AustLit
Latest Issues
Notes
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Special issue.
Contents
- The Man Whose Wife Has Told Him to Leavei"is camping with his daughters", single work poetry (p. 4)
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Terror Australis Incognita? : An Introduction to Fear in Australian Literature and Film,
single work
criticism
(p. 5-9)'Since feelings are one of the prevalent subject matters of literature, it is no wonder that fear has affected and infected many Australian literary texts, all the more after the pervasive sense of danger and insecurity generated in a post 9/11 anxiety-provoking context.'
- Lashi"My dearest, the belly and the heart overlap here;", single work poetry (p. 10)
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Paranoid Projections : Australian Novels of Asian Invasion,
single work
criticism
(p. 11-16)
'The October 9, 2000 edition of the Australian News magazine the Bulletin features a special report, entitled 'The Gathering Storm,' which details predictions of how catastrophic, climate-change driven upheavals across Asia could see the inundation of Australia's vulnerable north with environmental refugees. Australian Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty foresees that lack of rain, rising sea levels, pandemic disease, and failing crops may lead to vast movements of populations a people 'in their millions' could begin to look for land and they'll cross oceans and borders to do it.'
- Sonnet for Emma Lewi"so, dear disgraced, have you got a word", single work poetry (p. 16)
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The Exception That Proves the Rule? National Fear, Racial Loathing, Chinese Writing in 'UnAustralia',
single work
criticism
(p. 17-22)'In this essay I want to explore the idea that an exceptional cultural space, which I am calling 'unAustralia,' offers a deconstructive vantage point from which we can observe at work the normative ideological processes (the 'rules') that promote an experience of national belonging for some by excluding others.'
- Augusti"Boot prints crisscross, oyster-catchers", single work poetry (p. 23)
- The Importance of Being Incorrect : Burma Road Pieces From Beginning to End, single work prose travel (p. 24-31)
- Written in the City, A Fragmenti"to start", single work poetry (p. 32)
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The Uses of Fear : Spatial Politics in the Australian White-Vanishing Trope,
single work
criticism
(p. 33-41)
'In the fourteenth century, cartographers depicting Terra Australis, the imagined but as yet unconfirmed southern continent, placed fearsome mythical creatures in the 'unknown spaces' on their maps. Dragons, gargoyles, and giant sea serpents both guarded and occupied the as-yet-undefined spaces of the Antipodes.'
'In contemporary Australia's dominant, non-indigenous culture, the dragons and gargoyles, and even, ostensibly, terra nullius itself, now repealed, are gone, yet ghosts of their presence and purpose remain. White Australians still populate the spaces beyond their immediate knowledge with mythical presences and imbue them with qualities of fear and menace. This article explores the role of spaces of fear in one particular white Australian narrative trope, the white-vanishing tales. This is the paradigm of recurring stories in non-indigenous Australian textuality about disappearing whites (lost children, missing explorers, vanishing tramps and drovers, etc.)'
- Women In Their Houses On Their Owni"Tonight I'm washing the dishes after eating on my own", single work poetry (p. 42)
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Fearing the Protector, Fearing the Protected : Indigenous and 'National' Fears in Twentieth-century Australia,
single work
criticism
(p. 43-48)
'This essay examines the effects of early to mid twentieth-century government policies of 'protection' and assimilation on indigenous Australian lives. It focuses on childhood fears as recounted by Baarkanji memoirist Evelyn Crawford in her transcribed oral history, Over My Tracks, and on 'national' fears as represented in public spheres.'
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Reality Bites : The Impact of the Second World War on the Australian Home Front in Maria Gardner's Blood Stained Wattle and Robin Sheiner's Smile, the War Is Over,
single work
criticism
(p. 49-55)'Threats to national safety have captured the imagination of few novelists: to date, only Maria Gardner's Blood Stained Wattle (1992) and Robin Sheiner's Smile, the War is Over (1983) have appeared. While both of these writers draw heavily upon military and political history to tell their stories, Gardner derives much of her material from a diary her father, Colin Gray Gardner, kept of his experiences during and after the bombing of Darwin, and Sheiner, who was a child during the war in Perth, supplements her memories of the period with letters from and formal interviews with those who were alive at the time.'
- Fox Maideni"softest", single work poetry (p. 55)
- The Smoker's Case, single work short story (p. 56-59)
- Hangingi"While we wait for the hangman", single work poetry (p. 60-61)
- Noisei"Twitterers, skeletal birds", single work poetry (p. 62)
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'A World of ...Risk, Passion, Intensity, and Tragedy : The Post 9/11 Australian Novel,
single work
criticism
(p. 63-66)
'The terrorist has become a familiar figure and terrorism a common referent in recent Australian writing. I intend to explore a handful of Australian novels published, like [Janet Turner] Hospital's work , since 2001 : A.L. McCann's Subtopia (2005), Linda Jaivin's The Infernal Optimist (2006), Richard Flanagan's The Unknown Terrorist (2006), and Andrew McGahan's Underground (2006). All of these novels entered a world attuned to the destructive potential of the terrorist and wary of the terrorist desire to wreak and skill at wreaking havoc.'
- Nor Am I Out of Iti"Pottering might be", single work poetry (p. 67)
- Trampoliningi"The fattest eternity is childhood", single work poetry (p. 68)
