works. The Academy Editions series makes a staged transition to electronic delivery with these editions. The new methodology will lay the groundwork for future projects, and the text-authentication method may have further application. The State Library of New South Wales website will make fruits of the scholarship available to a wider public.Read moreRead less
Brought to book: Textual-editorial studies and the methodology of book history with a scholarly edition of Charles Harpur's complete poetry. Australia will possess reliable access for the first time to accurate versions of all of the verse of our most important colonial poet, Charles Harpur. Study of his manuscripts and publishing history will reveal the poet's place in society as a cross-section of Imperial-colonial relations. A Harpur website with collaborative interpretation will serve as a m ....Brought to book: Textual-editorial studies and the methodology of book history with a scholarly edition of Charles Harpur's complete poetry. Australia will possess reliable access for the first time to accurate versions of all of the verse of our most important colonial poet, Charles Harpur. Study of his manuscripts and publishing history will reveal the poet's place in society as a cross-section of Imperial-colonial relations. A Harpur website with collaborative interpretation will serve as a model for future projects. There will be benefits for students and the wider public through free electronic access to facsimiles and transcriptions of Harpur's manuscripts. Print-on-demand technology will ultimately allow coursebooks for student syllabuses to draw on the material.Read moreRead less
Faith into Words: the entanglement of religion, politics and poetry in the work of Vincent Buckley. This project will explore poetry of Vincent Buckley, which is grounded in a conception of a God incarnate in the world and its people that impacted directly on Australia's secular culture and politics, and continues to offer to both secular and religious readers a way towards an inclusive human community.
Evaluating the Australian Popular Fiction Archive: A Definitive Critical History and Bibliography of Early to Late Colonial Genre Writing. This project analyses and evaluates Australian popular or genre fiction from the early to the late colonial period: from around the 1840s to the beginning of World War Two. It will chart a comprehensive history of colonial Australian genre fiction for the first time, producing two critical monographs and an online bibliography and digital archive which will f ....Evaluating the Australian Popular Fiction Archive: A Definitive Critical History and Bibliography of Early to Late Colonial Genre Writing. This project analyses and evaluates Australian popular or genre fiction from the early to the late colonial period: from around the 1840s to the beginning of World War Two. It will chart a comprehensive history of colonial Australian genre fiction for the first time, producing two critical monographs and an online bibliography and digital archive which will function as major reading, research and teaching resources. Understanding colonial popular fiction as a field of writing that expressed colonial sensibilities and performed colonial predicaments, this project will also demonstrate the formative role it played in the task of settlement and nation building.Read moreRead less
Travelling Home: A Study of Walkabout, Australia's Geographic Magazine (1934-74). Walkabout was one of mid-twentieth century's most popular magazines with a focus on inland Australia, as well as the Pacific region. It graced suburban lounge rooms, doctors' and dentists' surgeries, railway waiting rooms, ministerial offices, and school libraries. Walkabout's mixture of entertainment and education ensured its influence across a spectrum of readers: across age, class, and educational boundaries. Th ....Travelling Home: A Study of Walkabout, Australia's Geographic Magazine (1934-74). Walkabout was one of mid-twentieth century's most popular magazines with a focus on inland Australia, as well as the Pacific region. It graced suburban lounge rooms, doctors' and dentists' surgeries, railway waiting rooms, ministerial offices, and school libraries. Walkabout's mixture of entertainment and education ensured its influence across a spectrum of readers: across age, class, and educational boundaries. This project explores the role of Walkabout in the development of a modern national identity. Walkabout deliberately cultivated one of Australia's key modern economic foundations-the travel industry-and did so whilst also influencing knowledge formation and circulation. Read moreRead less
The Visual Mediation of a Complex Narrative: TGH Strehlow's Journey to Horseshoe Bend. TGH Strehlow's biographical memoir, Journey to Horseshoe Bend, is a vivid ethno-historiographic account of Aboriginal, settler and Lutheran communities of Central Australia in the 1920's. This project intends to construct an extensive digital hub elaborating key textual thematics of Aboriginal identity and sense of ?place?, supplemented with oral histories. Consistent with the Strehlow Research Centre's missio ....The Visual Mediation of a Complex Narrative: TGH Strehlow's Journey to Horseshoe Bend. TGH Strehlow's biographical memoir, Journey to Horseshoe Bend, is a vivid ethno-historiographic account of Aboriginal, settler and Lutheran communities of Central Australia in the 1920's. This project intends to construct an extensive digital hub elaborating key textual thematics of Aboriginal identity and sense of ?place?, supplemented with oral histories. Consistent with the Strehlow Research Centre's mission in the management and preservation of the Strehlow Collection's vast archival materials, the project will provide access to and foster engagement with Strehlow's works. The project will employ innovative visual methodologies in the production and mediation of Indigenous knowledge related to the text. Read moreRead less
Local canons: institutional authority and the category of the literary in Australian secondary-school English syllabuses, 1901-2001. Does literature still have a role to play in contemporary Australian culture and society? Is there any national benefit from the study of Shakespeare? Patrick White? Is literary study irrelevant, and out of touch with contemporary culture? These are contentious and important questions. This research, in seeking a deeper and more detailed understanding of the variab ....Local canons: institutional authority and the category of the literary in Australian secondary-school English syllabuses, 1901-2001. Does literature still have a role to play in contemporary Australian culture and society? Is there any national benefit from the study of Shakespeare? Patrick White? Is literary study irrelevant, and out of touch with contemporary culture? These are contentious and important questions. This research, in seeking a deeper and more detailed understanding of the variability of the category of literature in Australian school education over the past century, promises to make an important contribution to long-standing and still vital national and international debates over the canon: debates that tell us a great deal about our region and the world.Read moreRead less
A study of Australia's most popular internationally-known comedian, Barry Humphries. This project will offer a fully researched biographical study of Barry Humphries in the context of Australian cultural history from the 1950s to the present. The study will illuminate Australian literature, theatre and cultural politics, and the way it intersects with both British and American cultural history and the development of global entertainment culture since the 1960s. It will fill a gap in the underst ....A study of Australia's most popular internationally-known comedian, Barry Humphries. This project will offer a fully researched biographical study of Barry Humphries in the context of Australian cultural history from the 1950s to the present. The study will illuminate Australian literature, theatre and cultural politics, and the way it intersects with both British and American cultural history and the development of global entertainment culture since the 1960s. It will fill a gap in the understanding of Humphries' life and his immense contribution to the Australian psyche and to the global export of Australian cultural products in the post-imperial era.Read moreRead less