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'There are those of us who are trying to rethink the place of Australian literature in our lives, as readers and writers, students and teachers, and as participants in this society and culture. It's happening from different angles: in the academy, in literary studies, cultural studies, and Australian studies, including Australian history, at undergraduate and postgraduate levels, and in research frameworks; in secondary and primary education, locally and nationally; and in the public domain. It's also happening internationally, through translation, and in the many different spaces where Australian literature might have meaning. Meaning, of course, is a first question and the meanings of both 'Australian' and 'literature' are fluid and routinely contested. Coupling the terms only increased the questioning, raising the stakes to beg the question of whether it is meaningful or necessary to talk about Australian literature at all. What is it? Does it exist? Does it matter anymore, or any differently from any other kind of literature, simply because we happen to be in Australia? Does it have a privileged claim on our attention, or, if it does, is that suspect? Each part of the coupling comes with hefty baggage. 'Australian' brings the national, the nation and the nationalistic, identity and belonging, history and culture, citizenship and inclusion/exclusion. 'Literature' brings not only the literary, but also language, and literacy, questions of reading and writing, and teaching and learning in relation to reading and writing. In particular it brings, for my purposes here, those approaches and practices known as 'creative writing' that in recent decades have entered subject English and more broadly the business of how literature is made is made in our society. 'Creative writing' is an infelicitous term, perhaps, but one we're stuck with, understood as something with many manifestations, widespread popularity and its own complex institutional history. Discussion of these things - creative writing and Australian literature in the curricular context - joins with larger debates about our education and contemporary culture that tend, paradoxically, to adopt a rhetoric of embattlement while taking for granted the importance of both related fields. It is surprising that, in a neoliberal, technocratic, metric-managed world, reading, writing and creativity should retain such power and loom so large.' (Author's abstract)
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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‘A Body in Time’ : Reading and Writing Australian Literature
2019
single work
criticism
— Appears in: TEXT Special Issue Website Series , October no. 57 2019; 'In the press, a lament for the study of Australian literature is often coupled with mistrust at the popularity of creative programs. It can be disconcerting for writers and teachers of writing in Australia, who work in a practical as well as pedagogical sense in the field of Australian literature, to be placed in an antithetical position to it. One response to the narrative of the decline of Australian literature in universities has been an assertion of its ‘embeddedness’ across the curriculum. The creative writing classroom is one place in which it can reliably be found, and the act of reading for the purpose of writing brings a distinctive charge to the study of Australian literature, produced by a movement across modal peripheries. This essay argues, via a ‘body in time’ (Jose 2011) model of Australian literature, and a reading of the novella Vertigo by Amanda Lohrey (2009), that the key elements of process and proximity in this mode of reading make a distinctive contribution to the study of Australian literature.' (Publication abstract)
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‘A Body in Time’ : Reading and Writing Australian Literature
2019
single work
criticism
— Appears in: TEXT Special Issue Website Series , October no. 57 2019; 'In the press, a lament for the study of Australian literature is often coupled with mistrust at the popularity of creative programs. It can be disconcerting for writers and teachers of writing in Australia, who work in a practical as well as pedagogical sense in the field of Australian literature, to be placed in an antithetical position to it. One response to the narrative of the decline of Australian literature in universities has been an assertion of its ‘embeddedness’ across the curriculum. The creative writing classroom is one place in which it can reliably be found, and the act of reading for the purpose of writing brings a distinctive charge to the study of Australian literature, produced by a movement across modal peripheries. This essay argues, via a ‘body in time’ (Jose 2011) model of Australian literature, and a reading of the novella Vertigo by Amanda Lohrey (2009), that the key elements of process and proximity in this mode of reading make a distinctive contribution to the study of Australian literature.' (Publication abstract)
Last amended 27 Nov 2019 09:37:02
95-107
Rewriting Australian Literature

Subjects:
- The Boat 2008 selected work short story
- Elizabeth Costello and the Ethics of Embodiment 2011 single work criticism
- The White Tiger 2008 single work novel
- The Man Who Loved Children 1940 single work novel
- A Child's Christmas in Warrnambool 1998 single work poetry
- My Blood's Country 2010 single work prose
- Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature 2009 anthology correspondence diary drama essay extract poetry prose short story
- Networked Language : Culture and History in Australian Poetry 2008 single work criticism
- Leaving Home with Henry 2009 single work novel
- Five Bells 2011 single work novel
- Rereading The Man Who Loved Children 2010 single work criticism
- The Making of Literature : A Continuing Conversation 2009 single work criticism
- Telling Stories : Australian Literature in a National English Curriculum 2008 single work criticism
- Disjunctions: Australian Literature and the Secondary English Curriculum 1997 single work criticism
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