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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'This is a narrative paper that tracks a story of Aboriginal representation and the concept of nation across the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries through some important Australian texts. I read this assemblage of settler literature through the cultural metaphor of tracking, because tracking is as much about anticipation as it is following. Tracking is about reading: reading land and people before and after whitefellas. It is about entering into the consciousness of the person or people of interest. Tracking is not just about reading the physical signs; it is about reading the mind. It is not just about seeing and hearing what is there; it is as much about what is not there. Tony Morrisson [sic] wrote of mapping ‘the critical geography’ (3) of the white literary imagination in her work on Africanist presence in American Literature, Playing in the Dark. This paper tracks the settler imagination on Aboriginal presence in Australian literature in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. ' (Author's introduction)
Notes
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Epigraph: ‘Tracking for Blackfellas is like reading for whitefellas.’
(Aunty Lil Smart nee Croker 1887–1980)
Author's note: Aunty Lil was my Grandmother with whom I grew up.
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Dorothy Green Memorial Lecture
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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Profiles of Practice: Influences When Selecting Texts to Include Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Perspectives in English
2022
single work
criticism
— Appears in: English in Australia , vol. 57 no. 1 2022; (p. 5-14.)'The subject of English offers a unique context to embed Indigenous perspectives for the benefit of all students through its availability and variety of text choices. Currently, the New South Wales (NSW) English Syllabus requires teachers to include texts which provide 'insights into Aboriginal experiences in Australia' (NESA, 2012). With no structured auditing method for this inclusion, there is room to further understand how teachers select texts to include Indigenous perspectives. This paper will present some factors influencing text selection when including Indigenous perspectives through four teacher profiles. It presents four teacher profiles to explore some influences on their text selections when including Indigenous perspectives. It is a snapshot of decision-making for class texts identified from semi-structured qualitative conversations with four Western Sydney English teachers. The study aims to provide some insight into the process of embedding Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives through text selection in Years 7-10 English.' (Publication abstract)
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Strange Home : Rethinking Australian Literature
2021
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Australian Humanities Review , November no. 69 2021; 'During my first semester of online teaching in 2020 I began keeping a form of teaching archive that was new to me.1 In addition to the usual lectures and slides, I began to accumulate a number of files with a .txt suffix. This is an archive of one of the unexpected affordances of teaching over Zoom: the chat window. I did not know what to do with the chat window, but my students did. They asked questions. They made jokes. They developed extended comedic and often critical conversations about the texts we were reading and how I was teaching them. These chat.txt files are an archive of students seeking and finding social connection in an online English classroom during a pandemic. They are also important to me as a record of a semester in which I tried to use that online classroom to begin to rethink what it means to do the work that has been the focus of my career: teaching and researching Australian literature.' (Introduction)
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Strange Home : Rethinking Australian Literature
2021
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Australian Humanities Review , November no. 69 2021; 'During my first semester of online teaching in 2020 I began keeping a form of teaching archive that was new to me.1 In addition to the usual lectures and slides, I began to accumulate a number of files with a .txt suffix. This is an archive of one of the unexpected affordances of teaching over Zoom: the chat window. I did not know what to do with the chat window, but my students did. They asked questions. They made jokes. They developed extended comedic and often critical conversations about the texts we were reading and how I was teaching them. These chat.txt files are an archive of students seeking and finding social connection in an online English classroom during a pandemic. They are also important to me as a record of a semester in which I tried to use that online classroom to begin to rethink what it means to do the work that has been the focus of my career: teaching and researching Australian literature.' (Introduction) -
Profiles of Practice: Influences When Selecting Texts to Include Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Perspectives in English
2022
single work
criticism
— Appears in: English in Australia , vol. 57 no. 1 2022; (p. 5-14.)'The subject of English offers a unique context to embed Indigenous perspectives for the benefit of all students through its availability and variety of text choices. Currently, the New South Wales (NSW) English Syllabus requires teachers to include texts which provide 'insights into Aboriginal experiences in Australia' (NESA, 2012). With no structured auditing method for this inclusion, there is room to further understand how teachers select texts to include Indigenous perspectives. This paper will present some factors influencing text selection when including Indigenous perspectives through four teacher profiles. It presents four teacher profiles to explore some influences on their text selections when including Indigenous perspectives. It is a snapshot of decision-making for class texts identified from semi-structured qualitative conversations with four Western Sydney English teachers. The study aims to provide some insight into the process of embedding Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives through text selection in Years 7-10 English.' (Publication abstract)
JASAL
- The Secret River 2005 single work novel
- Searching for the Secret River 2006 single work criticism
- Remembering Babylon 1993 single work novel
- Coonardoo : The Well in the Shadow 1928 single work novel
- Capricornia : A Novel 1938 single work novel
- Poor Fellow My Country 1975 single work novel
- A Fringe of Leaves 1976 single work novel
