Dissertations / Theses: 'Contemporary Australian literature'

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Tindall, Alexis. "Creating Australia : cultural representations and national identity in contemporary Australian literature /." Title page, contents and conclusion only, 1999. http://web4.library.adelaide.edu.au/theses/09AR/09art588.pdf.

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Blackmore, Ernie. "Speakin' out blak an examination of finding an "urban" Indigenous "voice" through contemporary Australian theatre /." Click here for electronic access to document: http://www.library.uow.edu.au/adt-NWU/public/adt-NWU20080111.121828/index.html, 2007. http://www.library.uow.edu.au/adt-NWU/public/adt-NWU20080111.121828/index.html.

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Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Wollongong, 2007.
"Including the plays Positive expectations and Waiting for ships." Title from web document (viewed 7/4/08). Includes bibliographical references: leaf 249-267.

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Gibbons, Sacha R. J. "Aboriginal testimonial life-writing and contemporary cultural theory /." [St. Lucia, Qld.], 2005. http://www.library.uq.edu.au/pdfserve.php?image=thesisabs/absthe18737.pdf.

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Weeda-Zuidersma, Jeannette. "Keeping mum : representations of motherhood in contemporary Australian literature - a fictocritical exploration." University of Western Australia. School of Social and Cultural Studies, 2007. http://theses.library.uwa.edu.au/adt-WU2007.0054.

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[Truncated abstract] This thesis argues that the non-representation and under-representation of mothering in contemporary Australian literature reflects a much wider cultural practice of silencing the mother-as-subject position and female experiences as a whole. The thesis encourages women writers to pay more attention to the subjective experiences of mothering, so that women’s writing, in particular writing on those aspects of women’s lives that are silenced, of which motherhood is one, can begin to refigure motherhood discourses. This thesis examines mother-as-subject from three perspectives: mothering as a corporeal experience, mothering as a psychological experience, and the articulations and silences of mothering-as-subject. It engages with feminist, postmodern and fictocritical theories in its discussion of motherhood as a discourse through these perspectives. In particular, the thesis employs the theoretical works of postmodern feminists Hélène Cixous, Luce Irigaray and Julia Kristeva in this discussion . . . A fictional narrative also runs through the critical discussion on motherhood. This narrative, Catherine’s Story, gives a personal and immediate voice to the mother-as-subject perspective. In keeping with the nature of fictocriticism, strict textual boundaries between criticism and fiction are blurred. The two modes of writing interact and in the process inform and critique each other.

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Weeda-Zuidersma, Jeannette Weeda-Zuidersma Jeannette. "Keeping mum representations of motherhood in contemporary Australian literature : a fictocritical exploration /." Connect to this title online, 2006. http://theses.library.uwa.edu.au/adt-WU2007.0054/.

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Potter, Emily Claire. "Disconcerting ecologies : representations of non-indigenous belonging in contemporary Australian literature and cultural discourse." Title page, contents and abstract only, 2003. http://web4.library.adelaide.edu.au/theses/09PH/09php865.pdf.

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Includes bibliographical references (leaves 313-325) Specific concern is the poetic, as well as literal, significance given to the environment, and in particular to land, as a measure of belonging in Australia. Environment is explored in the context of ecologies, offered here as an alternative configuration of the nation, and in which the subject, through human and non-human environmental relations, can be culturally and spatially positioned. Argues that both environment and ecology are narrowly defined in dominant discourses that pursue an ideal, certain and authentic belonging for non-indigenous Australians.

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Dunne, Catherine Margaret. "An ado/aptive reading and writing of Australia and its contemporary literature." Connect to full text, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/2123/2320.

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Sydney, 2008.
Title from title screen (viewed 29 Apr. 2008). Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy to the Dept. of English, Faculty of Arts. Degree awarded 2008; thesis submitted 2007. Includes bibliographical references. Also available in print form.

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Bode, Katherine. "In/visibility : women looking at men's bodies in and through contemporary Australian women's fiction /." [St. Lucia, Qld.], 2005. http://adt.library.uq.edu.au/public/adt-QU20060120.161127/index.html.

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Robb, Simon. "Fictocritical sentences." 2001, 2001. http://web4.library.adelaide.edu.au/theses/09PH/09phr631.pdf.

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Includes bibliographical references (leaves 166-168). CD-ROMs comprise: Appendix A. Family values: fictocritical sentences -- appendix C. Reforming the boy: fictocritical sentences Primarily enacts a fictocritical mapping of local cultural events essentially concerned with crime and trauma in Adelaide. The fictocritical treatment of these events simulates their unresolved or traumatised condition. A secondary concern is the relationship between electronic writing (hypertext) and fictocriticism.

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Seran, Justine Calypso. "Intersubjective acts and relational selves in contemporary Australian Aboriginal and Aotearoa/New Zealand Maori women's writing." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/21999.

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This thesis explores the dynamics of intersubjectivity and relationality in a corpus of contemporary literature by twelve Indigenous women writers in order to trace modes of subject-formation and communication along four main axes: violence, care, language, and memory. Each chapter establishes a comparative discussion across the Tasman Sea between Indigenous texts and world theory, the local and the global, self and community. The texts range from 1984 to 2011 to cover a period of growth in publishing and international recognition of Indigenous writing. Chapter 1 examines instances of colonial oppression in the primary corpus and links them with manifestations of violence on institutional, familial, epistemic, and literary levels in Aboriginal authors Melissa Lucashenko and Tara June Winch’s debut novels Steam Pigs (1997) and Swallow the Air (2006). They address the cycle of violence and the archetypal motif of return to bring to light the life of urban Aboriginal women whose ancestral land has been lost and whose home is the western, modern Australian city. Maori short story writer Alice Tawhai’s collections Festival of Miracles (2005), Luminous (2007), and Dark Jelly (2011), on the other hand, deny the characters and reader closure, and establish an atmosphere characterised by a lack of hope and the absence of any political or personal will to effect change. Chapter 2 explores caring relationships between characters displaying symptoms that may be ascribed to various forms of intellectual and mental disability, and the relatives who look after them. I situate the texts within a postcolonial disability framework and address the figure of the informal carer in relation to her “caree.” Patricia Grace’s short story “Eben,” from her collection Small Holes in the Silence (2006), tells the life of a man with physical and intellectual disability from birth (the eponymous Eben) and his relationship with his adoptive mother Pani. The main character of Lisa Cherrington’s novel The People-Faces (2004) is a young Maori woman called Nikki whose brother Joshua is in and out of psychiatric facilities. Finally, the central characters of Vivienne Cleven’s novel Her Sister’s Eye (2002) display a wide range of congenital and acquired cognitive impairments, allowing the author to explore how the compounded trauma of racism and sexism participates in (and is influenced by) mental disability. Chapter 3 examines the materiality and corporeality of language to reveal its role in the formation of (inter)subjectivity. I argue that the use of language in Aboriginal and Maori women’s writing is anchored in the racialised, sexualised bodies of Indigenous women, as well as the locale of their ancestral land. The relationship between language, body, and country in Keri Hulme’s the bone people (1984) and Alexis Wright’s Carpentaria (2006) are analysed in relation to orality, gesture, and mapping in order to reveal their role in the formation of Indigenous selfhood. Chapter 4 explores how the reflexive practice of life-writing (including fictional auto/biography) participates in the decolonisation of the Indigenous self and community, as well as the process of individual survival and cultural survivance, through the selective remembering and forgetting of traumatic histories. Sally Morgan’s Aboriginal life-writing narrative My Place (1987), Terri Janke’s Torres Strait Islander novel Butterfly Song (2005), as well as Paula Morris and Kelly Ana Morey’s Maori texts Rangatira (2011) and Bloom (2003) address these issues in various forms. Through the interactions between memory and memoirs, I bring to light the literary processes of decolonisation of the writing/written self in the settler countries of Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand. This study intends to raise the profile of the authors mentioned above and to encourage the public and scholarly community to pay attention and respect to Indigenous women’s writing. One of the ambitions of this thesis is also to expose the limits and correct the shortcomings of western, postcolonial, and gender theory in relation to Indigenous women writers and the Fourth World.

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Liu, Yuanhang. "Reifungsromane vis-à-vis Social Novels about Older Women: A Comparative Study on Fiction about Female Ageing in Contemporary Australian and Chinese Literature." Thesis, Curtin University, 2020. http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/80628.

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This study focuses on fiction about female ageing since the 1970s as an important literary genre. By conducting a cross-cultural comparison based on the close-reading of the primary texts of two recent literary genres – Reifungsromane in the Australian context and Social Novels about Older Women in the Chinese context – this study contributes to the deeper understanding of female ageing experiences represented in contemporary literature.

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ALHAJJI, ALI A. "“The Reliability of Cross-Cultural Communication in Contemporary Anglophone Arab Writing”." The Ohio State University, 2018. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1531502012291.

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Taylor, Christopher George. "The Good Bloke in Contemporary Australian Workplaces: Origins, Qualities and Impacts of a National Cultural Archetype in Small For-Profit Businesses." Antioch University / OhioLINK, 2019. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=antioch1566171729886909.

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Cruz, Talita Mochiute. "A ficção australiana de J. M. Coetzee: o romance autorreflexivo contemporâneo." Universidade de São Paulo, 2015. http://www.teses.usp.br/teses/disponiveis/8/8151/tde-10092015-160114/.

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Esta dissertação propõe uma leitura da chamada ficção australiana de J. M. Coetzee composta por Elizabeth Costello (2003), Homem lento (2005) e Diário de um ano ruim (2007). Esses romances da fase madura do autor compartilham um núcleo de questões estéticas e éticas, configurando um conjunto significativo marcado pela inflexão autorreflexiva. O trabalho acompanha a constituição e a trajetória dos escritores-personagens Elizabeth Costello e Señor C, discutindo como a inserção do recurso do duplo do escritor desestabiliza as noções de autor, personagem e narrador, além de borrar os limites entre ficção e não ficção. A dramatização do processo criativo no centro das obras é outro foco da análise, com o objetivo de entender a encenação da impossibilidade do romance nos moldes do realismo formal. O estudo ainda tenta sugerir a resposta de Coetzee sobre a validade do romance no mundo contemporâneo.
This dissertation presents a reading of J. M. Coetzees so-called Australian fiction comprising the works Elizabeth Costello (2003), Slow Man (2005), and Diary of a Bad Year (2007). These novels, belonging to the authors late prose, share core aesthetic and ethical issues. They are meaningful works characterized by self-reflexive inflection. This study follows Elizabeth Costello and Señor C in their writer-characters constitution and journey to discuss how the presence of the writers double, as literary device, destabilizes the notions of author, character, and narrator, as well as it blurs the boundaries between fiction and non-fiction. The dramatization of the creative process in the center of Coetzees works is another focus of analysis aiming to understand the impossibility of staging the novel in formal realism patterns. This work also attempts to suggest Coetzees response on the validity of the novel in the contemporary world.

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Holliday, Penny. "The shifting city : a study of contemporary fictional representations Of Melbourne's inner and outer suburban spaces." Thesis, Queensland University of Technology, 2017. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/103101/4/Penelope_Holliday_Thesis.pdf.

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This project explores the complexity of Melbourne’s inner and outer suburban spaces as portrayed within contemporary Melbourne fiction. The study is a textual analysis of the works of several Melbourne writers whose writings feature their city’s suburbs as significant sites in the exploration of the relationship between identity and place. I argue that Melbourne, as a city of suburbs, is a paradigm worthy of writerly and critical attention. The fictional texts are Christos Tsiolkas’s The Slap (2008), Sonya Hartnett’s Butterfly (2009), Steven Carroll’s novel The Time We Have Taken (2007) and Wayne Macauley’s novel Blueprints for a Barbed-Wire Canoe (2004).

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Dallmann, Tino [Verfasser]. "Telling Terror in Contemporary Australian Fiction / Tino Dallmann." Frankfurt : Peter Lang GmbH, Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften, 2016. http://d-nb.info/1105292754/34.

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Truter, Victoria Zea. "Dreamscape and death : an analysis of three contemporary novels and a film." Thesis, Rhodes University, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1012976.

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With its focus on the relationship between dreamscape and death, this study examines the possibility of indirectly experiencing – through writing and dreaming – that which cannot be directly experienced, namely death. In considering this possibility, the thesis engages at length with Maurice Blanchot's argument that death, being irrevocably absent and therefore unknowable, is not open to presentation or representation. After explicating certain of this thinker's theories on the ambiguous nature of literary and oneiric representation, and on the forfeiture of subjective agency that occurs in the moments of writing and dreaming, the study turns to an examination of the manner in which such issues are dealt with in selected dreamscapes. With reference to David Malouf's An Imaginary Life, Alan Warner's These Demented Lands, Cormac McCarthy's The Road, and Richard Linklater's Waking Life, the thesis explores the literary and cinematic representation of human attempts to define, resist, or control death through dreaming and writing about it. Ultimately, the study concludes that such attempts are necessarily inconclusive, and that it is only ever possible to represent death as a (mis)representation.

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Bach, Lisa [Verfasser]. "Spatial Belonging: Approaching Aboriginal Australian Spaces in Contemporary Fiction / Lisa Bach." Gießen : Universitätsbibliothek, 2020. http://d-nb.info/121614284X/34.

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Sharp, Christine Helen. "Aurora : an illustrated novella." Thesis, Queensland University of Technology, 2010. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/41466/1/Christine_Sharp_Thesis.pdf.

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Aurora, an illustrated novella, is a retelling of the classic fairytale Sleeping Beauty, set on the Australian coast around the grounds of the family lighthouse. Instead of following in the footsteps of tradition, this tale focuses on the long time Aurora is cursed to sleep by the malevolent Minerva; we follow Aurora as she voyages into the unconscious. Hunted by Minerva through the shifting landscape of her dreams, Aurora is dogged by a nagging pull towards the light—there is something she has left behind. Eventually, realising she must face Minerva to break the curse, they stage a battle of the minds in which Aurora triumphs, having grasped the power of her thoughts, her words. Aurora, an Australian fairytale, is a story of self-empowerment, the ability to shape destiny and the power of the mind. The exegesis examines a two-pronged question: is the illustrated book for young adults—graphic novel—relevant to a contemporary readership, and, is the graphic novel, where text and image intersect, a suitably specular genre in which to explore the unconscious? It establishes the language of the unconscious and the meaning of the term ‘graphic novel’, before investigating the place of the illustrated book for an older readership in a contemporary market, particularly exploring visual literacy and the way text and image—a hybrid narrative—work together. It then studies the aptitude of graphic literature to representing the unconscious and looks at two pioneers of the form: Audrey Niffenegger, specifically her visual novel The Three Incestuous Sisters, and Shaun Tan, and his graphic novel The Arrival. Finally, it reflects upon the creative work, Aurora, in light of three concerns: how best to develop a narrative able to relay the dreaming story; how to bestow a certain ‘Australianess’ upon the text and images; and the dilemma of designing an illustrated book for an older readership.

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(14037570), Ayesha E. Hall. "Changing perspectives: Formulations of identity in contemporary Australian literature." Thesis, 2003. https://figshare.com/articles/thesis/Changing_perspectives_Formulations_of_identity_in_contemporary_Australian_literature/21443109.

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Questions of identity occupy a central place in the history of the development of Australian literature and its critical construction and reception. The notions of identity appealed to in the various stages of this development have been closely imbricated with prevailing cultural and critical assumptions and practices.

The model of identity that was appealed to in earlier periods of Australian literature and its academic criticism was understandably circumscribed by the Anglo-centric prescriptions of the Colonial Convict period, embellished but not significantly changed by the influence of the Bush Pioneers and a growing Nationalist sentiment enhanced by the spirit of the first world war Anzacs. While, as with all identity models, this one suffered its own ambiguities and slippages, it did successfully exercise a hegemony, reinforced by the then dominant academic practices, that largely excluded the identity experiences of Indigenous people, non-white immigrants, women and those whose sexual orientations lay outside of the parameters of heteronormativity.

The Identities that have subsequently been articulated by such previously excluded groups and taken up by those within the academy influenced by developments in postcolonial, feminist, poststructural and postmodern (including Queer) theory have effectively functioned to dismantle the hegemony exerted by earlier unitary and reductive notions of Australian identity.

Previously neglected areas of Australian writing such as Indigenous, multicultural and youth literature, as representations of minority identities have articulated often oppositional conceptions of identity to those formulated within the former orthodoxy. Such texts, most particularly those more recent ones which engage with radical rearticulations of sexual identity, have increasingly moved towards fluid conceptions of identity which ultimately serve to pose the question of the usefulness of the unqualified notion The Australian Identity as a meaningful category of analysis for the literature now being produced within Australia.

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Haynes, BF. "Elements of carnival and the carnivalesque in contemporary Australian children's literature." Thesis, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/10453/36464.

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University of Technology, Sydney. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.
This thesis discusses the influence of elements of Bakhtinian camivalesque in selected contemporary Australian children’s literature. Many of the Bakhtinian ideas are centred on the work of Franqois Rabelais, particularly his five books collectively entitled Gargantua and Pantagruel. Aspects of the complex field of Bakhtinian camivalesque that have been considered include: attitudes to authority, the grotesque body and its working, the importance of feasting and the associated concepts of bodily functioning, customs in relation to food, and ritual and specific language such as the use of curses and oaths. The role of humour and the manifest forms this takes within carnival are intrinsic and are discussed at some length. These central tenets are explored in two ways: first, in relation to their connection and use within the narrative structures of a selection of books short listed (and thus critically acclaimed) by the Australian Children’s Book Council from the early 1980s to the early 2000s, and second, by means of contrast, to the commercially popular but generally less critically acclaimed works of other Australian writers such as Paul Jennings and Andy Griffiths. The thesis concludes by considering the ways in which camivalesque freedom is encouraged through and by new media.

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Tan, Yvette Ek Hiang. "Discourses of multiculturalism and contemporary Asian-Australian literature / Yvette Ek Hiang Tan." 2003. http://hdl.handle.net/2440/22044.

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"April 2003"
Bibliography: leaves 233-258.
vii, 258 leaves ; 30 cm.
Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library.
Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, School of Humanities, Discipline of English, 2004

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Potter, Emily Claire. "Disconcerting ecologies : representations of non-indigenous belonging in contemporary Australian literature and cultural discourse / Emily Claire Potter." Thesis, 2003. http://hdl.handle.net/2440/21970.

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Includes bibliographical references (leaves 313-325)
[6], 325 leaves ; 30 cm.
Specific concern is the poetic, as well as literal, significance given to the environment, and in particular to land, as a measure of belonging in Australia. Environment is explored in the context of ecologies, offered here as an alternative configuration of the nation, and in which the subject, through human and non-human environmental relations, can be culturally and spatially positioned. Argues that both environment and ecology are narrowly defined in dominant discourses that pursue an ideal, certain and authentic belonging for non-indigenous Australians.
Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of English, 2003

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Garretson, Anna. "Unsettling fictions : contemporary white writing from South Africa and Australia." Phd thesis, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/1885/151206.

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Holmes, Susan. "First Impressions: Writing a contemporary Australian adaptation of Pride and Prejudice." Thesis, 2013. https://vuir.vu.edu.au/27713/.

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This thesis consists of two components, the novel, which is 70% of the total and the exegesis, which is 30% of the thesis. Together, the novel and the exegesis are an exploration of Pride and Prejudice from the point of view of a creative writer working to understand and adapt Austen’s writing style. The focus on the concept of Emotional Intelligence is a deliberate strategy with two objectives, firstly to bring new insights into the reading and analyses of the novel and secondly to use this form of analysis to enhance the writing of a contemporary Australian adaptation. Thus this modern concept from the field of psychology is being used by a creative writer to explore Austen’s unique character development and depiction in an original way. My original research question of “what insight and contribution can Emotional Intelligence make to our reading of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and to the writing of a contemporary novel” has informed the entirety of this thesis. First Impressions shares the romance plot of Pride and Prejudice in that the central focus is for the protagonists to eventually unite, despite their preconceptions. However, although some of the characters are roughly based on those in Austen’s novel, First Impressions diverges at many points due to the vast differences of modern social settings, group dynamics, education and employment. One major difference is the gender reversal of the major characters. The exegesis outlines the importance of the source novel to my own creative processes. I reflect on the subtle balance between keeping resemblance to the original and a deliberate reshaping of characters and social situations. Although the exegesis is an integral part of the whole thesis, the starting point for the reader would ideally be the novel, First Impressions, as my aim is for my novel to stand alone but to have an additional resonance for those familiar with Austen’s work.

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Lynn, Jenna-Lee Delle. "Negotiating dark matter: trauma and ecology in the fiction of contemporary Australian women writers." Thesis, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1407778.

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Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
This thesis examines Janette Turner Hospital’s novels within the context of sites and expressions of trauma: locally, nationally and globally. Its focus is on rereading representations of trauma that destabilise dominant discourses about memory, place, nationality, community and gender. This dissertation also argues for a new interpretative paradigm for reading texts that deal with trauma and proposes a lens comprising eco-feminism and trauma theory. The framework I have created explores the phenomenon of trauma in literature as one of the defining features of human nature that shapes our ecological ontologies. Reading Turner Hospital’s fiction through a colloquy of trauma theory and eco-feminism shows how sites of wounding, embodied in land, the human form, art and music, can be reimagined to acknowledge the personal and cultural significance of working through pain. Using traumatic sites of national and global significance in Turner Hospital’s work also invites a reconsideration of trauma theory through examining different modes of hearing about and engaging with wounding to actualise bodily and psychic restoration. The major focus of my research is on the ways that eco-critical concerns interact with trauma and how this approach to reading Australian women’s fiction provides deeper understanding of trauma’s impact, both at the literal and metaphysical levels of experience. A case study of selected texts from Turner Hospital’s collection of writing will be used in conjunction with Alexis Wright’s Carpentaria and Lily Brett’s Too Many Men to examine how trauma affects Australia’s immigrant culture, mobilises the dispossession of its Indigenous people and speaks to discourses that are of international concern, including Australia’s vulnerability to the threat of international terrorism and the ways we respond to situations that violate basic human rights. The selection of Australian texts written by women provides a rich context for examining ongoing personal, national and global issues that underpin trauma.

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Killen, Chloe. "True stories about tall tales: a study of creativity and cultural production in contemporary Australian children’s picture books." Thesis, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1312065.

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Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Creativity is a uniquely human trait. However its ubiquity does not mean it is simple to understand. Various investigations into the nature of creativity have focused on an individual’s biology or psychology, or studied the surrounding society and culture in an attempt to pinpoint creative action. These types of studies, while they have their merit, have tended to focus only on one part of the phenomenon at the expense of the others. Instead, as current research suggests, a more valuable explanation of creativity is one that encompasses multiple factors in a system of mutual influence. It is argued that Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s systems model of creativity (1988, 1996, 1999) along with Pierre Bourdieu’s discussion of cultural production (1977, 1993, 1996) as examples of confluence approaches provide the best theoretical foundation to examine the complexity of creativity, as they both consider personal influences in conjunction with broader social and cultural contexts. All three of these components, a domain of cultural knowledge, a social field of experts, and individual creators can be identified within the sphere of Australian children’s picture books. Analysis of the data collected examined the connections between these three components to reveal the underlying systemic nature of creativity in Australian children’s picture books. This research employed case study methodology to examine the work processes of and interactions between key producers of Australian children’s picture books. Of the 20 people interviewed, 18 had written or illustrated a picture book. These authors and illustrators provide a broad sample from the population with some at the beginning of their careers producing only a handful of books while others produced more than 60 books over multiple decades. Additionally, a number of these authors and illustrators have worked in other production roles as editors, publishers, and booksellers so they were also able to speak to the function these intermediaries performed within the field. To support the interviews conducted with these participants, various modes of observation were used along with document and artefact analysis. The data gathered through these methods has demonstrated that there is a dynamic relationship constantly evolving between individual producers and the social and cultural structures they exist and work within. This research has concluded then, that rather than being the product of a singular individual, Australian children’s picture books are produced within a complex relation of systemic elements. Producers, often authors and illustrators, work as individuals by drawing upon their respective backgrounds to engage with a domain of knowledge that pre-exists them as well as engaging with a unique social structure consisting of all the cultural intermediaries (such as editors, publishers, and audiences) who regulate that knowledge, in order to produce a novel product. Understanding this complex system is the key to enhancing the abilities of cultural producers and increasing the cultural productivity of both individuals and society.

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"Non-Natives and Nativists: The Settler Colonial Origins of Anti-Immigrant Sentiment in Contemporary Literatures of the US and Australia." Doctoral diss., 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/2286/R.I.55467.

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abstract: Non-Natives and Nativists is a relational analysis of contemporary multiethnic literatures in two countries formed by settler colonialism, the process of nation-building by which colonizers attempt to permanently invade Indigenous lands and develop their own beliefs and practices as governing principles. This dissertation focuses on narratives that establish and sustain settlers’ claims to belonging in the US and Australia and counter-narratives that problematize, subvert, and disavow such claims. The primary focus of my critique is on settler-authored works and the ways they engage with, perpetuate, and occasionally challenge normalized conditions of belonging in the US and Australia; however, every chapter discusses works by Indigenous writers or non-Indigenous writers of color that put forward alternative, overlapping, and often competing claims to belonging. Naming settler narrative strategies and juxtaposing them against those of Indigenous and arrivant populations is meant to unsettle the common sense logic of settler belonging. In other words, the specific features of settler colonialism promulgate and govern a range of devices and motifs through which settler storytellers in both nations respond to related desires, anxieties, and perceived crises. Narrative devices such as author-perpetrated identity hoax, settings imbued with uncanny hauntings, and plots driven by fear of invasion recur to the point of becoming recognizable tropes. Their perpetuation supports the notion that the logics underwriting settler colonialism persist beyond periods of initial colonization and historical frontier violence. These logics—elimination and possession—still shape present-day societies in settler nations, and literature is one of the primary vehicles by which they are operationalized.
Dissertation/Thesis
Doctoral Dissertation English 2019

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Dalley, Hamish. "Postcolonialism and the historical novel : allegorical realism and contemporary literature of the past in Nigeria, Australia and New Zealand." Phd thesis, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/1885/155168.

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The historical novel is one of the most prominent modes of contemporary writing in the former British Empire, yet the genre's postcolonial variant has not been the subject of critical analysis in its own right. This neglect can be explained by the dominance of a "resistance paradigm" in postcolonial studies, which tends to equate realism with naive mimesis and thus treats the historical novel as either a vehicle for imperialist ideology or a site of discursive conflict over the meaning of the past. As a result, the genre's epistemological and aesthetic complexities have been marginalised. This thesis responds to this neglect by critically analysing examples of the historical novel published since 2000 in Nigeria, Australia, and New Zealand. Historicised close analysis reveals that notwithstanding the anti-mimetic presumptions of much contemporary postcolonial criticism, and despite differences arising from contextual particularities, these texts are shaped by a common "realist impulse" that frames their narratives as defensible interpretations of the past. This ethical obligation to evidence-based interpretation has formal and epistemological consequences that manifest in an aesthetic framework I call allegorical realism. This term names a mode of representation in which fictional elements oscillate between ontological and conceptual registers in ways that simultaneously produce empathetically-unsettling relations to imagined individuals and interpretations of macro-historical change. This combination of affect and abstraction defines the genre as one based neither around assumptions about the transparency of language, nor overly pessimistic views that knowledge of the past is unachievable. I show that focusing analysis on allegorical realism allows critical attention to move away from its exclusive concern with textual resistance and instead explore how the genre is inflected by the various narratives it mediates and the specificities of postcolonial contexts. This research identifies three main variants of the contemporary postcolonial historical novel, each characterised by a different modulation of allegorical realism. Settler allegory comprises texts like Kate Grenville's The Secret River (2005) and Fiona Kidman's The Captive Wife (2006), in which colonists' alienation from occupied territory is reflected formally in the undercutting of allegorical procedures that align imaginary characters with their settings. Transnational historical novels, by contrast, stretch the spatio-temporal coordinates of allegorical realism to encompass processes taking place in global settings. This generates aesthetic effects that link apparently dissimilar novels like Witi Ihimaera's The Trowenna Sea (2009) and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun (2006). Finally, melancholy realism describes texts like Chris Abani's Song for Night (2007) and Richard Flanagan's Gould's Book of Fish (2001)-texts which disrupt the boundaries between past and present to unsettle postcolonial complacency. Tracing allegorical realism across these modes reveals how postcolonial concerns continue to recreate the genre, and how the oscillation of the allegorical signifier can challenge dominant accounts of historical change. The genre provides a significant archive for exploring how postcolonial literature is characterised by disjunctive temporalities irreducible to dominant narratives of modernity, while nonetheless being shaped by processes that link the globalised world.

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Davidson, Kristy Lee. "Is that what you’re wearing? Gender diversity in contemporary fiction, a novel and exegesis." Thesis, 2012. https://vuir.vu.edu.au/21487/.

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The methods of production of gender diverse characters within mainstream literary texts are an under-researched area from a creative writing standpoint. Is That What You’re Wearing? Gender Diversity in Contemporary Fiction, A Novel and Exegesis is a creative writing doctoral thesis which critically interrogates the signifiers and tropes that are employed to produce gender diversity in contemporary fiction, and their effects and impacts. The exegesis, Gender Diversity in Contemporary Fiction, contextualises the theoretical ground concerning gender diversity. It critically explores issues of cultural and material access to literary works featuring gender diverse protagonists. In addition, it compares and contrasts the production of gender diversity in three contemporary novels: Chris Bohjalian’s (2000) Trans-sister Radio; Jeffrey Eugenides’ (2002b) Middlesex; and Ali Smith’s (2007) Girl Meets Boy: The Myth of Iphis. Most significantly it discusses the manner in which these two aspects inform my creative writing practice in the novel Is That What You’re Wearing? The exegesis argues that creative writers require an increased awareness of issues of representation when writing about marginalised groups, such as gender diverse individuals, to avoid perpetuating problematic and commonly used representations that otherwise sustain their marginalisation in society. The novel, which features three gender diverse characters, is the practical outcome of this critical theoretical research. As per the requirements for Victoria University creative writing theses, the creative component forms 67 per cent of the thesis, and the critical exegesis, 33 per cent. The preferred reading order for the thesis is the novel (Volume One), then the exegesis (Volume Two).

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Muirden, Sallie. "We too shall be mothers : her story, our story, history: feminism and postmodernism in the contemporary historical novel." Thesis, 2001. https://vuir.vu.edu.au/18195/.

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This Master of Arts thesis is in two parts : a novel, We Too Shall Be Mothers, (WTSBM) and an exegesis which positions the novel in relation to several strands of contemporary theory and fiction. The novel is set during the French Revolution in the southern French city of Avignon and in Vienna, the capital of the Hapsburg Empire. WTSBM tells the story of a fictional nun, Marie-France, who leaves her Carmelite convent and embarks on a journey towards motherhood and fully sexualised adulthood. The exegesis contains three main strands of theorisation. First, it illustrates the profound influence of feminist psychoanalytic theory on WTSBM, but also argues that the novel reformulates and departs from specific aspects of the feminist psychoanalytic paradigm. Second, the exegesis argues that WTSBM can be classified as a 'postmodernist, revisionist, historical novel', which can be positioned alongside other postmodernist, historical literature. Third, the exegesis argues that WTSBM can be located within contemporary issues of feminist politics, particularly issues of gender, sexuality and relationship, which are also evident in Jeanette Winterson's The Passion (1987). The research material for this thesis has come from a range of sources. Primary sources include field visits to the European cities of Avignon and Vienna. Secondary sources include literary theory, novels, and newspaper reviews, as well as historical monographs and works of religious philosophy and autobiography.

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Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Contemporary Australian literature'

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