AustLit

This thesis revisits the historical relations of literary studies and cultural studies and the effect of these relations on the intersections of Australian cultural policy studies, cultural policy itself, and the institutions of literary production and circulation in Australia over the past fifteen years [since 1990]. Australian cultural policy studies' trajectory out of British cultural studies has contributed to the development of an Australian cultural policy studies that has a number of exclusions or biases which are examined in two stages. Firstly, the thesis examines the effects of cultural studies' constitution in the patricidal rejection of literary studies and, in some instances, the rejection of an interest in literary production itself. ... Secondly the thesis argues that there is an unmet case for a cultural policy studies which attends, not to policy texts, but to the processes of policy formation. ... In a case study of a failed attempt to develop a new Queensland cultural policy statement in 2000, the thesis examines how policy work or policy "churn" is productive in its own right, contributing to the organisation of government cultural resources and the governing role of culture, particularly cultural policy. Source: author's abstract.