AustLit

'In Reel Men, Chelsea Barnett provides an original interpretation of films of the fifties, that screened different understandings of Australian masculinity, when men felt the responsibilities of breadwinner, father and husband that were not easy to disentangle or reconcile. It is part of Barnett’s innovative approach to argue that films that dealt with Australian personalities, histories and settings conveyed Australian meanings, even when they were co-produced with British or American cinema companies.' (Introduction)

'Martin Ritchie Sharp was born into a wealthy Sydney family in 1942. He was educated at Cranbrook School and went on to study at the East Sydney National Art School. In 1963, Richard Neville, Sharp, Richard Walsh and some of their friends launched the satirical Oz magazine. The first issue carried cartoons by Sharp that lampooned the monarchy and ridiculed sexual taboos. As if this was not enough, another cartoon by Sharp depicted the Christian God as a tycoon smoking a cigar at his desk with trays marked Heaven, Purgatory and Hell. Other subjects avoided by the mainstream press that were now voiced in Oz included suburban customs and habits caricatured in Sharp’s dull and tedious ‘Norman Normal’; misogynistic abuse of women as parodied in his The Word Flashed round the Arms; publication of the names of organised-crime bosses with links to the police; and condemnation of laws against abortion and homosexuality that created opportunities for blackmail and extortion.' (Introduction)

'Far from being a dutiful, sycophantic offspring of Great Britain, Australia had the assurance and self-confidence, almost from the earliest period of colonization, to negotiate for its own betterment. To become a nation, Australian society gave rise to a distinct and separate state within the British empire and then, increasingly, in the Asia-Pacific zone. Gradually Britain became an outsider in Australian political, economic, and cultural affairs, and the Australian people rejected or reinvented British institutions or traditions. The broad approach of this analysis covers Federation, republicanism, foreign debt, industrialization, the depression, and Australia at war. Ranging across a wide spectrum, this book presents a subtle and forceful account of national identities shaped by class, gender, ethnicity, religion, and political affiliation.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Norman Lindsay was one of the most influential, popular and controversial figures in Australian literature and art. The nude and masculinist conceptions of female sexuality were at the centre of Lindsay's aesthetic vision and his programme for an Australian renaissance. Male sexual liberation through the exploration of women's bodies was also an important aspect of his articulation of a national resistance to modernism as the product of metropolitan modernity. Lindsay's antimodernism was based on premodern styles and images increasingly divorced from historical time and national space. His nationalism was interwoven with his antimodernism; it was personal and contradictory and included criticism of the constraints placed on Australian writing by British publishers.'

Source: Abstract.

'This article outlines some aspects of Hancock's career, psychology and his ideas on writing history. It begins with a discussion of Hancock's relations with siblings and parents, and some speculative connections are drawn between childhood and his historical imagination. Then there follows a discussion of Hancock's work on historical method and imperial history in terms of his use of metaphor, paradox and irony. Some links are drawn between narrative form, the psychology of the author, and his way of posing questions and conceptualizing problems.'

Source: Opening paragraph.