AustLit

Resourceful Reading aimed to re-examine and re-invigorate Australian literary criticism and history by integrating traditional, qualitative approaches to literary studies with empirically-rich methodologies including data-mining and quantitative analysis.

Many of the new methodologies employed in Resourceful Reading are enabled by (though not restricted to) eResearch strategies, including data-basing, data mining, modelling, quantitative analysis and geo-spatial mapping. Such innovation is necessary to keep pace with digitised information now available to Australian literary studies, and with changes to the way that humanities research is being undertaken internationally.

Data resulting from four separate but linked research projects was the digital end product of Resourceful Reading.

Five projects

The five linked projects were :

– Professor Gillian Whitlock's Late 20th Century Anthologies

– Professor Gillian Whitlock's Asylum Seeker Narratives

– Professor Robert Dixon's Australian Literature in the 'Translation Zone'

– Professor Leigh Dale's Australian Newspaper Reviews of 1930

– Dr. Katherine Bode's Reading by Numbers

More information on each project can be found in the individual project pages.

AustLit and the new empiricism

A leading example of what has been called the 'new empiricism' in Australian literary studies, the Resourceful Reading approach aims to revise the legacy of theoretically-driven literary history and criticism, and to generate new ways of writing literary history and reading texts.

This project aimed to contribute data to AustLit as well as to maximise the potential of this important, data-rich resource. AustLit is a leading force in this new, technologically-aware era in Australian literary studies, and Resourceful Reading is dedicated to contributing to AustLit as a central resource for the study of Australian literary cultures.