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Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Western Australian literature'
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Henningsgaard, Per Hansa. "Outside traditional book publishing centres : the production of a regional literature in Western Australia." University of Western Australia. English and Cultural Studies Discipline Group, 2008. http://theses.library.uwa.edu.au/adt-WU2008.0255.
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This thesis provides a study of book publishing as it contributes to the production of a regional literature, using Western Australian publishing and literature as illustrative examples of this dynamic. 'Regional literature' is defined in this thesis as writing possessing cultural value that is specific to a region, although the writing may also have national and international value. An awareness of geographically and culturally diverse regions within the framework of the nation is shown to be derived from representations of these regions and their associated regional characteristics in the movies, television and books. In Australia, literature has been the primary site for expressions of regional difference. Therefore, this thesis analyses the impact of regionalism on the processes of book production and publication in Western Australias three major publishing houses a trade publishing house (Fremantle Press), an Indigenous publishing house (Magabala Books), and an academic publishing house (University of Western Australia Press). Book history, print culture studies and publishing studies, along with literary studies and cultural studies, roughly approximate a disciplinary map of the types of research that constitute this thesis. By examining regional literature in the context of its 'field of cultural production', this thesis maintains that regionalism and regional literature can avail themselves of a fresh perspective that shows them to be anything but marginal or exclusive. Regionalism has been a topic of peripheral interest, at least as far as scholarly research and academia are concerned, because those who are most likely to be affected by and thus interested in the topic, are also those who are most disempowered as a result of its attendant dynamics. However, as this thesis clearly demonstrates, access (or a lack thereof) to the field of cultural production (which in the case of print culture includes writers, literary agents, editors, publishers, government arts organisations, the media, schools, book clubs, and book retailers, just to name a few) plays a significant role in establishing and shaping an identity for marginalised 3 constituencies. The implications for this research are far-ranging, since both Western Australia and Australia can be understood as peripheries dominated in their different spheres (the 'national' and the 'international', respectively) by literary cultures residing elsewhere. Furthermore, there are parallels between this dynamic and the dynamic responsible for producing postcolonial literatures. The three publishing houses detailed in this thesis are disadvantaged by many of the factors associated with their distance from the traditional centres of book publishing, while at the same time producing a regional literature that serves as a platform from which the state broadcasts its distinctive contributions to the cultural landscape and to a wider understanding of concepts such as space, place and belonging. These publishing houses changed the way in which Australians and others have come to know and think about 'Australia', re-routing public consciousness and the national imagination.
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Buchanan, David. "Contextual thesis Part I & Part II : Book of poems, "Looking off the Southern Edge" ; Stage play (full-length): Ecstasis." Thesis, Edith Cowan University, Research Online, Perth, Western Australia, 2001. https://ro.ecu.edu.au/theses/1015.
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This thesis, which accompanies my book of poems Looking Off the Southern Edge and my full-length stage play Ecstasis, is submitted in two parts: Part-I and Part-II. Part-l contextualises the writing practice of the above poems in considering the epistemological, autobiographical and landscape contexts of my poetry. Part-I then discusses how the poetry is involved in the process of decentring subjectivity within the southern India/Pacific arena. It should be pointed out that Part-I was submitted and marked last year, as the first year component of the Master of Arts (Writing) course. It is included this year because much of its thesis informs Part-II (and indeed is referred to and referenced by Part-II), especially in terms of my general theoretical approach to writing poems, plays, as well as the relevance of my music, painting and stained glass practices. Part II mostly addresses the writing of the play Ecstasis. I have however, discussed why I have re-edited, augmented and re-submitted my book of poems. I have then contextualised the writing of the play, by addressing the areas of Apophasis and the Aporia of 'the story', An Ecstatic Dramaturgy and the Undecidable Subject, and Ecstasis and an Endemic Specificity. This play was written, workshopped and enjoyed a partially moved reading (as late as the 11th, November) in the course of this year. While the writing of the piece is addressed under the previous headings, the workshopping and reading process is discussed in Workshopping the 'Spectacle Text' in the Co-operative Medium of 'Theatre. I have also included Appendix (i) in support of this process, in particular, the changes inspired by the reading. The conclusion discusses some of the boundaries for my writing of A Poetry and The Spectacle Text for theatre, and hints at the context required for any writing of experimentation in the southern Indian/Pacific arena.
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Holliday, Brian. "The conundrum of the West : reading the novels of Nicholas Hasluck." Thesis, Curtin University, 1998. http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/1335.
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The purpose of this thesis is to explore the ways in which Nicholas Hasluck's novels have been read in the past, and to develop an alternative interpretation which takes into account all Hasluck's narratives, reading them through the framework of current trends in literary and cultural theory. Hasluck is a Western Australian writer whose work takes seriously, while at the same time parodies, the institutions of both Western Australia and Western society.The initial section comprises three chapters, in which Hasluck's novels are read through the commonly used frameworks of the mystery-thriller genre and satire. The second part of the thesis, which covers four chapters, is a reading of Hasluck's narratives through the shift from modernism to postmodernism, drawing particularly on the work of theorists such as Linda Hutcheon, Michel Foucault and Brian McHale. This interpretation reveals how Hasluck's work increasingly uses the marginal, regional narratives of Western Australia to contest the mega-narratives of the West.The significance of this thesis is twofold. Firstly, this is currently the most in-depth examination of the work of a neglected Western Australian writer, and, secondly, the combining of Hasluck's literary themes and this thesis's critical framework provides a productive format for exploring issues of Western Australian history and literature.
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Thistleton-Martin, Judith. "Black face white story : the construction of Aboriginal childhood by non-Aboriginal writers in Australian children's fiction 1841-1998 /." View thesis, 2002. http://library.uws.edu.au/adt-NUWS/public/adt-NUWS20031024.100333/index.html.
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Kindler, Michael. "Human literacy : liberal neglect in A Statement on English for Australian Schools /." View thesis, 1996. http://library.uws.edu.au/adt-NUWS/public/adt-NUWS20030902.170901/index.html.
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Jewell, Melinda R. "The representation of dance in Australian novels the darkness beyond the stage-lit dream /." View thesis, 2008. http://handle.uws.edu.au:8081/1959.7/39463.
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Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Western Sydney, 2008.A thesis submitted to the University of Western Sydney, College of Arts, School of Communication Arts, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Includes bibliographical references.
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Holliday, Brian. "The conundrum of the West : reading the novels of Nicholas Hasluck." Curtin University of Technology, School of Communication and Cultural Studies, 1998. http://espace.library.curtin.edu.au:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=10562.
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The purpose of this thesis is to explore the ways in which Nicholas Hasluck's novels have been read in the past, and to develop an alternative interpretation which takes into account all Hasluck's narratives, reading them through the framework of current trends in literary and cultural theory. Hasluck is a Western Australian writer whose work takes seriously, while at the same time parodies, the institutions of both Western Australia and Western society.The initial section comprises three chapters, in which Hasluck's novels are read through the commonly used frameworks of the mystery-thriller genre and satire. The second part of the thesis, which covers four chapters, is a reading of Hasluck's narratives through the shift from modernism to postmodernism, drawing particularly on the work of theorists such as Linda Hutcheon, Michel Foucault and Brian McHale. This interpretation reveals how Hasluck's work increasingly uses the marginal, regional narratives of Western Australia to contest the mega-narratives of the West.The significance of this thesis is twofold. Firstly, this is currently the most in-depth examination of the work of a neglected Western Australian writer, and, secondly, the combining of Hasluck's literary themes and this thesis's critical framework provides a productive format for exploring issues of Western Australian history and literature.
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Spear, Peta. "Libertine : a novel & A writer's reflection : the Libertine dynamic : existential erotic and apocalyptic Gothic /." View thesis, 1998. http://library.uws.edu.au/adt-NUWS/public/adt-NUWS20030909.143230/index.html.
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Kucharova, Sue. "The torch collector /." View thesis, 1999. http://library.uws.edu.au/adt-NUWS/public/adt-NUWS20030905.143557/index.html.
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Chakhachiro, Raymond. "The translation of irony in Australian political commentary texts from English into Arabic /." View thesis, 1997. http://library.uws.edu.au/adt-NUWS/public/adt-NUWS20030715.161818/index.html.
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Hawryluk, Lynda J. "Call waiting /." View thesis View thesis, 2001. http://library.uws.edu.au/adt-NUWS/public/adt-NUWS20030422.094611/index.html.
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Barlow, Gillian. "Jigsaw : looking at identity, post-colonialism and driving /." View thesis View thesis, 2001. http://library.uws.edu.au/adt-NUWS/public/adt-NUWS20030428.102002/index.html.
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De, Iacovo Joe. "Easy : a novella /." View thesis, 1999. http://library.uws.edu.au/adt-NUWS/public/adt-NUWS20030910.142345/index.html.
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Macris, Anthony. "Capital, volume one, part two : a novel ; The generative Mise en abyme : an accompanying theoretical essay /." View thesis View thesis, 2001. http://library.uws.edu.au/adt-NUWS/public/adt-NUWS20030505.145103/index.html.
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Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Western Sydney, Hawkesbury, 2001.A thesis presented to the University of Western Sydney, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, March, 2001. Bibliography : leaves [278]-282.
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McKenzie, Vahri. "As the owl discreet: Essay towards a conversation and Carly's Dance a novel." Thesis, Edith Cowan University, Research Online, Perth, Western Australia, 2008. https://ro.ecu.edu.au/theses/24.
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This thesis comprises a novel entitled Carly's Dance and an essay entitled As the Owl Discreet. Although separate works, a line runs through them that might be described as an urge to connect; each work, although self-contained, is concerned with the co-existence of opposites, or more precisely, apparent opposites. The essay's title is ironic, borrowed from Hillaire Belloc's perverse verses collected as Cautionary Tales. Discretion is exactly what the thesis tests the bounds of, as do the characters in my novel. And so do I, in using family history to motivate my research.
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Conte, Susannah. "The Fifth Sparrow: In Memory of Mollie Skinner." Thesis, Edith Cowan University, Research Online, Perth, Western Australia, 2018. https://ro.ecu.edu.au/theses/2080.
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This thesis offers a case study in adapting Australian literary biography to the theatre, specifically in the form of a one woman show or monologue performance. The thesis consists of a novel play script, together with exegetical writing which outlines the source materials used and the process and themes under consideration. These themes include those of family (specifically a difficult relationship with her mother), love (including a lesbian affair), life as an aspiring writer, and the protagonist’s difficult to shake sense of damage, pain and struggle. The play offers a portrait of West Australian writer Mollie Skinner (1876- 1955). Sources included her autobiography (both the original manuscript and that edited and published by Mary Durack), Mollie’s novels and her letters—particularly her extensive correspondence with the British author D.H. Lawrence, who she met in WA—and secondary writings. Skinner’s writing has been described as akin to an “untended garden,” rich in imagery, but scattered and often difficult to follow. In recognition of this, my play takes the form of a series of vignettes and images, a succession of heightened moments, choreographed with sound and movement elements for dramatic impact. Mollie’s life thereby emerges as one marked by pain and suffering, yet suffused with rich language and visions. Although Mollie was more than just a friend of D.H. Lawrence, it is nevertheless clear that the better known author offered her support and encouragement that few others did. Together with her Sybil these two figures emerge as Mollie’s only true loves and companions, figures physically separated from her, yet who enabled her life and many of her joys. Skinner emerges then as a modest but indomitable spirt, poised on the veranda, looking at the world through her failing eyesight; touched by the beauty of it all.
The aim of the play is thus to do justice to the spirit of Skinner, without presenting an exhaustive account of her entire life, and in doing so, to present her story to a new generation of West Australians.
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Cooley, Shevaun. "Homing : poetry ; &, An essay on the poetic leap in the late work of R.S. Thomas." Thesis, Edith Cowan University, Research Online, Perth, Western Australia, 2013. https://ro.ecu.edu.au/theses/850.
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Homing, as a collection, speaks to the capacity and yearning to navigate our way towards something we might call home. In animal behaviour, this seems like an instinct, hard-wired to the body. It is something I envy. By comparison, the instinct, in human behaviour, feels muffled and complicated.
These poems move between two places in which I feel ‘at home’, whatever that means: the south-west of Western Australia, where I was born and raised, and the north-west of Wales, where I lived for a time, and find myself returning to, drawn not by blood, but by longing, and a deep affinity for the landscape. Without any real intention, in the writing of the poems I found I had a lot to say about rivers. In particular, I found myself repeating images of drifting and gripping, as if these two, opposing, compulsions also said something about how we try to find our way home. The poet Mark Doty speaks of a “fierce internal debate between staying moored and drifting away, between holdings and letting go.”1 It is as if the river, too, knows something of how to arrive, and yet its movement is much like that of these poems, pulled by new hungers, at times distracted, or slowed, or apparently lost. Drift. Grip. Perhaps it is, after all, another kind of instinct.
In the critical essay that accompanies the poems, I look at the poetic leap in the work of the Welsh poet and priest R.S. Thomas. I was initially compelled by a strange parallel between an actual physical leap of escape, enacted by Thomas, who leapt a graveyard wall in order to avoid speaking to the mourners to whom he had just ministered a funeral service, and the leap found in Italo Calvino’s essay on lightness. This leap is also one of escape, in which the poet-philosopher Guido Calvcanti places a hand on a grave and leaps lightly over it, in order to elude the taunts of some local louts. Calvino calls this act, “an auspicious image for the new millennium.”2
In poetry we find the leap in the act of making metaphor, in enjambment, even in a kind of concentration. In Thomas’s work, the leap is focused in the form of the raptor; a presence repeated through his oeuvre, carrying with it many of his chief concerns, about God, love, and the inherent ferocity of the natural world. In a close reading of those poems, and with the aid of thinkers as disparate as Helene Cixous, Roland Barthes, Simone Weil and Edward Said, this essay is an attempt to trace the ways the leap works in Thomas’s poetry. It is also an attempt to analyse and understand the way poetry itself works to move the reader, in all senses of the word.
1Doty, M. (2001). Still life with oysters and lemon. Boston: Beacon Press, p.7
2Calvino, I. (2009). Six memos for the new millennium. (P. Creag, Trans.) London: Penguin Classics, p.12
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Reeves, Noelene. "The development of a literate society: A case study: Western Australia 1850-1910." Thesis, Reeves, Noelene (1993) The development of a literate society: A case study: Western Australia 1850-1910. PhD thesis, Murdoch University, 1993. https://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/id/eprint/50588/.
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Literacy, the ability to read and write, is now considered an essential social skill and the right of individuals. Yet, this was not always so. A ‘literate society’, where the expectation that essential day-to-day communications between its members can be conducted solely through print, belongs to the twentieth century. It is a very different environment from a society where literacy is significant yet it is socially acceptable, indeed socially demanded, for elements of the society to remain illiterate. Such was the historical experience when to be literate meant to possess power and high social status. A contemporary society which has become print-dependent expects its members to be literate and makes literacy acquisition by children compulsory. Negative social judgements are made about those who are not functional in literacy. More importantly, social disadvantage accrues to those who cannot adequately participate in activity requiring literacy. So how, when and why did such a fundamental change in attitudes and experience occur?
The thesis explores the experience of one small, isolated English-speaking colonial settlement mapping the intrusion of literacy into all levels of that society and the responses of people traditionally non-literate. It seeks to explain why reading and writing tuition was given to the ‘lower orders’ and why literacy was ultimately accepted universally by Western Australians. It seeks to understand what value was placed on literacy by the illiterate and less literate, how well these people could read and write and the degree of their participation in literacy exchanges. It hypothesises that social acceptance and participation depended on the recipients of instruction recognising that a personal need could be met, not the perceptions or stated reasons of the providers who endeavoured to instruct through a range of institutions throughout the period. It concludes that, in Western Australia, those needs were not religious, not political or judicial, not educational as may have been the case elsewhere, but primarily commercial and functional. When shopping in expanded and flourishing communities stimulated by the discovery of gold, adults needed to respond to the print (and associated graphics) identifying essential and desirable commodities and services. Adult awareness and skill development led to wider commercial usage and encouraged parents to ensure children attended school regularly and stayed longer, thus providing the context for greater social usage as reflected in advertising and the environment. Western Australia became a literate society between 1895 and 1905 when the social barriers erected on both sides that had prevented earlier participation finally gave way. The thesis recognises, however, that in a literate society literacy and its uses are still social markers that lead to inequality and disadvantage.
A detailed examination of data uses accepted literacy measures, such as statistical registers, education reports and signatures, explores the less frequently utilised measure of environmental print and draws on the researcher’s experience as a reading educator and researcher to make assessments about nineteenth century literacy and literacy education.
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Saraswati, Anandashila. "Adumbral traces : poems on the naming of places in South Western Australia." Thesis, Edith Cowan University, Research Online, Perth, Western Australia, 2008. https://ro.ecu.edu.au/theses/198.
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The poems in this collection are based on research into the naming of places in Western Australia. I began this project with the idea to study place names in the North and South of Western Australia; however the rich stories I found beneath the place names, and the time constraint of twelve months, has limited my field of research mainly to the metropolitan areas of Perth and Fremantle. In writing these poems I read extensively from historical accounts of the British occupation of Western Australia from 1829 and from recorded Noongar knowledge, combined with my own physical experience of place. These poems seek to open up a space in the narrative of the Swan River Colony, now known as Western Australia, in which to reconsider the origins of familiar place names, and their position in the current cultural discourse of nation. The exegesis The "Mountain is Named after the Man'" walks alongside the poetic work and engages with a more theoretical approach to the study of place names. The exegesis seeks to articulate the inherent inlbalance of power associated with place naming in the colonial context, and how in post-colonial societies, place names need to be critically examined and creatively engaged with in order to illuminate the political agendas embedded in geographical nomenclature.
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Temperton, Barbara Temperton Barbara. "The Lighthouse keeper's wife, and other stories (novel) : and Ceremony for ground : narrative, landscape, myth (dissertation) /." Connect to this title, 2006. http://theses.library.uwa.edu.au/adt-WU2008.0005.
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Temperton, Barbara. "The Lighthouse keeper's wife, and other stories (novel) ; and Ceremony for ground : narrative, landscape, myth (dissertation)." University of Western Australia. English, Communication and Cultural Studies Discipline Group, 2007. http://theses.library.uwa.edu.au/adt-WU2008.0005.
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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
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Klapproth, Danièle. "Holding the world in place : narrative as social practice in Anglo-Western and in a Central Australian Aboriginal culture /." [S.l.] : [s.n.], 2002. http://www.ub.unibe.ch/content/bibliotheken_sammlungen/sondersammlungen/dissen_bestellformular/index_ger.html.
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Saraswati, Anandashila. "Swamp : walking the wetlands of the Swan Coastal Plain ; and with the exegesis, A walk in the anthropocene: homesickness and the walker-writer." Thesis, Edith Cowan University, Research Online, Perth, Western Australia, 2012. https://ro.ecu.edu.au/theses/588.
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This project is comprised of a creative work and accompanying exegesis. The creative work is a collection of poetry which examines the history and ecology of the wetlands and river systems of the Swan Coastal Plain, and which utilises the practice of walking as a research methodology. For the creative practitioner walking reintroduces the body as a fundamental definer of experience, placing the investigation centrally in the corporeal self, using the physical senses as investigative tools of enquiry. As Rebecca Solnit comments in her history of walking, ‘exploring the world is one of the best ways of exploring the mind, and walking travels both terrains’ (Solnit, 2000, p. 13).
The context for my poetic walking project Swamp, is a local and global environment undergoing an unprecedented loss of biodiversity, mainly due to the destruction of habitat and changes in climatic conditions (Reid, Partha Dasgupta, Robert M. May, A.H. Zakri, & Henk Simons, 2005, pp. 438-442). The loss of species and ecosystems that have been a part of our earth home results in the human experience of ‘homesickness’ — a longing for the home places that we have known and which have diminished or disappeared.
Before the arrival of the British colonists in 1829, the Swan River and adjacent wetlands were an integral part of the seasonal food source for the original inhabitants, the Noongar (Bekle, 1981). In addition wetland places were, and are, deeply embedded in the spiritual and cultural life of the Noongar people of the Swan Coastal Plain (O'Connor, Quartermaine, & Bodney, 1989).
In less than two hundred years since the establishment of the Swan River Colony (Western Australia), the lakes and rivers of the Swan Coastal Plain have undergone extreme changes, often resulting in complete draining and in-filling of wetland areas as the city and its suburbs spread beyond the original town limits. This re–engineering of the landscape has had a dramatic and detrimental impact upon biodiversity, water quality and the sense of place experienced by residents.
Swamp is a project that has three main facets:
a) a body of original poetry which interprets the historical relationship between the British, European, and Chinese newcomers to Noongar country, and the wetlands lakes of the Swan Coastal Plain. The poetry contained in this thesis is copyright to the author, Anandashila Saraswati (Nandi Chinna).
b)An essay which contextualises the project within the sphere of walking art, psychogeography, and the philosophical idea of ‘Homesickness’.
c) A website, www.swampwalking.com.au, which displays photographs documenting the walks I have carried out over the three year period of the project from February 2009 to February 2012.
The exegetical part of this project looks at the notion of ‘homesickness’ as a philosophical condition that can be seen as a motivating force in the practice of writing on walking. I use Debord’s theory of the dérive as a starting point for my walking methodology and examine nostalgia within the Situationist International (Debord, 1958) and subsequent psychogeographical movements. I also investigate the role of homesickness in the work of other writers who walk and who write about their walking practice.
Finally I discuss homesickness in the epoch of the Anthropocene (Crutzen & Schwägerl, 2011), the era in which the earth’s biosphere is characterised by human interventions which have changed the meteorological, geological and biological elements of our earth home. In the Anthropocene, the wilderness view of nature needs to be re-evaluated. I posit that walking is a way of reconnecting with the physical landscape and building relationships with small wilds that exist in our home places, and that writing about the walking allows these relationships and encounters to ripple out to readers, contributing to and enabling the development of an ethic of care for ecosystems and beings other than human.
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Moore, Wendy M. "Clever talk : using literature to boost vocabulary through explicit teaching in early childhood." Thesis, Edith Cowan University, Research Online, Perth, Western Australia, 2013. https://ro.ecu.edu.au/theses/685.
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Vocabulary knowledge is an important predictor of literacy and broader academic outcomes. Children’s literature is a rich source of sophisticated vocabulary, and this study investigated the efficacy of boosting word learning by incorporating explicit instruction approaches into story-book read-aloud sessions. This design-based research study sought to compare two models: teaching a greater number of word meanings more briefly and teaching fewer words in greater depth. Six schools from low SES areas participated, with the main intervention program running for three 6 week blocks.
Overall, both of the explicit approaches were more effective in improving word learning for Grade One students than a traditional, student-centred or constructivist approach. Teaching more words briefly (greater breadth) was just as effective overall as teaching fewer words in a robust manner (greater depth). Students made larger gains on more difficult words than on simpler words, although the pattern of word learning was affected by the students’ vocabulary knowledge at the outset. Students with the highest initial vocabulary scores made greater gains, and learnt more of the most difficult words, than students with lower initial scores. While the intervention resulted in large effect size gains on target vocabulary words as assessed by researcher-developed measures, there was no impact on standardised vocabulary measures (PPVT and EVT) when compared to a control group.
Explicit instructional approaches have not been widely used in Western Australian classrooms, so the study used group interviews to investigate teachers’ responses to the programs. Mitigating and facilitative factors influencing the adoption of vocabulary instruction practices in schools were explored. Student engagement, ease of use, time efficiency and the provision of prepared materials were important factors in teacher responsiveness to the programs.
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Fozard, Roxanne. "Ghostcards of WA: An exhibition of oil paintings on linen – and – Repositioning the Denkbild: A painting investigation into deaths in custody in 21st century Western Australia: An exegesis." Thesis, Edith Cowan University, Research Online, Perth, Western Australia, 2017. https://ro.ecu.edu.au/theses/2155.
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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.
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Burns, Kathryn. "This Other Eden." 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/2123/1691.
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Doctor of PhilosophyThis thesis explores the sense of place formed during childhood, as remembered by adult Australians who reconstruct their youth through various forms of life writing. While Australian writers do utilize traditional tropes of Western autobiography, such as the mythology of Eden and the Wordsworthian image of the child communing with Nature, these themes are frequently transformed to meet a uniquely Australian context. Isolation and distance from Europe, and the apparent indifference of our landscape towards white settlement, have received much critical attention in Australian studies generally and, indeed, broadly influence the formation of children’s sense of place across the continent. However, writers are also concerned with the role of place on a more local level. Through a comparison of writing from Western Australia, Queensland and Victoria, this thesis explores regional landscape preoccupations that create an awareness of local identity, variously contributing to or frustrating the child’s sense of belonging. Western Australian writing is dominated by images of isolation, the fragility of white settlement in a dry land lacking fresh water, and a pervasive beach culture. A strong sense of the littoral pervades writing from this region. Queensland’s frontier mythology is of a different flavour: warm and tropical, nature here is exuberant, constantly threatening to overwhelm culture, already perceived as transient due to the flimsy aspect of the “Queenslander” house. Writing from Victoria, to some extent, tends to more closely follow English models, juxtaposing country and city environments, although there is a distinctly local flavour to many representations of urban Melbourne and its flat, grid-like organization. As Australian society becomes more concentrated on the coastal fringe, the beach is an increasingly significant environment. Though more prominent in writing from some regions than others, coastal imagery broadly reflects the modern Australian’s sense of inhabiting a liminal zone with negotiable boundaries.
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Abbas, Herawaty. "Dancing with Australian feminism: Helen Garner’s Postcards from Surfers viewed from a Buginese perspective with a partial translation into Indonesian." Thesis, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1036678.
Full textAbstract:
Research Doctorate - Doctor of PhilosophyThis study is a literary analysis on five stories from Helen Garner’s Postcards from Surfers. This study also translates these five stories from English into Indonesian and discusses some challenges that occurred in the process of translation. The aim of the study is to investigate Garner’s feminist ideas as reflected in the stories from Postcards from Surfers viewed from a Buginese perspective. The five stories are “Postcard from Surfers”, “La Chance Existe”, “The Art of Life”, “All Young Bloody Catholics”, and “Civilization and Discontents”. Through these stories, how Garner expresses her feminist ideas are juxtaposed with Buginese culture. By using Edward Said’s work on contrapuntal reading, Mohanty’s feminist-as-explorer model, and Lazar’s Critical Discourse Analysis, I move back and forth between Buginese culture and Australian culture to consider how Australian women and men are represented and how mainstream Australian society engages with, or challenges discourses of patriarchy and power. This movement back and forth I have theorised as “dancing”. My study examines the potential dialogue between Australian culture and Buginese culture in terms of feminism and its resulting cultural hybridity where some Australian feminist thoughts are applicable to Buginese culture but some are not. From this dialogue, it is found that both Australian women and Buginese women have their own sets of issues stemming from male domination. The way they empower themselves to resist are also different. Therefore, my study centres a Buginese standpoint while dialoguing with Australian feminisms.
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Allen, Delia Frances. "This town, last town, next town: the women of sideshow alley and the boxing tents: a novel and exegesis." Thesis, 2014. https://vuir.vu.edu.au/25868/.
Full textAbstract:
This doctoral creative thesis comprises a novel This town, last town, next town,
and an accompanying exegesis. The novel is set in Western Australia in the
1950s in sideshow alley, a unique part of Australian culture that has not
previously been represented in Australian fiction. It is a period in which the
sideshow is coming to the end of its heyday as a place of carnival and
spectacle. The three main characters are: Joan Tiernan, a dancer and married
to the owner of an entertainment show; Rose Jackson, the wife of a boxing tent
owner; and Corrie Cooper, married to an Aboriginal boxer. Joan and Rose
travel with the show but Corrie stays behind, living in a small timber shack on
the outskirts of a wheatbelt hamlet, while her husband travels with the tent
most of the year. The narrative explores the women’s hopes and personal
desires and how these are negotiated and shaped by the needs of the
community.