Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Songbooks, English Australia History'

Bibliography: pages 206-212.
This study examines Patrick White's Voss, Riders in the Chariot and A Fringe of Leaves. These works, which span White's creative career, demonstrate certain abiding preoccupations, while also showing a marked shift in treatment and philosophy. In Chapter One Voss is discussed as an essentially modernist work. The study shows how White takes an historical episode, the Leichhardt expedition, and reworks it into a meditation on the psychological and philosophical impulses behind nineteenth century exploration. The aggressive energy required for the project is identified with the myth of the Romantic male. I further argue that White, influenced by modernist conceptions of androgyny, uses the cyclical structure of hermetic philosophy to undermine the linear project identified with the male quest. Alchemical teaching provides much of the novel's metaphoric density, as well as a map for the narrative resolution. Voss is the first of the novels to examine Aboriginal culture. This culture is made available through the visionary artist, a European figure who, as seer, has access to the Aboriginal deities. European and Aboriginal philosophies are blended at the level of symbol, making possible the creative interaction between Europe and Australia. The second chapter considers how, in Riders in the Chariot, White modifies premises central to Voss. A holocaust survivor is one of the protagonists, and much of the novel, I argue, revolves around the question of the material nature of evil. Kabbalism, a mystical strain of Judaism, provides much of the esoteric material, am White uses it to foreground the conflict between metaphysical abstraction and political reality. In Riders, there is again an artist-figure: part Aboriginal, part European, he is literally a blend of Europe and Australia and his art expresses his dual identity. This novel, too, is influenced by modernist models. However, here the depiction of Fascism as both an historical crisis and as a contemporary moral bankruptcy locates the metaphysical questions in a powerfully realised material dimension. Chapter Three looks at A Fringe of Leaves, which is largely a post-modernist novel. One purpose of this chapter is to demonstrate how it responds to its literary precursors and there is thus a fairly extensive discussion of the shipwreck narrative as a genre. The protagonist of the novel, a shipwreck survivor, cannot apprehend the symbolic life of the Aboriginals: she can only observe the material aspects of the culture. Symbolic acts are thus interpreted in their material manifestation. The depiction of Aboriginal life is less romanticised than that given in Voss, as White examines the very real nature of the physical hardships of desert life. The philosophic tone of A Fringe of Leaves is most evident, I argue, in the figure of the failed artist. A frustrated writer, his models are infertile, and he offers no vision of resolution. There is a promise, however, offered by these novels themselves, for in them White has given a voice to women, Aboriginals and convicts, groups normally excluded from the dominating discursive practice of European patriarchy.

Calls for increased attention to subject-specific histories have been somewhat insistent in the last two decades. An important emphasis in these calls has been for attention to the history of the 'preactive curriculum' as represented, for example, in Syllabus documents. English has been a particular case in these arguments- a case which often revolves around defining the subject itself. Others have argued further that subject-specific history is usually centred in detailed local, historical studies of the recent past. In attempting to address these issues, this study sets out to answer the questions: 1/. How was Years 7-10 English defined from the early 1970s to the early 1990s in NSW? 2/. What was the relationship between the concepts 'English' and 'literacy' in NSW in the given period? The study focuses specifically on constructions of English in Syllabus documents, professional journals, textbooks and examinations. The particular methodology used to address the study questions is an in-depth study of two selected years during, viz. 1977 and 1992, accompanied by detailed discussion of contextual aspects of these years.
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Thesis (PhD)--Stellenbosch University, 2014.
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis focuses on the 'restorying‘ of British settler colonialism in a range of texts that negotiate the intricacies of post-settler afterlives in the postcolonial contexts of South Africa, Canada, Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand. In this, I do not undertake a sustained, programmatic comparative reading in order to deliver a set of answers based on insights achieved into the current state of post-settler colonial identities. Rather, I approach the study as an open-ended exploration by reading a combination of texts of various kinds – novels, poetry, drama, films and installation art – from and about these different geographical and historical contexts, structured as a sequence of four chapters, each with a distinct theoretical ensemble specific to the (pre)occupations of the settler colonial past and the linked senses of (dis)location in the present that emerge from the primary texts combined in each case. Since this project is informed by my location as a South African researcher, the cluster of primary texts in every chapter always includes one or more South African texts as pivotal to the juxtapositional dynamics such a reading attempts. By placing this study of the textual afterlives of settler colonialism undertaken from a South African perspective within the ambit of neo-Victorian studies, it is my intention to contribute to the growing body of critical and theoretical work emerging from this interdisciplinary field and to introduce to it a set of primary texts that will extend the parameters of its productive intersections with colonial and postcolonial studies.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie tesis bestudeer die 'restorying' van Britse setlaar-kolonialisme in ‘n groep tekste wat die verwikkeldheid van post-setlaar 'afterlives' in the post-koloniale kontekste van Suid Afrika, Kanada, Australië en Aotearoa Nieu-Seeland vervat. Hiermee onderneem ek nie ‘n volgehoue, programmatiese vergelykende interpretasie met die oog daarop om die huidige stand van post-setlaar koloniale identiteite tot ‘n stel antwoorde te reduseer nie. Ek benader die studie eerder as ‘n verkenning van moontlikhede gegenereer deur die lees van ‘n kombinasie van verskillende tekste – romans, gedigte, drama, films en installasie kuns – wat hulle oorsprong in hierdie verkillende geografiese en historiese kontekste het, asook daaroor handel. Gevolglik bestaan die studie uit vier hoofstukke wat elkeen die (pre)okkupasies van die setlaar-koloniale verlede en die gepaardgaande gevoel van (dis)lokasie in die hede, soos tevoorskyn gebring deur die kombinasie van primere tekste, aan die hand van ‘n toepaslike teoretiese ensemble bespreek. Aangesien die projek uit my posisie as Suid Afrikaanse navorser spruit, en ‘n jukstaposisionele dinamiek grondliggend aan my leesbenadering is, betrek ek telkens een of meer Suid Afrikaanse tekste by die groep primere tekste wat die basis van elke hoofstuk vorm. Deur hierdie studie van die tekstuele 'afterlives' van setlaar-kolonialisme, wat vanuit ‘n Suid Afrikaanse perspektief onderneem word, binne die raamwerk van neo-Viktoriaanse studies te plaas, beoog ek om by te dra tot die korpus van kritiese en teoretiese werk van hierdie interdisiplinere veld. Deur die toevoeging van die betrokke groep primere tekste word die area waar hierdie veld met koloniale en post-koloniale studies oorvleuel verbreed.

Early nineteenth-century Eurocentric perceptions of natural history led to the flora and fauna of Australia being thought of as deficient and inferior compared with those of other lands. By the 1820s, Australia had become known as ???the land of contrarieties???. This, and Eurocentric attitudes to nature in general, influenced the expectations and perceptions of immigrants throughout the century. Yet at the same time there was developing an aesthetic appreciation of the natural history of Australia. This thesis examines the tension between these two perceptions in the popular natural history writing of the nineteenth century, mainly through the writing of five authors ??? George Bennett (1804-1893), Louisa Anne Meredith (1812-1895), Samuel Hannaford (1937-1874), Horace Wheelwright (1815-1865) and Donald Macdonald (1859?-1932). George Bennett was a scientist, who saw Australian plants and animals more as scientific specimens than objects of beauty. Louisa Meredith perceived them in the familiar language of English romantic poetry. Samuel Hannaford used another language, that of popular British natural history writers of the mid-nineteenth century. To Horace Wheelwright, Australian animals were equally valuable to the sportsman???s gun as to the naturalist???s pen. Donald Macdonald was the only one of these major writers to have been born in Australia. Although proud of his British heritage, he rejoiced in the beauty of his native land. His writing demonstrates his joy, and his novel attitude to Australian natural history continued and developed in the present century.

Qi Jiguang is recognized as one of the most successful generals of the Ming dynasty. Noted for his severe discipline and intense training, Qi led an army comprised of uniformed regulars and civilian auxiliaries against Japanese pirates in Zejiang province. His unprecedented victories earned Qi a reputation as a training expert. He composed his first military treatise, the Jixiao Xinshu (New Treatise on Disciplined Service) in 1560 while serving in Zejiang. The text discusses command and control, tactics, and training. Chapter 14, the "Quanjing Jieyao Pian" (Chapter on the Fist Canon and the Essentials of Nimbleness), endorses unarmed combat exercises as physical training for troops. No literary precedent for such a work has been discovered. Historical evidence suggests, however, that pre-Ming armies have used some forms of martial arts in training or demonstrations. Also, similarities between the "Quanjing" and modern taijiquan raise questions about a possible common martial arts heritage.

The focus of this project is on poetry, narrative, landscape and myth, and the palimpsest and/or hybridisation created when these four areas overlay each other. Our local communities' engagement with myth-making activity provides a golden opportunity for contemporary poets to continue the practice long established by our forebears of utilising folklore and legendary material as sources for poetry. Keeping in mind the words of M. H. Abrams who said

Having a personal connection through several family members to the life and work of Ngaanyatjarra Elder Mr Ward, I found his death in custody in outback Western Australia unsettling and incomprehensible. As the circumstances of his death were revealed, I became aware of glaring omissions in the telling of his story and the circumstances that led to his death. Through my engagement with the subsequent media reporting, official documents and personal conversations, I recognised a profound lack of understanding of difference and otherness within a shared history and space in Western Australia. The initial aim of my project was to investigate the incomprehensible through the lens of Ngaanyatjarra Elder Mr Ward’s death; however, ethically, this proved a difficult path to negotiate. Through my research, I came to understand that the continued use of the dominant language of the coloniser, which is embedded in social practices and academic discourse is, in part, continuing to perpetuate white privilege. The ethical problems raised inspired me to develop an approach, which although oblique, would nevertheless enable fresh insight into otherness and difference in a multi-cultural society. The particular concern of this practice-led research project is not to exploit the trauma of others but to raise awareness of this social space through my work, giving rise to new understandings and possible relations. This research gathered key texts from Walter Benjamin and Theodor Adorno, to facilitate the transfer of the written form of Denkbild, a literary device manipulating the codes of language to visualise the process of thought, into a painting practice. The Denkbild (thought-image) is a Euro-centric genre of exploratory philosophical writing, crafted in response to a society witnessing tremendous change as a result of the devastating impact of WWI and WWII. Through this creative project, the challenge was to re-activate the Denkbild through painting and accompanying text to investigate deaths in custody and interrogate the connected issues of ethics, politics and inequality, which is written into the shared spaces of Western Australia. The Denkbild is then developed further with the addition of Henri Lefebvre’s threedimensional spatial application of dialectical thinking and the creative practice of selected Australian artists. Through this addition, the binary dialectical framework of the Denkbild is expanded to reflect contemporary thinking on the concept of space as a social product. This perspective emerges to enable fresh insight into Aboriginal understandings of space as representing an ‘eternal now’, such that a mutual understanding of space is manifested. My painting practice reflects and informs this transition, as I moved from the painting studio to selected locations to record information and experiences that developed my research position. To achieve the project’s aims, I engaged in reflexivity and praxis as the methodological tools to guide my research. Through painting, my research extended across interdisciplinary fields including visual arts practices, philosophical history and literature, to interrogate a spatial dynamic, revealing marginalised insights and connecting interrelationships between sites. For the purpose of this research, the paintings, exhibitions and exegesis function on two levels: as an avenue into mediation of Western Australian culture and as a methodological approach to visual art practice. My research culminated in the exhibition, Ghostcards of WA 2017 at the Spectrum Project Space, ECU, Mount Lawley. This project is significant as it renews the Denkbild to further the unique relationship between conceptual and representational categories that binds together experience, object and practice to form an interrogative tool for critical inquiry. In the application of this method to a Western Australian context, new thinking is encouraged through the inclusive reading of space and the collapsing of misunderstandings perpetuated in historicism through a shared recognition of the inherent value of space/sites which— far from being incomprehensible, reactive, nostalgic and solipsistic—are comprehensible, active, prescient, abundant and social.

Techronomicon Techronomicon is a science fiction novel that examines far-future military actions from several different perspectives. Human beings have colonized several planets with help from the enigmatic and more technologically advanced Zhir, who gave spaceships and habitable worlds to those they deemed suitable and their descendants. The Joint Expeditionary Force is the military arm of the Universal Faith, called in when conflicts arise that the Faith decides are beyond the local government and militia and require their intervention. Leneveldt and Roader are JEF officers assigned to Operation Techronomicon, investigating what seems to be a Zhir-built defence shield around the planet Lassana. Another JEF company sent to Kalaabhavan after the murder of the planets Confessor-General loses its CO to a land-mine, and Lieutenant Hellerman reluctantly accepts command. Chevalier, a civilian pilot, takes refugees fleeing military-run detention camps on Ararat to a biological research station on otherwise uninhabited Lila. The biologists on Lila discover a symbiote that enables humans to photosynthesize, which comes to the attention of Operation Techronomicon and the JEF's Weapons Research Division. Leneveldt and Roeder, frustrated by the lack of progress on Lassana, are sent to Lila to detain the biologists, who flee into the swamps. Hellerman's efforts to restore peace on Kalaabhavan are frustrated by the Confessors, and his company finds itself besieged by insurgents. The novel explores individuals' motives for choosing or rejecting violence and/or military service; the lessons they learn about themselves and their enemies; and the possible results of attempts to forcibly suppress ideas.

This thesis examines English immigration to eastern Australia between 1815 and 1860, dealing predominantly with the colonies of New South Wales and Victoria. I focus on the English because of their relative neglect in Australian immigration historiography, despite their being in the majority among the immigrants. I uncover evidence of origins, class, gender, motivation and culture. To provide a rounded picture of these immigrants, I use statistics and contemporary literary sources, principally correspondence, diaries and official and private archives, and compare the English immigrants in eastern Australia with English immigrants to the United States and with Scottish and Irish immigrants to New South Wales and Victoria in the same decades. To analyse the origins, motives and skills of the immigrants, I employ demographic data and case studies and examine separately immigrants with capital and assisted immigrants. Overwhelmingly, for both sets of immigrants, the motive was to seek material success in the colonies, faster than they believed they could at home. For the majority, this overcame scruples about the primitive state of the colonial societies and the taint of convictism. Land was a major attraction for many self-funded immigrants, who began to come into New South Wales in increasing numbers in the 1820s, initially mainly in family groups, but later larger numbers of single men were attracted to seek wealth prior to marriage. Many settled on the land as their primary source of income; others who came to practice in middle class professions were also keen to acquire town and country land for the status and wealth it promised, but lived and worked in urban areas. Chain migration was a common feature among middle class families in all decades. The gold rushes of the 1850s throw into stark relief the gambling element propelling so many people drawn from all but the poorest classes to chase fortunes. In the promotion of the Australian colonies to labouring people through government-assisted passages, the period 1831-1836 was experimental. I analyse the steps taken, the lessons learned and the background, motivations and skills of the English people attracted by this early scheme. Revised recruitment criteria were put into action in 1837 and I examine a profile of the assisted immigrants from a one in sixty sample from that year to 1860. This longitudinal study shows that, despite contemporary and subsequent criticisms of the quality of the assisted immigrants, they fitted the categories demanded by the colonists and predominantly came from regions of England suffering economic decline. To examine the culture and values of the English immigrants, I develop an extended case study of one family over two generations and analyse key themes emerging from the private papers of a cross-section of people. These two perspectives illustrate the contribution English immigrants made to the culture in eastern Australia and show how many of them maintained contact with family in England over a long period, while engaging actively in their new society.

This thesis is about the genesis and development of the first pidgin English in Australia, called here New South Wales Pidgin. It presents a detailed analysis of the history of the language and a diachronic analysis of developments in the grammar and lexicon of the language. 'Melaleuka' refers to the model devised for the purposes of this thesis to explain the hypothesis on which the work is premised—that NSW Pidgin existed in two dialect forms. The time frame addressed is from the late eighteenth century when the language had its inception to the middle of the nineteenth century when it was consolidated. The geographical area of study encompasses the states of New South Wales and Victoria. The area was known as the colony of New South Wales until the middle of the nineteenth century.

Taking Percy Bysshe Shelley's A Philosophical View of Reform as its key document, this dissertation makes two contributions to nineteenth-century studies. First, it locates Shelley in the context of England's colonial venture in British India, a context new to Shelleyan study, although several scholars have investigated his Orientalist elements. Second, it ties together several major, seemingly disparate--even competing--late-eighteenth- /early-nineteenth-century discourses on India, illustrating how these discourses were later enlisted to serve the English Raj. Beyond reviewing Orientalism, Utilitarianism, Evangelicalism, and Imperialism, this dissertation also treats related contemporary issues of class, gender, race, and nationalism and finds that subjectivities that middle-class males established for the Indian 'other' were later re-imported to England to further subjugate women, workers, and non-English Britishers. The View demonstrates both Shelley's knowledge of these debates and his internalized contradictions concerning India. Although chiefly concerned with Shelley's lifetime, this study also reviews late-eighteenth-century origins of the discourses and their Victorian distillation into the new imperialism Chapter One surveys period issues of class, gender, race, and nationalism; their relationship to British India; and Shelley's personal and literary treatment of these issues. Chapter Two reviews overall English Orientalism concerning India and Indic elements in Shelley's Mab through Triumph. Chapter Three treats Utilitarian projects in India and England, and outlines Shelley's mastery and later rejection of Utilitarianism (Defence) as limited rationalism. Chapter Four studies Evangelical Indian and English projects, and reviews Shelley's seeming contradictions between attacking Christianity (Essay on Christianity; View) yet approving of missionaries in India (View). Chapter Five illustrates the coalescing of the discourses into Victorian manifest imperialism in India and ideological imperialism at home. It also tests Shelley as early 'reluctant imperialist' (Brantlinger) or unwitting pre-1857 collaborator (Said). Finally, nothing Shelley's hatred of tyranny (Cenci; Prometheus Unbound) and his theories on transience of empire (Hellas), and individual progress as sole means of breaking history's repeating cycles, this study posits that Shelley, although highly conflicted, could not have guessed England's future imperialism and that he offers Jesus the anarchist as model to show Indians how to reject their 'paralysing' caste system
acase@tulane.edu

In the aftermath of the Shoah (Holocaust)—the mass murder of 6,000,000 Jews—Jean-Paul Sartre wrote Reflexions sur la Question Juive (1946), in which he concluded that the fate of the Jews, the fate of the individual non-Jew, and the fate of the entire world are inextricably and reciprocally intertwined. Building on Sartre's perception, Portrait of a Jew (1962) and The Liberation of the Jew (1966) describe what the author, Albert Memmi, terms "the universal Jewish fate": that of being the paradigmatic "colonized" Other—insofar as the Jews are a particularly oppressed minority, that is, their marginalization epitomizes the fate of all humanity. Further, Memmi argues both that "to be a Jewish writer is ... to express the Jewish fate" and that a "true Jewish literature" is necessarily one which revolts against the imposition and acceptance of this fate. Sartre's and Memmi's insights posit that Jewish consciousness acts upon both national and world consciousness. Memmi suggests that one means of expressing the Jewish consciousness is through literature. In their imaginative interpretations of the post-Shoah interconnections between the Jew, the nation, and the world, modern Jewish fiction writers of the Diaspora (dispersion) —at least those whose work foregrounds tropes of Jewish sensibility, incorporating Jewish characters and themes—often delineate a world which, in the aftermath of Auschwitz, is socially and existentially even more precarious than it was before the war. This study examines post-Shoah Jewish consciousness and its relation to national/world consciousness,as represented in the English-language Jewish fiction of Australia, South Africa, and Canada, Commonwealth countries whose diverse Jewish literatures have been overshadowed by the predominant English-language Jewish literary culture of the U.S.A. The structure of this study is bipartite. Part B is an indexed Bibliography enumerating primary works by Jewish prose fiction writers of Australia, Canada, and South Africa. Part A is a critical commentary on Part B. The Introduction (Chapter 1) outlines the theoretical bases for the study. The three following chapters scrutinize Jewish Australian (Chapter 2), Jewish South African (Chapter 3), and Jewish Canadian (Chapter 4) fiction. Among the writers considered are Australians B.N. Jubal, Judah Waten, David Martin, Morris Lurie, Serge Liberman, and Lily Brett; South Africans Nadine Gordimer, Dan Jacobson, Jillian Becker, Antony Sher, and Rose Zwi; and Canadians Henry Kreisel, A.M. Klein, Adele Wiseman, Mordecai Richler, and Robert Majzels. Each of these three chapters follows a similar format: a description of the origin, history, and demography of the Jewish community; an outline of the important pre-World War II Jewish fiction writers and their work; an examination of representative post-Shoah works; and concluding remarks about the ways in which the works under consideration here contest and revise both the canons of nation and national literature and the very concepts of nation, canon, and canon-making. An Epilogue (Chapter 5) contextualizes the thematic patterns common to the Jewish fiction of the three countries and suggests ways in which this fiction can be located within the larger framework of Jewish Literature.

Since haiku first crossed Australian borders more than one hundred years ago, it has undergone a process of translation, interpretation and transformation. This study examines aspects of haiku’s cultural transmission and evolution in Australia from a genre oriented to the early Japanese models, to one which is informed by a growing international haiku community and an emerging local sensibility. This study will examine the origins of Australian haiku by evaluating the contribution of some of its most important translators and educators and assess the legacy of Australia’s early haiku education on current haiku practices. Haiku is still best known as a three-line poem of seventeen syllables broken into lines of 5-7-5, however, contemporary haiku largely eschews this classicist approach and is characterised by a blend of emulation and experimentation. This study presents and discusses a variety of approaches to writing haiku that have emerged in Australia over the course of its development.

This is an historical investigation into the provision of education services for deaf children in the State of New South Wales in Australia since 1860. The main focus is those deaf children without additional disabilities who have been placed in mainstream classes, special classes for the deaf and special schools for the deaf. The study places this group at centre stage in order to better understand their educational situation in the late 1990s. The thesis has taken a chronological and thematic approach. The chapters are defined by significant events that impacted on the education of the deaf, such as the establishment of special schools in New South Wales, the rise of the oral movement, and aftermath of the rubella epidemic in Australia during the 1940s. Within each chapter, there is a core of key elements around which the analysis is based. These key elements tend to be based on institutions, players, and specific educational features, such as the mode of instruction or the curriculum. The study found general agreement that language acquisition was a fundamental prerequisite to academic achievement. Yet the available evidence suggests that educational programs for most deaf children in New South Wales have seldom focused on ensuring adequate language acquisition in conjunction with the introduction of academic subjects. As a result, language and literacy competencies of deaf students in general have frequently been acknowledged as being below those of five their hearing counterparts, to the point of presenting a barrier to successful post-secondary study. It is proposed that the reasons for the academic failings of the deaf are inherent in five themes.
PhD Doctorate

This is an historical investigation into the provision of education services for deaf children in the State of New South Wales in Australia since 1860. The main focus is those deaf children without additional disabilities who have been placed in mainstream classes, special classes for the deaf and special schools for the deaf. The study places this group at centre stage in order to better understand their educational situation in the late 1990s. The thesis has taken a chronological and thematic approach. The chapters are defined by significant events that impacted on the education of the deaf, such as the establishment of special schools in New South Wales, the rise of the oral movement, and aftermath of the rubella epidemic in Australia during the 1940s. Within each chapter, there is a core of key elements around which the analysis is based. These key elements tend to be based on institutions, players, and specific educational features, such as the mode of instruction or the curriculum. The study found general agreement that language acquisition was a fundamental prerequisite to academic achievement. Yet the available evidence suggests that educational programs for most deaf children in New South Wales have seldom focused on ensuring adequate language acquisition in conjunction with the introduction of academic subjects. As a result, language and literacy competencies of deaf students in general have frequently been acknowledged as being below those of five their hearing counterparts, to the point of presenting a barrier to successful post-secondary study. It is proposed that the reasons for the academic failings of the deaf are inherent in five themes.
PhD Doctorate