AustLit

Oodgeroo's Stradbroke Dreamtime was the first autobiographical narrative by an Aboriginal woman to gain a mainstream publisher, but, as Jones points out, the text was almost completely ignored by the literary establishment. It achieved good sales when marketed as a children's book. However, this sales success was founded upon Oodgeroo's acceptance of pragmatic compromise in the editorial preparation of the text. The paper argues that the published version is manifestly different form the manuscript in its ideological underpinning and political intentions, and that Oodgeroo's original representation of Aboriginality was occluded by an act of 'editorial double mimesis' during the production process.

The paper explores the role of and attitude towards father-figures in contemporary Anglo-Australian short fiction. Focussing on four recent mother-daughter narratives, it finds that father-figures are represented as disruptive agents in the lives of both mothers and daughters.

Examines the representation of Indigeneity in books for child readers, focussing on three genres: historical adventure narratives about the exploration of Australia; history books for children that focus on key chronological events; and legend books for children ('a genre of historical writing that uses conventions of ethnography and fantasy to incorporate Indigenous knowledge into a recognisable literary format' 71-72).

The article examines the travelogue of an early British woman traveller to the colony of New South Wales, 'A Journal of a Voyage to Calcutta, Java and etc during the year 1815 & 1816, by a Lady' (Mitchell Library, B563), and finds that the author plagiarised from David Collins' authoritative record of the settlement, An Account of the English Colony at New South Wales (1798). It discusses the self-representation of the writer, 'a Lady', and the parallels that can be drawn between her self-portrait (which obviously tries to obfuscate Spurrell's true social situation) and her act of plagiarism.

Cowan argues that 'a sample of the literature written by the Scots since the arrival of the First Fleet shows the powerful contribution of its people to Australian cultural life, particularly to its enrichment of Australian literature'. Supporting her case, Cowan cites such writers as Thomas Watling, John Dunmore Lang, Catherine Helen Spence, Catherine Martin, Will Ogilvie, Alexander Forbes, W. H. Lang, Frederick Howard and Les Murray.

Explores the various strategies that playwrights and filmmakers employ to represent masculinities, especially in relation to acts of sexual violence, in a number of texts.