AustLit

'New Voices, New Visions brings together a collection of papers that engage with the ideas of nation, identity and place. The title New Voices, New Visions harks back to earlier scholarship that endeavoured to explore these issues. It therefore makes links between old and new stories of Australian identity, tracing the continuities, shifts and changes in how Australia is imagined. The collection is deliberately interdisciplinary, gathering work by historians, literary and film scholars, communication and cultural theorists, political scientists and sociologists. This mixed perspectives enables the reader to trace ideas, concepts and theories across a range of disciplines and understand the distinctive ways in which different disciplines engage with ideas of nation, space and Australian identity.

'The book is written in an engaging and accessible manner, making it an excellent text for undergraduate and postgraduate students in the fields of Australian Studies. It will be especially useful for the growing number of students living outside Australia who engage with Australian literature and culture. The book provides a range of topics that introduces students to key issues and concepts. It also situates these ideas in historical context.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'The re-release of Ted Kotcheff's 1971 film Wake in Fright was a highlight of the 2009 Sydney International Film Festival. The film had been 'lost' for decades but in the early twenty-first century, members of the original production team began searching for surviving copies. In one of those truth as stranger than fiction turns, a copy was found in a vault in Pittsburgh 'marked for destruction and imminent disposal'. Dedicated collaborative work between film technicians, digital experts, sound engineers and film archivists meant a restored version was produced and screened at Cannes and Sydney in mid-2009. Almost forty years after the original film had opened in Sydney, Paris and London, it resurfaced to much acclaim...The re-released version of Wake in Fright re-envisions Australia for a new generation of viewers. Though it was made decades ago, to watch it today is to engage with new ways of understanding Australian-ness. The shifts in cultural norms around attitudes to the environment, to Indigenous rights and culture, to gender relations, sexual relations, and taboos and prejudices, mean that the same scenes shot in Broken Hill in 1970 resonate in both familiar and alien ways.' (p. 388)