AustLit

'From the dawn of cinema, images of Indigenous peoples have been dominated by Hollywood stereotypes and often negative depictions from elsewhere around the world. With the advent of digital technologies, however, many Indigenous peoples are working to redress the imbalance in numbers and counter the negativity.

'The contributors to Reverse Shots offer a unique scholarly perspective on current work in the world of Indigenous film and media. Chapters focus primarily on Canada, Australia, and New Zealand and cover areas as diverse as the use of digital technology in the creation of Aboriginal art, the healing effects of Native humour in First Nations documentaries, and the representation of the pre-colonial in films from Australia, Canada, and Norway.' (Publication summary)

'Children's books seek to assist children to understand themselves and their world. Unsettling Narratives: Postcolonial Readings of Children's Literature demonstrates how settler-society texts position child readers as citizens of postcolonial nations, how they represent the colonial past to modern readers, what they propose about race relations, and how they conceptualize systems of power and government.

Clare Bradford focuses on texts produced since 1980 in Canada, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand and includes picture books, novels, and films by Indigenous and non-Indigenous publishers and producers. From extensive readings, the author focuses on key works to produce a thorough analysis rather than a survey. Unsettling Narratives opens up an area of scholarship and discussion - the use of postcolonial theories - relatively new to the field of children's literature and demonstrates that many texts recycle the colonial discourses naturalized within mainstream cultures ' (From publisher's catalogue).

Contents: Introduction. Part One: 'When Languages Collide': Resistance and Representation 1. Language, Resistance, and Subjectivity.2. Indigenous Texts and Publishers.3. White Imaginings.4. Telling the Past. Part Two: Place and Postcolonial Significations.5. Space, Time, Nation. 6. Borders, Journeys, and Liminality.7. Politics and Place.8. Allegories of Place and Race.Conclusion