Academic literature on the topic 'Wombat Forest (Vic )'

Abstract. Well-drained, aerated soils are important sinks for atmospheric methane (CH4) via the process of CH4 oxidation by methane-oxidising bacteria (MOB). This terrestrial CH4 sink may contribute towards climate change mitigation, but the impact of changing soil moisture and temperature regimes on CH4 uptake is not well understood in all ecosystems. Soils in temperate forest ecosystems are the greatest terrestrial CH4 sink globally. Under predicted climate change scenarios, temperate eucalypt forests in south-eastern Australia are predicted to experience rapid and extreme changes in rainfall patterns, temperatures and wild fires. To investigate the influence of environmental drivers on seasonal and inter-annual variation of soil–atmosphere CH4 exchange, we measured soil–atmosphere CH4 exchange at high-temporal resolution (< 2 h) in a dry temperate eucalypt forest in Victoria (Wombat State Forest, precipitation 870 mm yr−1) and in a wet temperature eucalypt forest in Tasmania (Warra Long-Term Ecological Research site, 1700 mm yr−1). Both forest soil systems were continuous CH4 sinks of −1.79 kg CH4 ha−1 yr−1 in Victoria and −3.83 kg CH4 ha−1 yr−1 in Tasmania. Soil CH4 uptake showed substantial temporal variation and was strongly controlled by soil moisture at both forest sites. Soil CH4 uptake increased when soil moisture decreased and this relationship explained up to 90 % of the temporal variability. Furthermore, the relationship between soil moisture and soil CH4 flux was near-identical at both forest sites when soil moisture was expressed as soil air-filled porosity (AFP). Soil temperature only had a minor influence on soil CH4 uptake. Soil nitrogen concentrations were generally low and fluctuations in nitrogen availability did not influence soil CH4 uptake at either forest site. Our data suggest that soil MOB activity in the two forests was similar and that differences in soil CH4 exchange between the two forests were related to differences in soil moisture and thereby soil gas diffusivity. The differences between forest sites and the variation in soil CH4 exchange over time could be explained by soil AFP as an indicator of soil moisture status.

Bare-nosed wombats (Vombatus ursinus) are an often important south-east Australian agricultural riparian species that may improve riparian landscape heterogeneity via their burrowing activity. At the same time they are often accused of causing soil erosion. As populations of wombats in other landscapes are under threat due to habitat disturbance, road mortality and disease, knowledge of the factors determining their use of riparian systems are important for their conservation and management. Since the European colonisation of Australia, riparian areas have been utilised by domestic cattle (Bos taurus), usually resulting in a decline in biodiversity. Camera-trap data was used to investigate the habitat use by wombats and cattle in remnant Eastern Riverine Forests. A total of 664 detections of animals from 13 species were made over the entire riparian-zone survey. Wombats were the most detected species, followed by cattle, then foxes and cats. Wombat and cattle activity varied significantly through the diurnal cycle, with wombats active from 1900 to 0700 hours and cattle active from 0700 to 1900 hours. There were no seasonal effects relating to the detection of either species. Feral species such as foxes, cats and rabbits were more frequently detected at sites highly disturbed by cattle. Results of this study illustrate the potential of camera-trapping for modelling habitat use by wombats and cattle and providing guidelines for the management of feral animals in remnant agricultural riparian habitats.

The aim in this study was to describe the safety and efficacy of vacuum-assisted closure (VAC) in patients with complex cranial wounds with extensive scalp, bone, and dural defects who were not candidates for immediate free tissue transfer. Five patients (4 men and 1 woman) ages 24–73 years with complex cranial wounds were treated with VAC at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center. Etiologies included trauma, squamous cell carcinoma, and malignant meningioma. Cutaneous wound defects measured as large as 15 cm in diameter. Four of the 5 patients had open skull defects with concomitant dural defects, and 1 patient had dural dehiscence. After surgical debridement, all 5 patients were treated with the direct application of a VAC device to a reapproximated dura mater (1 patient), to a pericranial flap (1 patient), or to a regenerative tissue matrix overlying CNS tissue (3 patients). In all cases involving open cranial wounds, the VAC device promoted granulation tissue formation over the dural substitute, prevented CSF leakage, and kept the wounds free from local infection. The duration of VAC therapy ranged from 16 to 91 days. Although VAC therapy was intended as a temporary measure until these patients could be stabilized for larger tissue transfer procedures or they succumbed to their primary pathology, 1 patient had a successful skin graft following VAC therapy. Hydrocephalus requiring shunt placement developed in 2 patients during VAC therapy. The VAC dressings applied to a tissue matrix or other barrier over brain tissue in extensive cranial wounds are safe and well tolerated, providing a functional barrier and preventing infection.

Not many people know the potential of Muaragembong Sub-District, Bekasi, West Java. The skills to process pidada mangroves, in particular, should be introduced to the people who also live in areas with the same mangrove forest wealth as Muaragembong. The purpose of this activity is to design a documentary video about the activities of a coastal woman who produces dodol pidada. The video, which titled "Cara Praktis Produksi Dodol Pidada, Olahan Top Kampung Beting, Desa Pantai Bahagia, Kecamatan Muaragembong, Bekasi, Jawa Barat / Practical Ways of Pidada Dodol Production, Processed Top Kampung Beting, Pantai Bahagia Village, Muaragembong District, Bekasi, West Java" design through the three stages: pre-production, production, and postproduction. This 09.40 video has been tested on thirty respondents via a google form. The results are that this video was considered adequate in terms of sound quality (43.3%), images (43.3%), transitions between images (50%), choice of music (43.3%), and duration (46.7%). This video contains excellent inspirational impressions (33.3%) and good in terms of content (40%), visual (48.3%), and font size (30%). The presence of this video can use a learning media to give skills how to process pidada fruits become dodol pidada easily and safely. In addition, this video is a promotion of the marine tourism potential of Muaragembong, which has been less exposed. No less important, this video is expected to inspire Indonesian women to become strong entrepreneurs.

One of the most in demand research topic in today’s technology world is medical area and cancer is one of them. The second main cause of death in the world is cancer. In 2015 about 8.8 million people have died due to cancer [5]. For the early detection of breast cancer several types of research have been done to start the treatment and increase the survivability. Breast cancer affects the women mentally as well as emotionally. The goal of this challenge is to provide a framework that uses a cancer medical dataset as input and then analyses the dataset to produce findings that help medical experts better understand the state of the disease. The majority of studies concentrate on mammography results. However, incorrect detection in mammography pictures can occasionally result, endangering the patient's health. Cancer that forms in the cells of breast is said to be breast cancer. The cancer should be cured if it is diagnosed in early stage. So, with the help of machine learning algorithm the cancer should be diagnosed early. Most of the women lives are affected by the breast cancer in all over the world. There are two types of tumors that can be found in breast cancer i.e. malignant or benign. If a person is having a cancer disease, then it will be categorized as malignant otherwise it is known as benign. In 2020, 685000 deaths and 2.3 million women diagnosed with breast cancer globally, somewhere in world in every 14 seconds, a woman is diagnosed with breast cancer [1]. Patient life from the breast cancer can be saved only if it is found in early stage; if it is diagnosed later then the chances of survival are less. If the cancer is diagnosed early then the patient will get a better treatment. This study will concentrate on a few machine learning methods for identifying if a breast cancer is malignant or benign. The Wisconsin Breast Cancer Dataset, which was acquired via Kaggle, was used in this study. Our goal is to evaluate how accurately various machine learning algorithms can detect breast cancer. These include Random Forest Classifier, Decision Tree Classifier, Support Vector Machine, and K-Nearest Neighbors. All the experiments are conducted on a Jupiter platform. After the analyzing the accuracy of each algorithm the most suitable one is Support Vector Machine that gives the better accuracy among all i.e., 98%.

Introduction and Objective Cardiac pacemakers and Implantable Cardioverter-Defibrillators (ICD) are devices used to treat a range of cardiac dysrhythmias. Symptomatic cardiac perforation may occur in as many as 4.2% of pacemaker or ICD placements with 1.2% of pacemaker or ICD placements leading to clinically significant pericardial effusion. Acute onset of symptoms within 24 hours of device placement due to cardiac perforation is particularly rare, with a paucity of reported cases. This report describes a case of bedside Emergency Department (ED) ultrasound identifying an acute onset of pericardial effusion following cardiac pacemaker placement in an 85-year-old woman who experienced pleuritic and oscillating chest pain. Case Presentation An 85-year-old woman with a past medical history of hypertension, diabetes and dual-chamber pacemaker placement two days ago presented to the ED with pleuritic and oscillating chest pain. Initial bedside Point of Care Ultrasound (POCUS) exam, performed by the emergency department attending, revealed a moderate pericardial effusion with evidence of a pacemaker lead perforation through the right ventricular myocardium. Lead perforation and effusion were confirmed via formal transthoracic echocardiogram. Minutes later, the patient was treated with a right ventricle lead repositioning procedure and recovered uneventfully. Conclusion Symptomatic cardiac perforation due to pacemaker or ICD placement is rare, with a range of potential complications which typically occur weeks to months after placement. This case demonstrates the utility of POCUS exam for patients presenting to the ED for non-specific chest pain as it facilitated the timely diagnosis of an atypical presentation of ICD-induced wall perforation.

The Australian species of the water beetle genus Hydraena Kugelann, 1794, are revised, based on the study of 7,654 specimens. The 29 previously named species are redescribed, and 56 new species are described. The species are placed in 24 species groups. High resolution digital images of all primary types are presented (online version in color), and geographic distributions are mapped. Male genitalia, representative female terminal abdominal segments and representative spermathecae are illustrated. Australian Hydraena are typically found in sandy/gravelly stream margins, often in association with streamside litter; some species are primarily pond dwelling, a few species are humicolous, and one species may be subterranean. The areas of endemicity and species richness coincide quite closely with the Bassian, Torresian, and Timorian biogeographic subregions. Eleven species are shared between the Bassian and Torresian subregions, and twelve are shared between the Torresian and Timorian subregions. Only one species, H. impercepta Zwick, is known to be found in both Australia and Papua New Guinea. One Australian species, H. ambiflagellata, is also known from New Zealand. New species of Hydraena are: H. affirmata (Queensland, Palmerston National Park, Learmouth Creek), H. ambiosina (Queensland, 7 km NE of Tolga), H. antaria (New South Wales, Bruxner Flora Reserve), H. appetita (New South Wales, 14 km W Delagate), H. arcta (Western Australia, Synnot Creek), H. ascensa (Queensland, Rocky Creek, Kennedy Hwy.), H. athertonica (Queensland, Davies Creek), H. australula (Western Australia, Synnot Creek), H. bidefensa (New South Wales, Bruxner Flora Reserve), H. biimpressa (Queensland, 19.5 km ESE Mareeba), H. capacis (New South Wales, Unumgar State Forest, near Grevillia), H. capetribensis (Queensland, Cape Tribulation area), H. converga (Northern Territory, Roderick Creek, Gregory National Park), H. cubista (Western Australia, Mining Camp, Mitchell Plateau), H. cultrata (New South Wales, Bruxner Flora Reserve), H. cunninghamensis (Queensland, Main Range National Park, Cunningham's Gap, Gap Creek), H. darwini (Northern Territory, Darwin), H. deliquesca (Queensland, 5 km E Wallaman Falls), H. disparamera (Queensland, Cape Hillsborough), H. dorrigoensis (New South Wales, Dorrigo National Park, Rosewood Creek, upstream from Coachwood Falls), H. ferethula (Northern Territory, Cooper Creek, 19 km E by S of Mt. Borradaile), H. finniganensis (Queensland, Gap Creek, 5 km ESE Mt. Finnigan), H. forticollis (Western Australia, 4 km W of King Cascade), H. fundaequalis (Victoria, Simpson Creek, 12 km SW Orbost), H. fundata (Queensland, Hann Tableland, 13 km WNW Mareeba), H. hypipamee (Queensland, Mt. Hypipamee National Park, 14 km SW Malanda), H. inancala (Queensland, Girraween National Park, Bald Rock Creek at "Under-ground Creek"), H. innuda (Western Australia, Mitchell Plateau, 16 mi. N Amax Camp), H. intraangulata (Queensland, Leo Creek Mine, McIlwrath Range, E of Coen), H. invicta (New South Wales, Sydney), H. kakadu (Northern Territory, Kakadu National Park, Gubara), H. larsoni (Queensland, Windsor Tablelands), H. latisoror (Queensland, Lamington National Park, stream at head of Moran's Falls), H. luminicollis (Queensland, Lamington National Park, stream at head of Moran's Falls), H. metzeni (Queensland, 15 km NE Mareeba), H. millerorum (Victoria, Traralgon Creek, 0.2 km N 'Hogg Bridge', 5.0 km NNW Balook), H. miniretia (Queensland, Mt. Hypipamee National Park, 14 km SW Malanda), H. mitchellensis (Western Australia, 4 km SbyW Mining Camp, Mitchell Plateau), H. monteithi (Queensland, Thornton Peak, 11 km NE Daintree), H. parciplumea (Northern Territory, McArthur River, 80 km SW of Borroloola), H. porchi (Victoria, Kangaroo Creek on Springhill Rd., 5.8 km E Glenlyon), H. pugillista (Queensland, 7 km N Mt. Spurgeon), H. queenslandica (Queensland, Laceys Creek, 10 km SE El Arish), H. reticuloides (Queensland, 3 km ENE of Mt. Tozer), H. reticulositis (Western Australia, Mining Camp, Mitchell Plateau), H. revelovela (Northern Territory, Kakadu National Park, GungurulLookout), H. spinissima (Queensland, Main Range National Park, Cunningham's Gap, Gap Creek), H. storeyi (Queensland, Cow Bay, N of Daintree River), H. tenuisella (Queensland, 3 km W of Batavia Downs), H. tenuisoror (Australian Capital Territory, Wombat Creek, 6 km NE of Piccadilly Circus), H. textila (Queensland, Laceys Creek, 10 km SE El Arish), H. tridisca (Queensland, Mt. Hemmant), H. triloba (Queensland, Mulgrave River, Goldsborough Road Crossing), H. wattsi (Northern Territory, Holmes Jungle, 11 km NE by E of Darwin), H. weiri (Western Australia, 14 km SbyE Kalumburu Mission), H. zwicki (Queensland, Clacherty Road, via Julatten).

IntroductionWhen she divorced, Cheryl Strayed chose for herself an entirely new surname. In Wild: A Journey from Lost to Found, the memoir she wrote and published in 2012 about hiking 1,100 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) from the Mojave Desert to the Oregon-Washington border, she recalls looking up the definition of the word “strayed”, and how its meaning resonated for her. “I had diverged, digressed, wandered, and become wild”, Strayed writes. “Even in my darkest days—those very days in which I was naming myself—I saw the power of the darkness. Saw that, in fact, I had strayed and that I was a stray and that from the wild places my straying had brought me, I knew things I couldn’t have known before” (97).From the outset of her memoir, Strayed links the notion of wildness with movement, suggesting that “becom[ing] wild” only came about for her when she moved away from—and I would suggest here deliberately rejected—a sedentary role in her life. That is, when she became a peripatetic walker: someone “travelling from place to place, in particular working or based in various places for relatively short periods” (Oxford English Dictionary online). In this article, I discuss Strayed’s memoir Wild as an example of radical wandering. I argue that Strayed subverts the figure of the adventuring explorer in nature—who we usually think of as male—by using the idea of “dark peripatetic walking” whereby the dark peripatetic walker transgresses by going against, or existing outside of, society’s norms, walking “perhaps out of life itself” (Adams 196). Strayed walks the PCT out of desperation and grief after her mother dies and her marriage ends. While Paul Adams interprets dark peripatetic walking as a dire act, in this article I offer a reading of this impulse to wander away from as empowering: a radical “return to the self” only made possible by solitude (Barbour 201-202). My reading of Strayed’s walking as dark peripatetic offers a framework for understanding women’s walking in the wild; how, in wandering away from society’s norms, and in seeking solitude and being self-sufficient, the female walker rejects what society expects of women in the wild and finds empowerment in the transgressive act of existing in a male-dominated terrain: in this case, the literal one of the PCT, and the generic one that comprises memoirs about journeys in nature.Dark Peripatetic Walking as Radical Wandering A rich history of walking exists throughout the last few centuries, from Charles Baudelaire’s flâneur strolling the streets of Paris, to psychogeography and Guy Debord’s theory of the dérive, to pilgrimages throughout the ages. However, much of this walking was conducted in primarily urban spaces—and flânerie, in particular, excluded women both culturally and linguistically. Dark peripatetic walking is also associated with the urban rather than nature, but I want to take it out into wild landscapes. Adams describes two kinds of walking that Western society practises: “light peripatetic” and “dark peripatetic”. Light peripatetic is associated with solitude, simplicity, and idyll; in short, it connotes a Romantic strolling (193-194). Adams cites the celebrated nature writer Henry David Thoreau’s essay “Walking” as an example of light peripatetic, in which, for Thoreau, walking is an essential, routine part of each day. Dark peripatetic is a more ominous form of walking. Adams writes that “the dark peripatetic motif signals that the bonds of society have been torn, or a character’s identity is beginning to dissolve, or both” (196). The dark peripatetic walker is seen to walk “out of doors, out of society, out of community, out of normal reality, and perhaps even out of life itself” (196). Adams associates dark peripatetic with walking in urban spaces, driven by a sense of leaving, or being forced to leave, society.Extending Adams’s concept of the dark peripatetic, we might follow the dark peripatetic walker away from an urban setting and into the wilderness. Here we find Strayed. By the time she sets out to embark on the PCT, she has transgressed a number of social norms that have taken her to the edge of society and her existence: she has been unfaithful in her marriage, which has now fallen apart; she regularly takes drugs (though does not consider herself an addict); she is struggling with depression after the death of her mother; she is emotionally isolated as significant relationships with her family and wider networks have collapsed, and she has almost no money and no plans for the immediate future. We can see in Strayed a figure poised at the edge of what could be conceived as the limit of what is bearable. Strayed’s solution is to walk away from her broken life and into solitude and nature. The impulse of dark peripatetic is away from; the dark peripatetic walker transgresses by going against, or existing outside of society’s norms, walking “perhaps out of life itself” (Adams 196). However, while Strayed’s sense of identity, and her connections with society, have come to feel tenuous, I do not insinuate that she sees hiking the PCT as an act that leads her away from life and into death. While her reasoning for embarking on the hike comes from a place of desperation, it is not a desperate act; while Strayed is unprepared for the rigours of the hike, her inexperience does not equal failure. While Adams interprets dark peripatetic walking as dire, it is possible also to interpret this impulse to walk away from as radical and empowering—particularly for women walking away from societal norms and gendered constrictions that say women should not be, nor want to be, in the wild. Woman in the WildWhen we think about “wildness”, notions of the unfamiliar are evoked; the uncomfortable, the frightening, and the physically arduous. But wildness can also evoke the empowering. For Thoreau, the word “wild” was “the past participle of to will, self-willed” (cited in Turner 111). Carol Black elaborates on this idea, describing Thoreau’s wild as “that which lives out of its own intrinsic nature rather than bowing to some extrinsic force” (Black). Understood like this, to be wild is ultimately to embody your intrinsic essence. Of course, the discussion of an “intrinsic essence”, or, implicitly, one of a woman’s, is complicated territory: as the feminist scholar Donna Haraway writes, “there is not even such a state as ‘being’ female, itself a highly complex category constructed in contested sexual scientific discourses and other social practices” (155). There is a long association between women and nature as the ecofeminist scholar Carolyn Merchant discusses in her important book The Death of Nature, with both being dominated by science and men, and both being conflated as the “nurturing mother” (xx). The association between men and nature, however, is interestingly fluid, as the ecocritic Astrid Bracke points out: “‘male’ can be seen as both culture, and nature: culture, when ‘wild’, ‘natural’ women have to be civilized, nature when it comes to drawing a contrast to the domestic sphere of the home, the place of women and children” (“Macho Nature”). The discussion of the essence of a human being is complex and potentially fraught, and would require another article to do it justice, so what I want to focus on here is the idea of wildness as being, or returning to, a sense of selfhood that may have been forgotten. I focus here on how Strayed experiences self and wildness through the act of walking in solitude, and what this means for narratives of being in the wild. The ability to inhabit, explore freely, and stake claims on wild places has often been the business of men in history and male characters in literature. For instance, Tanya Kam argues that women who hike alone are more likely to be asked what compelled them to do so, whereas this legitimisation is not required when a man does the same thing (365). She suggests that adventures in the wild are often perceived in Western society as a “rite of masculinity” (365) where the male explorer sets out to conquer “rugged, natural terrain” (353). For Kam, this stems from the concept of “frontier masculinity”, which, she writes, “depends on romanticised conceptions of the wilderness, rugged self-sufficiency, courage, masculine physical strength, autonomous individualism, and the active subordination of nature” (353). This masculine explorer trope impedes the fact that women have always been present in nature and wilderness. Sarah McFarland calls for “the reconstruction of the concept of nature itself” (45), which she argues women’s nature writing can bring about, in a way that will “integrat[e] the interests of actual women into an actual wilderness” (45). Memoirs such as Tracks (1980) by Robyn Davidson, Woman in the Wilderness (2018) by Miriam Lancewood, Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube (2016) by Blair Braverman, and even The Word for Woman Is Wilderness by Abi Andrews (2018), which is not a memoir but a novel that reads like one, are a suite of texts that I think would interest McFarland, who proposes that by disrupting the notion of the solitary male “questing hero” (37), women-authored texts about being in nature refute “the myth of a womanless wilderness” (38). Strayed, with Wild, joins the lineage of women writers who do this.One strategy that Strayed uses to refute this myth, and provide an alternative to the male explorer, is to embody some of the tropes of this figure in her narration of hiking the PCT. The criteria by which Kam defines this masculine explorer are evident, in most instances, in Strayed’s narrator in Wild. During the three months that she spends hiking the PCT, she is forced to become self-sufficient; she finds courage in the face of extreme hardship; her physical strength develops, and she becomes comfortable in her autonomy. Strayed consistently highlights the gender of her body in this narration: her overweight pack “Monster” is a constant struggle for her smaller physique; she pushes herself physically so male hikers don’t overtake her; she lists the condoms and natural sea sponge she packs, anticipating occasions of physical intimacy and attending to the practicality of menstruating while on the trail. She notes, as the weeks pass, the way her hair grows straw-like from exposure to the weather, and how the developing muscles in her legs “rippl[e] beneath [her] thinning flesh in ways they never had” (190). Patches of skin on her hips and tailbone bleed and scab over from her pack chafing (190). Strayed’s walking, and how she foregrounds the femininity of her body, disrupts the idea that the wilderness is not a place for a woman’s body.However, it is important that the narrator does not seek to subordinate nature—a key aspect of Kam’s “frontier masculinity”. Embodying some, but not all, of the masculine explorer’s traits, as a female narrator-protagonist, Strayed engages with, but ultimately resists, conforming to this tradition, subverting the dominant picture of the masculine explorer in wild places. This is not to say that Strayed refrains from engaging in adversarial encounters with nature; she feels triumphant after successfully navigating snow-covered parts of the trail, and loudly blows her whistle to scare away wildlife. Strayed’s gender is key here: with this strategy, Strayed claims her place as a woman in masculine territory, but in doing so she is more concerned with reflecting on her inner life than in asserting herself over the land that she traverses. In a statement against patriarchal and colonial conceptions of “the wilderness” as empty space to be claimed (via literally claiming land, or by inscribing a romantic narrative upon it), Strayed finds her place in the landscape without owning it. She writes about being in nature, but is ultimately more occupied with being in herself.Witnessing the SelfIf the need to assert himself over nature drives the male adventurer, as Kam suggests, we might read in Wild’s female adventurer an antithesis to this impulse: the act of witness. In a moment of revelation, the narrator realises what it is that drove her, and others before her, to hike the PCT:It had only to do with how it felt to be in the wild. With what it was like to walk for miles for no reason other than to witness the accumulation of trees and meadows, mountains and deserts, streams and rocks, rivers and grasses, sunrises and sunsets. The experience was powerful and fundamental. It seemed to me that it had always felt like this to be a human in the wild, and as long as the wild existed it would always feel this way. (207)Strayed’s language choices are significant here. In walking through the landscape features that she names in the above passage, she is witnessing place. Witnessing connotes viewing, but not acting upon. We might also surmise, however, that she is witnessing herself located in these places. Strayed uses the phrase “how it felt to be” to describe the essence of her experience in the wild—again, “felt” could refer to tactile experience in the landscape, or a sense of wildness in her identity that manifested through being in that landscape.On the trail, Strayed also discovers that she is comfortable alone. In a passage that is deceptively short, Strayed makes a remarkable comment on solitude as a transgressive and transformative state for a woman to seek out and ultimately feel at home in: Alone had always felt like an actual place to me, as if it weren’t a state of being, but rather a room where I could retreat to be who I really was. The radical aloneness of the PCT had altered that sense. Alone wasn’t a room anymore, but the whole wide world, and now I was alone in that world, occupying it in a way I never had before. (119, emphasis mine)There are two important points in this passage: the first is that Strayed feels most herself when she is alone, and the second that her understanding of aloneness has shifted. Reading Strayed’s walking as dark peripatetic allows us to see the act of walking as a radical “return to the self”. John Barbour, from whom I have borrowed this phrase, explains that “solitude … is not oriented toward escaping the world, but toward a different kind of participation in it, as made possible by the disengagement from ordinary social interactions. Solitude is a return to the self” (201-202). Kam discusses how Barbour’s “return to the self” (201-202) occurs when the subject is freed from the various social and domestic responsibilities by which they would normally be bound. She speculates that isolation, or solitude, is generally discouraged in the individual as it endangers the functionality of society. This criticism seems particularly relevant in relation to women, as it highlights their roles as home-makers in a patriarchal society. Hiking alone, Strayed finds that her participation in the world has changed—and it is through her solitary experience that this occurs. There is a safety, a self-containment, in Strayed’s solitude—which counters the narrative that for women, in particular, the wilderness contains danger and threat. As Kam points out, it is not wild animals that present the greatest threat to Strayed; it is a pair of male hunters who encounter her campsite on one occasion (Kam 363).Claiming autonomy and seeking out solitude, as Strayed does in Wild, suggests an experience of wildness that resonates with Thoreau’s understanding of it as “self-willedness” (Turner 111). After reading Wild, the phrase “radical self-containment” seems to me to describe the phenomenon of the particular kind of wildness enabled by walking; the autonomy found in solitude; and in existing beyond the reach of extrinsic forces that would normally affect one’s life. In this experience of wildness, walking, the natural world, and solitude are entwined and essential to the other: wildness is both an embodied and internal experience. ConclusionWild asks us to think about what we make of women venturing into the wild, and the role that walking plays in this. Reading Strayed’s walking in Wild as dark peripatetic suggests a framework for understanding women’s walking in the wild; how, in seeking and discovering that she is at home in solitude, the female walker rejects what society expects of women. Women are not, culturally speaking, encouraged to seek out either solitude or wild places. As nature writing has historically suggested, wild terrain is male terrain. Strayed subverts the figure of the adventuring explorer in nature with her walking by foregrounding the lived experiences of her female body, rejecting society’s role for her, and finding that she is at home in solitude. But most importantly, she does so by shifting the gaze of the walker that we encounter in much male-authored nature literature: rather than looking outward with the intention of conquering, dominating, or claiming landscape, she looks inwards, witnessing the changes in self that walking in remote, wild landscapes enables, and in doing so, gives us another narrative for contemporary journeys in the wild.ReferencesAdams, Paul C. “Peripatetic Imagery and Peripatetic Sense of Place.” Textures of Place: Exploring Humanist Geographies. Eds. Paul C. Adams, Steven Hoelscher, and Karen E. Till. Minnesota: U of Minnesota P, 2001.Andrews, Abi. The Word for Woman Is Wilderness. London: Profile Books, 2018.Barbour, John D. The Value of Solitude: The Ethics and Spirituality of Aloneness in Autobiography. Charlottesville: U of Virginia P, 2004.Black, Carol. “On the Wildness of Children: The Revolution Will Not Take Place in the Classroom.” Carolblack.org, Apr. 2016. 27 May 2019 <https://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/on-the-wildness-of-children/>.Bracke, Astrid. “Macho Nature? Or, Gender in New Nature Writing Part I.” Astridbracke.com, 19 Feb. 2013. Braverman, Blair. Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube: Chasing Fear and Finding Home in the Great White North. New York: HarperCollins, 2016.Davidson, Robyn. Tracks. 1980. London: Bloomsbury, 2017.Haraway, Donna. “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late 20th Century.” In Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge, 1991.Kam, Tanya Y. “Forests of the Self: Life Writing and ‘Wild’ Wanderings.” Life Writing 13.3 (2016): 351-371. 22 Apr. 2019 <https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14484528.2016.1086290>.Lancewood, Miriam. Woman in the Wilderness: A Story of Survival, Love and Self-Discovery in New Zealand. New Zealand: Allen & Unwin. 2017.McFarland, Sarah E. “Wild Women: Literary Explorations of American Landscapes.” Ed. Barbara J. Cook. Women Writing Nature: A Feminist View. Plymouth: Lexington Books, 2008.Merchant, Carolyn. The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution. New York: HarperCollins, 1983.“Peripatetic.” Oxford English Dictionary. Lexico, 2019. <https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/peripatetic>.Strayed, Cheryl. Wild: A Journey from Lost to Found. Rev. ed. London: Atlantic Books, 2013.Turner, Jack. The Abstract Wild. Tucson: U of Arizona P, 1996.

IntroductionThe horror film Hush (2016) has attracted attention since its release due to the uniqueness of its central character—a deaf–mute author who lives in a world of silence. Maddie Young (Kate Siegel) moves into a remote cabin in the woods to recover from a breakup and finish her new novel. Aside from a cat, she is alone in the house, only engaging with loved ones via online messaging or video chats during which she uses American Sign Language (ASL). Maddie cannot hear nor speak, so writing is her primary mode of creative expression, and a key source of information for the audience. This article explores both the presence and absence of text in Hush, examining how textual “captions” of various kinds are both provided and withheld at key moments. As an author, Maddie battles the limits of written language as she struggles with writer’s block. As a person, she fights the limits of silence and isolation as a brutal killer invades her retreat. Accordingly, this article examines how the interplay between silence, text, and sound invites viewers to identify with the heroine’s experience and ultimate triumph.Hush is best described as a slasher—a horror film in which a single (usually male) killer stalks and kills a series of victims with relentless determination (Clover, Men, Women). Slashers are about close, visceral killing—blood and the hard stab of the knife. With her big brown eyes and gentle presence, quiet, deaf Maddie is clearly framed as a lamb to slaughter in the opening scenes. Indeed, throughout Hush, Maddie’s lack of hearing is leveraged to increase suspense and horror. The classic pantomime cry of “He’s behind you!” is taken to dark extremes as the audience watches a nameless man (John Gallagher Jr.) stalk the writer in her isolated house. She is unable to hear him enter the building, unable to sense him looming behind her. Neither does she hear him killing her friend outside on the porch, banging her body loudly against the French doors.And yet, despite her vulnerability, she rises to the challenge. Fighting back against her attacker using a variety of multisensory strategies, Maddie assumes the role of the “Final Girl” in this narrative. As Carol Clover has explained, the Final Girl is a key trope of slasher films, forming part of their essential structure. While others in the film are killed, “she alone looks death in the face; but she alone also finds the strength either to stay the killer long enough to be rescued (ending A) or to kill him herself (ending B)” (Clover, Her Body, Himself). However, reviews and discussions of Hush typically frame Maddie as a Final Girl with a difference. Adding disability into the equation is seen as “revolutionising” the trope (Sheppard) and “updating the Final Girl theory” for a new age (Laird). Indeed, the film presents its Final Girl as simultaneously deaf and powerful—a twist that potentially challenges the dynamics of the slasher and representations of disability more generally.My Weakness, My StrengthThe opening sequence of Hush introduces Maddie’s deafness through the use of sound, silence, and text. Following an establishing shot sweeping over the dark forest and down to her solitary cottage, the film opens to warm domesticity. Close-ups of onion, eggs, and garlic being prepared are accompanied by clear, crisp sounds of crackling, bubbling, slicing, and frying. The camera zooms out to focus on Maddie, busy at her culinary tasks. All noises begin to fade. The camera focuses on Maddie’s ear as audio is eliminated, replaced by silence. As she continues to cook, the audience experiences her world—a world devoid of sound. These initial moments also highlight the importance of digital communication technologies. Maddie moves smoothly between devices, switching from laptop computer to iPhone while sharing instant messages with a friend. Close-ups of these on-screen conversations provide viewers with additional narrative information, operating as an alternate form of captioning from within the diegesis. Snippets of text from other sources are likewise shown in passing, such as the author’s blurb on the jacket of her previous novel. The camera lingers on this book, allowing viewers to read that Maddie suffered hearing loss and vocal paralysis after contracting bacterial meningitis at 13 years old. Traditional closed captioning or subtitles are thus avoided in favour of less intrusive forms of expositional text that are integrated within the plot.While hearing characters, such as her neighbour and sister, use SimCom (simultaneous communication or sign supported speech) to communicate with her, Maddie signs in silence. Because the filmmakers have elected not to provide captions for her signs in these moments, a—typically non-ASL speaking—hearing audience will inevitably experience disruptions in comprehension and Maddie’s conversations can therefore only be partially understood. This allows for an interesting role reversal for viewers. As Katherine A. Jankowski (32) points out, deaf and hard of hearing audiences have long expressed dissatisfaction with accessing the spoken word on television and film due to a lack of closed captioning. Despite the increasing technological ease of captioning digital media in the 21st century, this barrier to accessibility continues to be an ongoing issue (Ellis and Kent). The hearing community do not share this frustrating background—television programs that include ASL are captioned to ensure hearing viewers can follow the story (see for example Beth Haller’s article on Switched at Birth in this special issue). Hush therefore inverts this dynamic by presenting ASL without captions. Whereas silence is used to draw hearing viewers into Maddie’s experience, her periodic use of ASL pushes them out again. This creates a push–pull dynamic, whereby the hearing audience identify with Maddie and empathise with the losses associated with being deaf and mute, but also realise that, as a result, she has developed additional skills that are beyond their ken.It is worth noting at this point that Maddie is not the first Final Girl with a disability. In the 1967 thriller Wait until Dark, for instance, Audrey Hepburn plays Susy Hendrix, a blind woman trapped in her home by three crooks. Martin F. Norden suggests that this film represented a “step forward” in cinematic representations of disability because its heroine is not simply an innocent victim, but “tough, resilient, and resourceful in her fight against the criminals who have misrepresented themselves to her and have broken into her apartment” (228). Susy’s blindness, at first presented as a source of vulnerability and frustration, becomes her strength in the film’s climax. Bashing out all the lights in the apartment, she forces the men to fight on her terms, in darkness, where she holds the upper hand. In a classic example of Final Girl tenacity, Susy stabs the last of them to death before help arrives. Maddie likewise uses her disability as a tactical advantage. An enhanced sense of touch allows her to detect the killer when he sneaks up behind her as she feels the lightest flutter upon the hairs of her neck. She also wields a blaring fire alarm as a weapon, deafening and disorienting her attacker, causing him to drop his knife.The similarities between these films are not coincidental. During an interview, director Mike Flanagan (who co-wrote Hush with wife Siegel) stated that they were directly informed by Wait until Dark. When asked about the choice to make Maddie’s character deaf, he explained that “it kind of happened because Kate and I were out to dinner and we were talking about movies we liked. One of the ones that we stumbled on that we both really liked was Wait Until Dark” (cited in Thurman). In the earlier film, director Terence Young used darkness to blind the audience—at times the screen is completely black and viewers must listen carefully to work out what is happening. Likewise, Flanagan and Siegel use silence to effectively deafen the audience at crucial moments. The viewers are therefore forced to experience the action as the heroines do.You’re Gonna Die Screaming But You Won’t Be HeardHorror films often depend upon sound design for impact—the most mundane visuals can be made frightening by the addition of a particular noise, effect, or tune. Therefore, in the context of the slasher genre, one of the most unique aspects of Hush is the absence of the Final Girl’s vocalisation. A mute heroine is deprived of the most basic expressive tool in the horror handbook—a good scream. “What really won me over,” comments one reviewer, “was the fact that this particular ‘final girl’ isn’t physically able to whinge or scream when in pain–something that really isn’t the norm in slasher/home invasion movies” (Gorman). Yet silence also plays an important part in this genre, “when the wind stops or the footfalls cease, death is near” (Whittington 183). Indeed, Hush’s tagline is “silence can be killer.”The arrival of the killer triggers a deep kind of silence in this particular film, because alternative captions, text, and other communicative techniques (including ASL) cease to be used or useful when the man begins terrorising Maddie. This is not entirely surprising, as the abject failure of technology is a familiar trope in slasher films. As Clover explains, “the emotional terrain of the slasher film is pretechnological” (Her Body, Himself, 198). In Hush, however, the focus on text in this context is notable. There is a sense that written modes of communication are unreliable when it counts. The killer steals her phone, and cuts electricity and Internet access to the house. She attempts to use the neighbours’ Wi-Fi via her laptop, but does not know the password. Quick thinking Maddie even scrawls backwards messages on her windows, “WON’T TELL. DIDN’T SEE FACE,” she writes in lipstick, “BOYFRIEND COMING HOME.” In response, the killer simply removes his mask, “You’ve seen it now” he says. They both know there is no boyfriend. The written word has shifted from being central to Maddie’s life, to largely irrelevant. Text cannot save her. It is only by using other strategies (and senses) that Maddie empowers herself to survive.Maddie’s struggles to communicate and take control are integral to the film’s unfolding narrative, and co-writer Siegel notes this was a conscious theme: “A lot of this movie is … a metaphor for feeling unheard. It’s a movie about asserting yourself and of course as a female writer I brought a lot to that.” In their reflection on the limits of both verbal and written communication, the writers of Hush owe a debt to another source of inspiration—Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer television series. Season four, episode ten, also called Hush, was first aired on 14 December 1999 and features a critically acclaimed storyline in which the characters all lose their ability to speak. Voices from all over Sunnydale are stolen by monstrous fairytale figures called The Gentlemen, who use the silence to cut fresh hearts from living victims. Their appearance is heralded by a morbid rhyme:Can’t even shout, can’t even cry The Gentlemen are coming by. Looking in windows, knocking on doors, They need to take seven and they might take yours. Can’t call to mom, can’t say a word, You’re gonna die screaming but you won’t be heard.The theme of being “unheard” is clearly felt in this episode. Buffy and co attempt a variety of methods to compensate for their lost voices, such as hanging message boards around their necks, using basic text-to-voice computer software, and drawing on overhead projector slides. These tools essentially provide the captions for a story unfolding in silence, as no subtitles are provided. As it turns out, in many ways the friends’ non-verbal communication is more effective than their spoken words. Patrick Shade argues that the episode:celebrates the limits and virtues of both the nonverbal and the verbal. … We tend to be most readily aware of verbal means … but “Hush” stresses that we are embodied creatures whose communication consists in more than the spoken word. It reminds us that we have multiple resources we regularly employ in communicating.In a similar way, the film Hush emphasises alternative modes of expression through the device of the mute Final Girl, who must use all of her sensory and intellectual resources to survive. The evening begins with Maddie at leisure, unable to decide how to end her fictional novel. By the finale she is clarity incarnate. She assesses each real-life scene proactively and “writes” the end of the film on her own terms, showing that there is only one way to survive the night—she must fight.Deaf GainIn his discussion of disability and cinema, Norden explains that the majority of films position disabled people as outsiders and “others” because “filmmakers photograph and edit their work to reflect an able-bodied point of view” (1). The very apparatus of mainstream film, he argues, is designed to embody able-bodied experiences and encourage audience identification with able-bodied characters. He argues this bias results in disabled characters positioned as “objects of spectacle” to be pitied, feared or scorned by viewers. In Hush, however, the audience is consistently encouraged to identify with Maddie. As she fights for her life in the final scenes, sound fades away and the camera assumes a first-person perspective. The man is above, choking her on the floor, and we look up at him through her eyes. As Maddie’s groping hand finds a corkscrew and jabs the spike into his neck, we watch his death through her eyes too. The film thus assists viewers to apprehend Maddie’s strength intimately, rather than framing her as a spectacle or distanced “other” to be pitied.Importantly, it is this very core of perceived vulnerability, yet ultimate strength, that gives Maddie the edge over her attacker in the end. In this way, Maddie’s disabilities are not solely represented as a space of limitation or difference, but a potential wellspring of power. Hence the film supports, to some degree, the move to seeing deafness as gain, rather than loss:Deafness has long been viewed as a hearing loss—an absence, a void, a lack. It is virtually impossible to think of deafness without thinking of loss. And yet Deaf people do not often consider their lives to be defined by loss. Rather, there is something present in the lives of Deaf people, something full and complete. (Bauman and Murray, 3)As Bauman and Murray explain, the shift from “hearing loss” to “deaf gain” involves focusing on what is advantageous and unique about the deaf experience. They use the example of the Swiss national snowboarding team, who hired a deaf coach to boost their performance. The coach noticed they were depending too much on sound and used earplugs to teach a multi-sensory approach, “the earplugs forced them to learn to depend on the feel of the snow beneath their boards [and] the snowboarder’s performance improved markedly” (6). This idea that removing sound strengthens other senses is a thread that runs throughout Hush. For example, it is the loss of hearing and speech that are credited with inspiring Maddie’s successful writing career and innovative literary “voice”.Lennard J. Davis warns that framing people as heroic or empowered as a result of their disabilities can feed counterproductive stereotypes and perpetuate oppressive systems. “Privileging the inherent powers of the deaf or the blind is a form of patronizing,” he argues, because it traps such individuals within the concept of innate difference (106). Disparities between able and disabled people are easier to justify when disabled characters are presented as intrinsically “special” or “noble,” as this suggests inevitable divergence, rather than structural inequality. While this is something to keep in mind, Hush skirts the issue by presenting Maddie as a flawed, realistic character. She does not possess superpowers; she makes mistakes and gets injured. In short, she is a fallible human using what resources she has to the best of her abilities. As such, she represents a holistic vision of a disabled heroine rather than an overly glorified stereotype.ConclusionHush is a film about the limits of text, the gaps where language is impossible or insufficient, and the struggle to be heard as a woman with disabilities. It is a film about the difficulties surrounding both verbal and written communication, and our dependence upon them. The absence of closed captions or subtitles, combined with the use of alternative “captioning”—in the form of instant messaging, for instance—grounds the narrative in lived space, rather than providing easy extra-textual solutions. It also poses a challenge to a hearing audience, to cross the border of “otherness” and identify with a deaf heroine.Returning to the discussion of the Final Girl characterisation, Clover argues that this is a gendered device combining both traditionally feminine and masculine characteristics. The fluidity of the Final Girl is constant, “even during that final struggle she is now weak and now strong, now flees the killer and now charges him, now stabs and is stabbed, now cries out in fear and now shouts in anger” (Her Body, Himself, 221). Men viewing slasher films identify with the Final Girl’s “masculine” traits, and in the process find themselves looking through the eyes of a woman. In using a deaf character, Hush suggests that an evolution of this dynamic might also occur along the dis/abled boundary line. Maddie is a powerful survivor who shifts between weak and strong, frightened and fierce, but also between disabled and able. This portrayal encourages the audience to identify with her empowered traits and in the process look through the eyes of a disabled woman. Therefore, while slashers—and horror films in general—are not traditionally associated with progressive representations of disabilities, this evolution of the Final Girl may provide a fruitful topic of both research and filmmaking in the future.ReferencesBauman, Dirksen, and Joseph J. Murray. “Reframing: From Hearing Loss to Deaf Gain.” Trans. Fallon Brizendine and Emily Schenker. Deaf Studies Digital Journal 1 (2009): 1–10. <http://dsdj.gallaudet.edu/assets/section/section2/entry19/DSDJ_entry19.pdf>.Clover, Carol J. Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film. New Jersey: Princeton UP, 1992.———. “Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film.” Representations 20 (1987): 187–228.Davis, Lennard J. Enforcing Normalcy: Disability, Deafness, and the Body. London: Verso, 1995.Ellis, Katie, and Mike Kent. Disability and New Media. New York: Routledge, 2011.Gorman, H. “Hush: Film Review.” Scream Horror Magazine (2016) <http://www.screamhorrormag.com/hush-film-review/>.Jankowski, Katherine A. Deaf Empowerment: Emergence, Struggle, and Rhetoric. Washington: Gallaudet UP, 1997.Laird, E.E. “Updating the Final Girl Theory.” Medium (2016) <https://medium.com/@TheFilmJournal/updating-the-final-girl-theory-b37ec0b1acf4>.Norden, M.F. Cinema of Isolation: A History of Physical Disability in the Movies. New Jersey: Rutgers UP, 1994.Shade, Patrick. “Screaming to Be Heard: Community and Communication in ‘Hush’.” Slayage 6.1 (2006). <http://www.whedonstudies.tv/uploads/2/6/2/8/26288593/shade_slayage_6.1.pdf>.Sheppard, D. “Hush: Revolutionising the Final Girl.” Eyes on Screen (2016). <https://eyesonscreen.wordpress.com/2016/06/08/hush-revolutionising-the-final-girl/>.Thurman, T. “‘Hush’ Director Mike Flanagan and Actress Kate Siegel on Their New Thriller!” Interview. Bloody Disgusting (2016). <http://bloody-disgusting.com/interviews/3384092/interview-hush-mike-flanagan-kate-siegel/>.Whittington, W. “Horror Sound Design.” A Companion to the Horror Film. Ed. Harry M. Benshoff. Oxford: John Wiley & Sons, 2014: 168–185.

‘Historiographic Metafiction’ (HM) is a literary term first coined by creative writing academic Linda Hutcheon in 1988, and which refers to the postmodern practice of a fiction author inserting imagined--or illegitimate--characters into narratives that are intended to be received as authentic and historically accurate, that is, ostensibly legitimate. Such adventurous and bold authorial strategies frequently result in “novels which are both intensely self-reflexive and yet paradoxically also lay claim to historical events and personages” (Hutcheon, A Poetics 5). They can be so entertaining and engaging that the overtly intertextual, explicitly inventive work of biographical HM can even change the “hegemonic discourse of history” (Nunning 353) for, as Philippa Gregory, the author of HM novel The Other Boleyn Girl (2001), has said regarding this genre of creative writing: “Fiction is about imagined feelings and thoughts. History depends on the outer life. The novel is always about the inner life. Fiction can sometimes do more than history. It can fill the gaps” (University of Sussex). In a way, this article will be filling one of the gaps regarding HM.Forrest Gump (Robert Zemeckis, 1994) is possibly the best known cinematic example of HM, and this film version of the 1986 novel by Winston Groom particularly excels in seamlessly inserting images of a fictional character into verified history, as represented by well-known television newsreel footage. In Zemeckis’s adaptation, gaps were created in the celluloid artefact and filled digitally with images of the actor, Tom Hanks, playing the eponymous role. Words are often deemed less trustworthy than images, however, and fiction is considered particularly unreliable--although there are some exceptions conceded. In addition to Gregory’s novel; Midnight’s Children (1980) by Salman Rushdie; The Name of the Rose (1983) by Umberto Eco; and The Flashman Papers (1969-2005) by George MacDonald Fraser, are three well-known, loved and lauded examples of literary HM, which even if they fail to convince the reader of their bona fides, nevertheless win a place in many hearts. But despite the genre’s popularity, there is nevertheless a conceptual gap in the literary theory of Hutcheon given her (perfectly understandable) inability in 1988 to predict the future of e-publishing. This article will attempt to address that shortcoming by exploring the potential for authors of HM e-novels to use hyperlinks which immediately direct the reader to fact providing webpages such as those available at the website Wikipedia, like a much speedier (and more independent) version of the footnotes in Fraser’s Flashman novels.Of course, as Roland Barthes declared in 1977, “the text is a tissue of quotations drawn from innumerable centres of culture” (146) and, as per any academic work that attempts to contribute to knowledge, a text’s sources--its “quotations”--must be properly identified and acknowledged via checkable references if credibility is to be securely established. Hence, in explaining the way claims to fact in the HM novel can be confirmed by independently published experts on the Internet, this article will also address the problem Hutcheon identifies, in that for many readers the entirety of the HM novel assumes questionable authenticity, that is, the novel’s “meta-fictional self-reflexivity (and intertextuality) renders their claims to historical veracity somewhat problematic, to say the least” ("Historiographic Metafiction: Parody", 3). This article (and the PhD in creative writing I am presently working on at Murdoch University in Perth, Western Australia) will possibly develop the concept of HM to a new level: one at which the Internet-connected reader of the hyperlinked e-novel is made fully (and even instantly) aware of those literary elements of the narrative that are legitimate and factual as distinct from those that are fictional, that is, illegitimate. Furthermore, utilising examples from my own (yet-to-be published) hyperlinked HM e-novel, this article demonstrates that such hyperlinking can add an ironic sub-text to a fictional character’s thoughts and utterances, through highlighting the reality concerning their mistaken or naïve beliefs, thus creating HM narratives that serve an entertainingly complex yet nevertheless truly educational purpose.As a relatively new and under-researched genre of historical writing, HM differs dramatically from the better known style of standard historical or biographical narrative, which typically tends to emphasise mimesis, the cataloguing of major “players” in historical events and encyclopaedic accuracy of dates, deaths and places. Instead, HM involves the re-contextualisation of real-life figures from the past, incorporating the lives of entirely (or, as in the case of Gregory’s Mary Boleyn, at least partly) fictitious characters into their generally accepted famous and factual activities, and/or the invention of scenarios that gel realistically--but entertainingly--within a landscape of well-known and well-documented events. As Hutcheon herself states: “The formal linking of history and fiction through the common denominators of intertextuality and narrativity is usually offered not as a reduction, as a shrinking of the scope and value of fiction, but rather as an expansion of these” ("Intertextuality", 11). Similarly, Gregory emphasises the need for authors of HM to extend themselves beyond the encyclopaedic archive: “Archives are not history. The trouble with archives is that the material is often random and atypical. To have history, you have to have a narrative” (University of Sussex). Functionally then, HM is an intertextual narrative genre which serves to communicate to a contemporary audience an expanded story or stories of the past which present an ultimately more self-reflective, personal and unpredictable authorship: it is a distinctly auteurial mode of biographical history writing for it places the postmodern author’s imaginative “signature” front and foremost.Hutcheon later clarified that the quest for historical truth in fiction cannot possibly hold up to the persuasive powers of a master novelist, as per the following rationale: “Fact is discourse-defined: an event is not” ("Historiographic Metafiction", 843). This means, in a rather simplistic nutshell, that the new breed of HM novel writer is not constrained by what others may call fact: s/he knows that the alleged “fact” can be renegotiated and redefined by an inventive discourse. An event, on the other hand, is responsible for too many incontrovertible consequences for it to be contested by her/his mere discourse. So-called facts are much easier for the HM writer to play with than world changing events. This notion was further popularised by Ansgar Nunning when he claimed the overtly explicit work of HM can even change the “hegemonic discourse of history” (353). HM authors can radically alter, it seems, the way the reader perceives the facts of history especially when entertaining, engaging and believable characters are deliberately devised and manipulated into the narrative by the writer. Little wonder, then, that Hutcheon bemoans the unfortunate reality that for many readers the entirety of a HM work assumes questionable “veracity” due to its author’s insertion of imaginary and therefore illegitimate personages.But there is an advantage to be found in this, the digital era, and that is the Internet’s hyperlink. In our ubiquitously networked electronic information age, novels written for publication as e-books may, I propose, include clickable links on the names of actual people and events to Wikipedia entries or the like, thus strengthening the reception of the work as being based on real history (the occasional unreliability of Wikipedia notwithstanding). If picked up for hard copy publication this function of the HM e-novel can be replicated with the inclusion of icons in the printed margins that can be scanned by smartphones or similar gadgets. This small but significant element of the production reinforces the e-novel’s potential status as a new form of HM and addresses Hutcheon’s concern that for HM novels, their imaginative but illegitimate invention of characters “renders their claims to historical veracity somewhat problematic, to say the least” ("Historiographic Metafiction: Parody", 3).Some historic scenarios are so little researched or so misunderstood and discoloured by the muddy waters of time and/or rumour that such hyperlinking will be a boon to HM writers. Where an obscure facet of Australian history is being fictionalised, for example, these edifying hyperlinks can provide additional background information, as Glenda Banks and Martin Andrew might have wished for when they wrote regarding Bank’s Victorian goldfields based HM novel A Respectable Married Woman. This 2012 printed work explores the lives of several under-researched and under-represented minorities, such as settler women and Aboriginal Australians, and the author Banks lamented the dearth of public awareness regarding these peoples. Indeed, HM seems tailor-made for exposing the subaltern lives of those repressed individuals who form the human “backdrop” to the lives of more famous personages. Banks and Andrew explain:To echo the writings of Homi K. Bhaba (1990), this sets up a creative site for interrogating the dominant, hegemonic, ‘normalised’ master narratives about the Victorian goldfields and ‘re-membering’ a marginalised group - the women of the goldfields, the indigenous [sic], the Chinese - and their culture (2013).In my own hyperlinked short story (presently under consideration for publishing elsewhere), which is actually a standalone version of the first chapter of a full-length HM e-novel about Aboriginal Australian activists Eddie Mabo and Chicka Dixon and the history of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra, entitled The Bullroarers, I have focussed on a similarly under-represented minority, that being light-complexioned, mixed race Aboriginal Australians. My second novel to deal with Indigenous Australian issues (see Starrs, That Blackfella Bloodsucka Dance), it is my first attempt at writing HM. Hopefully avoiding overkill whilst alerting readers to those Wikipedia pages with relevance to the narrative theme of non-Indigenous attitudes towards light-complexioned Indigenous Australians, I have inserted a total of only six hyperlinks in this 2200-word piece, plus the explanatory foreword stating: “Note, except where they are well-known place names or are indicated as factual by the insertion of Internet hyperlinks verifying such, all persons, organisations, businesses and places named in this text are entirely fictitious.”The hyperlinks in my short story all take the reader not to stubs but to well-established Wikipedia pages, and provide for the uninformed audience the following near-unassailable facts (i.e. events):The TV program, A Current Affair, which the racist character of the short story taken from The Bullroarers, Mrs Poulter, relies on for her prejudicial opinions linking Aborigines with the dealing of illegal drugs, is a long-running, prime-time Channel Nine production. Of particular relevance in the Wikipedia entry is the comment: “Like its main rival broadcast on the Seven Network, Today Tonight, A Current Affair is often considered by media critics and the public at large to use sensationalist journalism” (Wikipedia, “A Current Affair”).The Aboriginal Tent Embassy, located on the lawns opposite the Old Parliament House in Canberra, was established in 1972 and ever since has been the focus of Aboriginal Australian land rights activism and political agitation. In 1995 the Australian Register of the National Estate listed it as the only Aboriginal site in Australia that is recognised nationally for representing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and their political struggles (Wikipedia, “The Aboriginal Tent Embassy”).In 1992, during an Aboriginal land rights case known as Mabo, the High Court of Australia issued a judgment constituting a direct overturning of terra nullius, which is a Latin term meaning “land belonging to no one”, and which had previously formed the legal rationale and justification for the British invasion and colonisation of Aboriginal Australia (Wikipedia, “Terra Nullius”).Aboriginal rights activist and Torres Strait Islander, Eddie Koiki Mabo (1936 to 1992), was instrumental in the High Court decision to overturn the doctrine of terra nullius in 1992. In that same year, Eddie Mabo was posthumously awarded the Australian Human Rights Medal in the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission Awards (Wikipedia, “Eddie Mabo”).The full name of what Mrs Poulter blithely refers to as “the Department of Families and that” is the Australian Government’s Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs (Wikipedia, “The Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs”).The British colonisation of Australia was a bloody, murderous affair: “continuous Aboriginal resistance for well over a century belies the ‘myth’ of peaceful settlement in Australia. Settlers in turn often reacted to Aboriginal resistance with great violence, resulting in numerous indiscriminate massacres by whites of Aboriginal men, women and children” (Wikipedia, “History of Australia (1788 - 1850)”).Basically, what is not evidenced empirically with regard to the subject matter of my text, that is, the egregious attitudes of non-Indigenous Australians towards Indigenous Australians, can be extrapolated thanks to the hyperlinks. This resonates strongly with Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s assertion in 2012 that those under-represented by mainstream, patriarchal epistemologies need to be engaged in acts of “reclaiming, reformulating and reconstituting” (143) so as to be re-presented as authentic identities in these HM artefacts of literary research.Exerting auteurial power as an Aboriginal Australian author myself, I have sought to imprint on my writing a multi-levelled signature pertaining to my people’s under-representation: there is not just the text I have created but another level to be considered by the reader, that being my careful choice of Wikipedia pages to hyperlink certain aspects of the creative writing to. These electronic footnotes serve as politically charged acts of “reclaiming, reformulating and reconstituting” Aboriginal Australian history, to reuse the words of Smith, for when we Aboriginal Australian authors reiterate, when we subjugated savages wrestle the keyboard away from the colonising overseers, our readers witness the Other writing back, critically. As I have stated previously (see Starrs, "Writing"), receivers of our words see the distorted and silencing master discourse subverted and, indeed, inverted. Our audiences are subjectively repositioned to see the British Crown as the monster. The previously presumed rational, enlightened and civil coloniser is instead depicted as the author and perpetrator of a violently racist, criminal discourse, until, eventually, s/he is ultimately eroded and made into the Other: s/he is rendered the villainous, predatory savage by the auteurial signatures in revisionist histories such as The Bullroarers.Whilst the benefit in these hyperlinks as electronic educational footnotes in my short story is fairly obvious, what may not be so obvious is the ironic commentary they can make, when read in conjunction with the rest of The Bullroarers. Although one must reluctantly agree with Wayne C. Booth’s comment in his classic 1974 study A Rhetoric of Irony that, in some regards, “the very spirit and value [of irony] are violated by the effort to be clear about it” (ix), I will nevertheless strive for clarity and understanding by utilizing Booth’s definition of irony “as something that under-mines clarities, opens up vistas of chaos, and either liberates by destroying all dogmas or destroys by revealing the inescapable canker of negation at the heart of every affirmation” (ix). The reader of The Bullroarers is not expecting the main character, Mrs Poulter, to be the subject of erosive criticism that destroys her “dogmas” about Aboriginal Australians--certainly not so early in the narrative when it is unclear if she is or is not the protagonist of the story--and yet that’s exactly what the hyperlinks do. They expose her as hopelessly unreliable, laughably misinformed and yes, unforgivably stupid. They reveal the illegitimacy of her beliefs. Perhaps the most personally excoriating of these revelations is provided by the link to the Wikipedia entry on the Australian Government’s Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, which is where her own daughter, Roxy, works, but which Mrs Poulter knows, gormlessly, as “the Department of Families and that”. The ignorant woman spouts racist diatribes against Aboriginal Australians without even realising how inextricably linked she and her family, who live at the deliberately named Boomerang Crescent, really are. Therein lies the irony I am trying to create with my use of hyperlinks: an independent, expert adjudication reveals my character, Mrs Poulter, and her opinions, are hiding an “inescapable canker of negation at the heart of every affirmation” (Booth ix), despite the air of easy confidence she projects.Is the novel-reading public ready for these HM hyperlinked e-novels and their potentially ironic sub-texts? Indeed, the question must be asked: can the e-book ever compete with the tactile sensations a finely crafted, perfectly bound hardcover publication provides? Perhaps, if the economics of book buying comes into consideration. E-novels are cheap to publish and cheap to purchase, hence they are becoming hugely popular with the book buying public. Writes Mark Coker, the founder of Smashwords, a successful online publisher and distributor of e-books: “We incorporated in 2007, and we officially launched the business in May 2008. In our first year, we published 140 books from 90 authors. Our catalog reached 6,000 books in 2009, 28,800 in 2010, 92,000 in 2011, 191,000 in 2012 and as of this writing (November 2013) stands at over 250,000 titles” (Coker 2013). Coker divulged more about his company’s success in an interview with Forbes online magazine: “‘It costs essentially the same to pump 10,000 new books a month through our network as it will cost to do 100,000 a month,’ he reasons. Smashwords book retails, on average, for just above $3; 15,000 titles are free” (Colao 2012).In such a burgeoning environment of technological progress in publishing I am tempted to say that yes, the time of the hyperlinked e-novel has come, and to even predict that HM will be a big part of this new wave of postmodern literature. The hyperlinked HM e-novel’s strategy invites the reader to reflect on the legitimacy and illegitimacy of different forms of narrative, possibly concluding, thanks to ironic electronic footnoting, that not all the novel’s characters and their commentary are to be trusted. Perhaps my HM e-novel will, with its untrustworthy Mrs Poulter and its little-known history of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy addressed by gap-filling hyperlinks, establish a legitimising narrative for a people who have traditionally in white Australian society been deemed the Other and illegitimate. Perhaps The Bullroarers will someday alter attitudes of non-Indigenous Australians to the history and political activities of this country’s first peoples, to the point even, that as Nunning warns, we witness a change in the “hegemonic discourse of history” (353). If that happens we must be thankful for our Internet-enabled information age and its concomitant possibilities for hyperlinked e-publications, for technology may be separated from the world of art, but it can nevertheless be effectively used to recreate, enhance and access that world, to the extent texts previously considered illegitimate achieve authenticity and veracity.ReferencesBanks, Glenda. A Respectable Married Woman. Melbourne: Lacuna, 2012.Banks, Glenda, and Martin Andrew. “Populating a Historical Novel: A Case Study of a Practice-led Research Approach to Historiographic Metafiction.” Bukker Tillibul 7 (2013). 19 Sep. 2014 ‹http://bukkertillibul.net/Text.html?VOL=7&INDEX=2›.Barthes, Roland. Image, Music, Text. Trans. Stephen Heath. London: Fontana Press, 1977.Booth, Wayne C. A Rhetoric of Irony. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1974.Colao, J.J. “Apple’s Biggest (Unknown) Supplier of E-books.” Forbes 7 June 2012. 19 Sep. 2014 ‹http://www.forbes.com/sites/jjcolao/2012/06/07/apples-biggest-unknown-supplier-of-e-books/›.Coker, Mark. “Q & A with Smashwords Founder, Mark Coker.” About Smashwords 2013. 19 Sep. 2014 ‹https://www.smashwords.com/about›.Eco, Umberto. The Name of the Rose. Trans. William Weaver, San Diego: Harcourt, 1983.Forrest Gump. Dir. Robert Zemeckis. Paramount Pictures, 1994.Fraser, George MacDonald. The Flashman Papers. Various publishers, 1969-2005.Groom, Winston. Forrest Gump. NY: Doubleday, 1986.Gregory, Philippa. The Other Boleyn Girl. UK: Scribner, 2001.Hutcheon, Linda. A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction, 2nd ed. Abingdon, UK: Taylor and Francis, 1988.---. “Intertextuality, Parody, and the Discourses of History: A Poetics of Postmodernism History, Theory, Fiction.” 1988. 19 Sep. 2014 ‹http://ieas.unideb.hu/admin/file_3553.pdf›.---. “Historiographic Metafiction: Parody and the Intertextuality of History.” Eds. P. O’Donnell and R.C. Davis, Intertextuality and Contemporary American Fiction. Baltimore, Maryland: John Hopkins UP, 1989. 3-32.---. “Historiographic Metafiction.” Ed. Michael McKeon, Theory of the Novel: A Historical Approach Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins UP, 2000. 830-50.Nunning, Ansgar. “Where Historiographic Metafiction and Narratology Meet.” Style 38.3 (2004): 352-75.Rushdie, Salman. Midnight’s Children. London: Jonathan Cape, 1980.Starrs, D. Bruno. That Blackfella Bloodsucka Dance! Saarbrücken, Germany: Just Fiction Edition (paperback), 2011; Starrs via Smashwords (e-book), 2012.---. “Writing Indigenous Vampires: Aboriginal Gothic or Aboriginal Fantastic?” M/C Journal 17.4 (2014). 19 Sep. 2014 ‹http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/viewArticle/834›.Tuhiwai Smith, Linda. Decolonizing Methodologies. London & New York: Zed Books, 2012.University of Sussex. “Philippa Gregory Fills the Historical Gaps.” University of Sussex Alumni Magazine 51 (2012). 19 Sep. 2014 ‹http://www.scribd.com/doc/136033913/University-of-Sussex-Alumni-Magazine-Falmer-issue-51›.Wikipedia. “A Current Affair.” 2014. 19 Sep. 2014 ‹http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Current_Affair›.---. “Aboriginal Tent Embassy.” 2014. 19 Sep. 2014 ‹http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aboriginal_Tent_Embassy›.---. “Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs.” 2014. 19 Sep. 2014 ‹http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_of_Families,_Housing,_Community_Services_and_Indigenous_Affairs›.---. “Eddie Mabo.” 2014. 19 Sep. 2014 ‹http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_Mabo›.---. “History of Australia (1788 – 1850).” 2014. 19 Sep. 2014 ‹http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Australia_(1788%E2%80%931850)#Aboriginal_resistance›.---. “Terra Nullius.” 2014. 19 Sep. 2014 ‹http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_nullius›.

La violence faite aux femmes est une réalité encore très présente, surtout dans les sociétés patriarcales, même après des décennies de lutte féministe. C’est aussi un thème privilégié en littérature. La présente thèse propose justement une analyse de ce thème à travers deux romans assez récents qui mettent tous deux de l’avant des aspects particuliers de la question : Un dimanche à la piscine à Kigali de Gil Courtemanche et Je m’appelle Bosnia de Madeleine Gagnon. Nous tenterons de cerner les différentes formes de violences à l’œuvre dans les deux narrations : la violence faite aux filles, celle faite aux femmes, et enfin la violence spécifique qu’engendrent les conflits armés avec le viol comme arme de guerre. Nous proposerons une analyse intersectionnelle de ces formes de violences afin de mesurer les représentations et les répercussions des notions de classe et de race eu égard aux toiles de fond différentes des deux romans : le génocide chez Courtemanche, le nettoyage ethnique chez Gagnon. Nous aborderons aussi les narrations sous l’angle de l’agentivité. Dans des sociétés fondamentalement patriarcales, quel pouvoir peuvent espérer avoir les personnages féminins sur leur destin personnel et collectif? Y a-t-il pour ces femmes fictives des stratégies possibles pour atteindre une liberté d’action, si mince soit-elle?

The Dialogue Society supports the Equality Act 2010 (Government Equalities Office 2015). We believe we have a duty to eliminate discrimination, advance equality of opportunity, and foster good relations within our organisation. Furthermore, Dialogue Society aims to reflect its values in accordance with the Equality Act 2010 within society. Whether it is direct discrimination, indirect discrimination, harassment or victimisation, any form of discrimination must be condemned in any area of social life. Society will be in its fully developed form when all forms of discrimination are eliminated. The Equality Act 2010 includes legislation against many forms of discrimination. Sex discrimination is one of the areas covered by the Equality Act 2010. Sex discrimination is the unfair treatment of one as a result of their gender identity, i.e., if they are a man or a woman. Although sex discrimination can be towards both genders, women experience it many times more than men do. Additionally, although many countries have achieved significant milestones towards gender parity across education, health, economic and political systems, there remains much to be done. According to The Global Gender Gap Index 2018 report, there is a gender disparity in political empowerment, which today maintains a gap of 77.1%, and an economic participation and opportunity gap, which is the second-largest gender disparity at 41.9% globally (World Economy Forum 2019). The data illustrates that sex discrimination is one of many problems in the contemporary world. It operates negatively on a number of societal and economic levels: it divides the community, causes a lack of opportunity and representation for women, and excludes women from participation in many aspects of social life. Equal contribution opportunities for women and men are critical for our community's economic and societal development. The Dialogue Society aims to build dynamic and inclusive economies and societies that provide a future of opportunities for all. In order to achieve this best form of society, we believe women’s empowerment is a necessity. Women’s empowerment includes promoting professional development for women, implementing practices that empower women in the workplace, and promoting equality through community initiatives. The women’s empowerment process focuses on shaping frameworks for closing economic gender gaps, fostering diversity, and promoting women's inclusion and equality. Furthermore, the Dialogue Society aims to increase women's participation in the workforce, help more women advance into leadership, and close the gender gap. To this end, the Dialogue Society organised many projects, research, and panel discussions on women’s empowerment. This report aims to inspire ongoing efforts and further action to accelerate the achievement of full gender equality via promoting women’s empowerment, recommending and implementing direct top-level policies for gender equality, and ensuring that existing policies are gender-sensitive and practices are safe from gender-based discrimination. Finally, this report is to engage and illustrate the importance of allyship, awareness, and policy implementations that improve the lives of millions of women. We call upon every reader of this report to join the efforts of the Dialogue Society in promoting women’s empowerment for an equal society.

“Saying No and Saying Yes” turns at last from the speaker of the erotic invitation to its imagined auditor: the figure being invited to “seize the day.” Persuasion poets, of course, never expect acquiescence—the motif would hardly exist if ladies were easily seduced. However, Spenser’s The Faerie Queene and Milton’s A Maske are among those longer works that make room for very demonstrable acts of refusal, and both do so within an explicitly moral, Protestant context: Spenser via his knight Guyon (hearing Acrasia’s song in the Bower of Bliss), and Milton through his virginal and unnamed Lady responding to the libertine Comus. Despite some obvious similarities between these encounters, the two poets imagine remarkably different responses to the voluptuous invitations they feature. Spenser’s Guyon responds not with his putative virtue, Temperance, but vehement rage to Acrasia’s invitation in the Bower—becoming an agent of the very materialist forces he repudiates. Milton, on the other hand, imagines a place for chastity that is not built upon a sequestration of the self, but a willingness to seek, and find, trial. He thereby provides a model for perhaps the most “impossible” thought experiment of all, one in which a woman participates as an intellectual and rhetorical equal, and in whom eloquence, chastity, and desire can coexist. Milton thereby utilizes the trope to turn it on its head, constructing within it a forum for a proto-feminist articulation of agency and voice.