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(Re)considering Australian Geography with First Nations Literature - Jeanine Leane’s Walk Back Over,
single work
criticism
In their introduction to Human Geography,, Derek Gregory and Noel Castree remind the reader that “if . . . theories and methods establish spaces of constructed visibility, these are also always spaces of constructed invisibility. The price of seeing this is not to see that” (xliv; italics in original). Such spaces of constructed invisibility are constitutive of Australian geography, where marginalised or discredited systems of knowledge offer alternative ways of perceiving the Australian territory. Hence, in human geography terms, “positionality” plays a central role, inasmuch as “[I]ndigenous or subaltern knowledges are often discounted in order to promote particular versions of ‘Science’ or ‘Development’” (Gregory and Castree, xxix). Without doubt, in the context of Australia, the colonial accumulation of geographical knowledge coincides with the dissimulation of Aboriginal geography. In this regard, Australian First Nations literature activates other spaces of visibility, those that have been rendered invisible through colonisation and succeeding settlement. As such, Australian First Nations literature responds and adds to postcolonial criticism by confronting different geographies of the same territory.1 The aim of this paper is therefore to reconsider the place of colonial-settler geography and to make visible another geography of Australia. To do so, our study of selected poems from the collection Walk Back Over by Wiradjuri poet, academic, and activist Jeanine Leane seeks to bring into the light another geography and, therefore, another history of the land. Through her fiction and essays, Jeanine Leane deconstructs the manner in which Aboriginal people are represented in non-Aboriginal narratives, while defending and promoting the place given to Aboriginal people’s voices and representations, by and for Aboriginal people.2 Jeanine Leane’s highly acclaimed fiction and non-fiction work gives presence to those made absent and a voice to those who have been silenced by past and present forms of colonisation.3 Concentrating most particularly on the section called Country, this essay aims to show how Leane’s poems bring together the explicit and the implicit of colonial and Aboriginal history, thereby provoking different readings and responses from both First Nations and non-First Nations readers. In this regard, the poems in Walk Back Over become the opportunity to consider a Wiradjuri geography perturbed by colonial discourse and action, but still positively and proudly acknowledged and admired by the poet.' (Introduction)
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Decolonising Categories : Learning from “Water” by Ellen Van Neerven,
single work
criticism
'This essay offers a study of Yugambeh writer Ellen van Neerven’s short story “Water”. It will look at its creative use of a group of futuristic characters, who turn out to be Indigenous ancestral spirits. How do their long-debated identity question all sorts of categories, making them appear as socially-constructed and highlighting their material effects? Traits pertaining to the bildungsroman will be elucidated through an analysis of the main character whose quest for her Aboriginal identity finds an auxiliary in the spirits’ leader and an opponent in a representative of the government. The story unfolds as a political one of becoming-as-resistant against the latest form of segregation conducted in the name of national reconciliation. Drawing on the past, reflecting the present and imagining the future, at the intersection of Western and Indigenous worldviews, it challenges the literary genres and definitions of the real and the fiction. In its imagination of Indigenous futures, navigating between epistemologies, it may be called a work of Murri realism which draws a set of parallels to reflect on current postcolonising conditions.' (Publication abstract)
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Australian Regional Literary History : Rethinking Limits and Boundaries,
single work
criticism
'This paper emerges from a panel discussion at the ‘Texts and Their Limits’ conference (2021) between four scholars in the field of Australian regional literary history to consider its current concerns, practices and relationship to the frameworks of Australian literary studies. The panel flagged a renewal of regional literary scholarship in Australia through exploration of the panelists’ own projects and collaborations in regional and rural Victorian and Western Australian communities. Drawing on their reflections on the doing of regional literary history, the conversation canvassed the distinct qualities of contemporary regional Australian literary scholarship; the role of place, situated practice and community engagement in this field; and the implications for the regional literary studies of the always unsettled boundaries and status of the ‘region’ in Australian life. Following the original panel event, this paper discusses questions such as: what is regional literary history, where is it going, and what are limits? ' (Publication abstract)
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Apeironi"That passage of dune between",
single work
poetry
Author's note:
Non-Traditional Research Output, Statement of Intent
Research Background
This practice-led research was written as part of a broader project considering how childbearing and -rearing can recognise (and pay respect to) Indigenous sovereignty. Sovereignty as a concept sees the body overlap with place, while the act of childbearing is complicated in the Australian context by the inheritance of the colonial world into which the child is born. Poetry offers a nuanced and emotionally sensitive mode for traversing this complex terrain. This work moves conceptually through the multivalent structure of the rhizome (Deleuze and Guattari) in accommodating the influences of placemaking studies, critical whiteness studies and creative practice studies.Research Contribution
Drawing from Anne Brewster’s conceptualisation of “beachcombing” as a methodology for white Australian creative practice, this work extends on “body in reverie” (Brewster 135) and its openness to an embodied awareness of First Nations sovereignty through generative contact with place, in contemplating the function of colonial epistemologies of mapping in placemaking and childbearing alike. It uses the rhizome and its capacity to encompass indeterminacy as a means to challenge the epistemic certainty of the map, and to reiterate complex and multifaceted experiences of embodiment.Research Significance
The significance of this work lies primarily in the relevance of its thematic interests to the experiences of contemporary Australians. It highlights the importance of recognising First Nations sovereignty in the domain of childbearing, where it is often overlooked by popular/medical discourse. Other works within the ongoing project have been published in journals and anthologies, including Antipodes and Plumwood Mountain, attesting to the value of the project as a whole. -
Writing with the Australian Archive : Digital Posthuman Approaches to Australian Literature,
single work
criticism
Author's note: 'Research Background
This practice-led research was written as part of a broader project into digital literary creative practice. This project explores the process of creating digital-born literature, i.e. works that depend on a computer to exist. It uses Italo Calvino’s Six memos for the Next Millennium as a means to produce digital literary works that renegotiate text and images through recombinant poetics.'Research Contribution
Building upon Natalie Harkin’s concept of archival-poetics, this work employs digital literary techniques to interrogate and navigate the Australian archive. The ‘icastic’ image of the camel is used to lighten and quickly navigate the posthuman weight of the archive. Following text-image practitioners such as W.G. Sebald and Ross Gibson, the initial ‘static’ work is reimagined using curatorial software, augmented reality, and recombinant poetics. This makes a contribution to both Australian archival studies and Australia digital literary practice.'Research Significance
The significance of this work is its use of the icastic image as a prismatic symbol to navigate the posthuman weight of the archive. If the archive is both problematic and posthuman, then such creative research techniques are requisite. Traditional scholarly approaches are limited, so the implementation of creative practice that employs Calvino’s values and digital technologies are necessary to interrogate the archive and address the ‘grave consequences’ (Derrida’s proviso) that result from challenging the processes by which the archive has been established.' (Publication abstract) -
Parochial Canons : Teaching Australian Literature in Western Australia,
single work
criticism
'In recent years, various studies have drawn attention to a lack of Australian literature being taught in secondary classrooms in Australia, with these findings often attributed to teachers’ minimal experience of Australian texts during their senior secondary and tertiary education. This paper draws on a state-wide study of texts studied in Year 12 English and Literature classrooms in Western Australia in 2018, which revealed that Australian works, and particularly Western Australian texts, were popular inclusions for study. The externally examined English course in WA not having a prescribed text list, yet this condition of text list expansion does not necessarily ensure that a wider variety of texts will be studied in schools. This paper explores some possible explanations for this situation by referring to sites of sociability and to the work of John Guillory on canonicity and cultural capital (1993), to consider the impact of a parochial canon on Western Australian English subjects.' (Publication abstract)
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Chris Mead. Wondrous Strange : Seven Brief Thoughts on New Plays,
single work
review
— Review of Wondrous Strange : Seven Brief Thoughts on New Plays 2022 multi chapter work criticism ;'In this short Currency title, a collection of seven essays or “thoughts” on playmaking, Chris Mead states in his introduction that he is offering a ruminative alternative to “how-to” playwriting guides that err toward the reductive, the formulaic, and the conservative. “The following essays,” he explains, “are an attempt to chart a course between the chaos of competing theories and divergent practices, and oversimplifications of some how-to guides” (xiv).'(Introduction) -
Ann-Marie Priest. My Tongue Is My Own : A Life of Gwen Harwood,
single work
review
— Review of My Tongue Is My Own : A Life of Gwen Harwood 2022 single work biography ;'When my year 11 literature class began studying Gwen Harwood, the teacher gave us a hand- out with factoids about the Australian poet. She was born in Brisbane in 1920 but lives in Tasmania; she has written under pseudonyms and is rather fond of hoaxes (yet we weren’t told about her famous Bulletin acrostic, “Fuck all editors,” which would have piqued our interest); and the themes of her poetry include engagement with the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (his thought summarised in a sentence), religion, music, and suburban domesticity. “I think,” the teacher added hesitantly in those days of limited internet access, “she died recently.” (It was 1997 and she had, in fact, died in 1995.) With this introduction, we began studying her poems. It was a thin framework on which to construct our literary criticism, although to be fair it is only now, decades later, that the first biography of Harwood has appeared. Ann-Marie Priest’s My Tongue Is My Own is a rich narrative connecting and nuancing the factoids readers of Harwood have had to make do with until now. The restrictions on what could be said while her husband was still alive have lifted and a fuller story of her life is now possible.' (Introduction) -
Melinda J. Cooper. Middlebrow Modernism: Eleanor Dark’s Interwar Fiction.,
single work
review
— Review of Middlebrow Modernism : Eleanor Dark's Interwar Fiction 2022 multi chapter work criticism ;'Among the cluster of Australian women writers working in the early to mid-twentieth century and engaged with the debates and experiments of literary modernism, Eleanor Dark has always held a place of prominence. While her work has always attracted scholarly attention—even when it was accused of popularism—scholarly book-length studies of Dark are few and far between, limited to primarily biographical works like Eleanor Dark: A Writer’s Life (Barbara Brooks and Judith Clark, 1998), although a new collection on her work, edited by Brigid Rooney and Fiona Morrison, is scheduled for imminent publication by Sydney University Press. Melinda J. Cooper’s Middlebrow Modernism: Eleanor Dark’s Interwar Fiction therefore marks a welcome and long overdue focus on one of Australia’s most important writers of the twentieth century. The book can be seen as part of a growing movement of new scholarship on Australian women writers working around the wartime period, including Meg Brayshaw’s Sydney and Its Waterway in Australian Literary Modernism (2022), and Brigitta Olubas’s Shirley Hazzard: A Writing Life (2022).' (Introduction) -
Megan Davis and George Williams. Everything You Need to Know about the Uluru Statement from the Heart,
single work
review
— Review of Everything You Need to Know About the Uluru Statement from the Heart 2021 multi chapter work criticism ;'Australia is in the midst of a debate around the role of Indigenous people in the legal document that underpins the nation-state of Australia’s governance system—the Australian Constitution. Everything You Need to Know About the Uluru Statement from the Heart (henceforth, Everything You Need to Know) is a timely and useful handbook to help the reader understand how we have arrived at this position, and what is at stake in the coming months and years. This book was authored by Professors Megan Davis and George Williams. Both authors are experienced constitutional lawyers and experts in Australian and international Indigenous rights and constitutional recognition. Professor Davis was also a member of the Prime Minister’s Expert Panel on Constitutional Recognition for Indigenous Australians, and of the Referendum Council. This experience provides important context as the authors describe the processes that led to the Uluru Statement from the Heart.' (Introduction) -
Shannon Burns. Childhood: A Memoir,
single work
review
— Review of Childhood : A Memoir 2022 single work autobiography ;'Upon reading Shannon Burns’s memoir, Childhood, I was immediately struck by the uncomfortable sensation that with this book Burns is breaking one of the unspoken mores of working-class academia—that people who have successfully insinuated themselves into the university system should avoid talking openly about the peculiarities of their upbringing. Academics from disadvantaged backgrounds should keep to the generalities at least, so as not to expose the social and intellectual shortcomings of youth. Even in the supposedly egalitarian halls of the modern Australian university, class remains a complicated web of performance and deceit, and Burns observes that it is often working-class colleagues who are most “dismayed to learn that I had a rougher beginning than them” (12). When the aim of the exercise is to blend in with the children of doctors, solicitors and professors, declaring that you are the son of a sex worker and pot dealer who worked in a recycling facility is at once showing off and giving the game away.' (Introduction) -
Julieanne Lamond. Lohrey,
single work
review
— Review of Lohrey 2022 selected work essay ;'Most will be familiar with Amanda Lohrey’s Miles Franklin-winning 2020 novel The
Labyrinth, but many will not have explored the rich body of work this author has produced
over the several decades of her career. Julieanne Lamond’s book-length study is both an
introduction to Lohrey for readers and academics, as well as a call for scholars of Australian literature to pay due attention to this significant Australian writer.'(Introduction)
