AustLit

'A deep dive into iconic 1980s Australian women-in-prison TV drama Prisoner (aka Cell Block H), its contemporary reimagining as Wentworth, and its broader, global industry significance and influence, this book brings together a range of scholarly and industry perspectives, including an interview with actor Shareena Clanton (Wentworth’s Doreen Anderson). Its chapters draw on talks with producers, screenwriters and casting; fan voices from the Wentworth twitterverse; comparisons with Netflix’s Orange is the New Black; queer and LGBTQ approaches; and international production histories and contexts. By charting a path from Prisoner to Wentworth, the book offers a new mapping of TV shifts and transformations through the lens of female transgression, ruminating on the history, currency, industry position and cultural value of women-in-prison series.'

Source: Abstract.

'A reconciliation movement spread across Australia during the 1990s, bringing significant marches, speeches, and policies across the country. Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians began imagining race relations in new ways and articulations of place, belonging, and being together began informing literature of a unique new genre. This book explores the political and poetic paradigms of reconciliation represented in Australian writing of this period. The author brings together textual evidence of themes and a vernacular contributing to the emergent genre of reconciliatory literature. The nexus between resistance and reconciliation is explored as a complex process to understanding sovereignty, colonial history, and the future of society. Moreover, this book argues it is creative writing that is most necessary for a deeper understanding of each other and of place, because it is writing that calls one to witness, to feel, and to imagine all at the same time.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Australia's official Reconciliation project confronted Australians with the continuous violent dispossession suffered by the country's Indigenous peoples and the pressing need to offer a public apology to them. While trauma became a tool whereby to create paths of empathy and reconciliation between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians, it was also a manipulative strategy to deny the country's shameful history. This book examines Gail Jones's literary contribution to such debates. It examines Gail Jones's questioning of Australia's victimology narratives, and offers an insightful discussion of the transmedia, transnational and multidirectional approach to trauma in the reconciliation-related novels she published during John Howard's vexed Liberal Government (1996-2007)'  (Publication summary)

'Australia led the world in the achievement of woman's suffrage and the nation's cultural history reflects this ambitious and progressive atmosphere. The impressive achievements of suffrage feminists in Australian theatre, however, are an untold story, as is their contribution to the development of international women's theatre of the time. A Splendid Adventure brings these experiences and experiments to light through a group biography exploring the theatrical careers of Katharine Susannah Prichard, Stella Miles Franklin, and Inez Isabel Bensusan. Chosen because of their expatriate involvement in the women's movement, their international profile as enfranchised Australian women, and their exceptional contribution to both the development of Australian drama and international feminist theatre, these women embody the energies and passions of Australian suffrage playwrights. The biographies of these major figures are accompanied by the dramatic stories of the New Women playwrights, the theatrical endeavours of women university students, and a consideration of international feminist theatre on tour in Australia, including the work of migrant suffragette Adela Pankhurst. The volume also includes the full text of a play by each playwright. Australian suffrage playwrights emerge from this study as exceptional feminists, expatriates, and theatre workers, whose "splendid adventures" have considerable implications for international women's theatre, feminist dramatic criticism, and Australian theatre historiography.' (Publication summary)

'How did Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population go from being the objectified subjects of documentary films to the directors and producers in the digital age? What prompted these changes and how and when did this decolonisation of documentary film production occur? Taking a long historical perspective, this book is based on a study of a selection of Australian documentary films produced by and about Aboriginal peoples since the early twentieth century. The films signpost significant shifts in Anglo-Australian attitudes about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders and trace the growth of the Indigenous filmmaking industry in Australia.

'Used as a form of resistance to the imposition of colonialism, filmmaking gave Aboriginal people greater control over their depiction on documentary film and the medium has become an avenue to contest widely held assumptions about a peaceful colonial settlement. This study considers how developments in camera and film stock technologies along with filmic techniques influenced the depiction of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. The films are also examined within their historical context, employing them to gauge how social attitudes, access to funding and political pressures influenced their production values. The book aims to expose the course of race relations in Australia through the decolonisation of documentary film by Aboriginal filmmakers, tracing their struggle to achieve social justice and self-representation.' (Publication summary)