AustLit

This is a general space for former and upcoming teaching-focused events. Access information on events from the tiles below.

Past events may have associated publications or teaching resources, so we encourage you to explore even past events.

Teaching with Fantasy

(23 February 2018 - booked out)

'Australian Fantasy writers in conversation and in the classroom'. Read about the event on the Teaching with Fantasy site.

Teaching with BlackWords 

(22 November 2017 - booked out)

Have you ever felt concerned, awkward about, or ill-prepared to teach Indigenous authored texts and issues in your classroom?

Would you like advice on how to respectfully use Aboriginal and / or Torres Strait Islander stories and history in your teaching?

Do you think your teaching could benefit from a deeper understanding of the concerns and issues that First Nations writers address in their work?

Join amazing writers, teachers, and thinkers to discuss best practice methods of bringing Indigenous stories into the classroom.

Click here for full details of this event and visit the Teaching with BlackWords page for resources resulting from collaboration at the event.

Here we have an expanding collection of resources relating to Australian drama and theatre.

• Explore lesson plans for teaching Australian Gothic Theatre through four of Angela Beitzen's plays.

• Full text essays on David Williamson, Hannie Rayson, Louis Nowra, Jack Davis, Patrick White, Michael Gow, and Dorothy Hewett available in AustLit's Anthology of Criticism

• Full text biographical essays about leading Australian actors in Players : Australian Actors on Stage, Television and Film by theatre historian, Professor Anne Pender.

• Discover playwrights and plays in full text from the first half of the 20th century - explore the evolving Australian Drama Archive as new plays and resources are added to this collection.

A range of new theatre resources are coming in 2017 and 2018 ... watch this space!

Australian Film on the Internet Archive

This exhibition collects together information on early Australian films (from 1906 to 1944) available to watch via the Internet Archive. The exhibition's content includes the films themselves, AustLit records, and information gathered from Trove, and covers the following films:

• The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906)

• The Sentimental Bloke (1919)

• Robbery Under Arms (1920)

• Silks and Saddles (1921)

• The Kid Stakes (1927)

• His Royal Highness (1932)

• In the Wake of the Bounty (1933)

• Uncivilised (1936)

• The Rats of Toobruk (1944)

The Silent Film Era

This exhibition is a largely pictorial exploration of the material that Australian newspapers used to advertise home-grown films: from publicity stills to pictorial advertisements to portraits of leading ladies.

The Writer in Australian Television History

The Writer in Australian Television History was a project that aimed to create detailed records for around 300 scripts from seminal Australian television and radio programs. The enhanced records are accompanied by exhibitions on (currently) Homicide and Division 4.

Australian and Adaptations (1900-2014)

A broad-reaching exhibition that aims to give an overview of the way in which Australian writers have adapted materials for the screen and from the screen. Includes sections on Australians working in the US and the UK, silent films, adaptations of Australian material in other countries, television and adaptation, and frequently adapted works.

Edited by Professor Bridget Griffen-Foley, A Companion to the Australian Media contains entries on many aspects of the media in Australia. It provides detailed histories of television, radio, and print companies and associated individuals and organisations. An incredible resource for students studying media history.

The Companion is available in full text through AustLit.

Australian Speculative Fiction

Explore AustLit's full-text collection of speculative fiction works, from Account of an Expedition to the Interior of New Holland (1837) to Blackmarket Brains (1949).

Explore the Teaching with Fantasy resources based on the Professional Development day for teachers, February 2018.

Diversity in Australian Speculative Fiction

This exhibition is divided into carefully curated reading lists on

• racial or ethnic diversity
• physical, neurological, and sensate diversity
• sexual or gender diversity
• religious deiversity

The core reading lists are accompanied by a rich list of further reading.

Beyond Goggles and Corsets: Australian Steampunk

A critical history of steampunk in Australian writing. This project contains a rich dataset for discovering Australian Steampunk and a comprehensive essay on its history.

BlackWords: An Overview

The BlackWords project was launched in 2007 by Uncle Sam Watson. The first national coordinator was Dr Anita Heiss who has remained an important champion of the work we do in recording biographical, bibliographical, and general information about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander writers and storytellers and their continuing practice of Indigenous culture across the country. BlackWords contains records for published and unpublished books, stories, plays, poems, and secondary works associated with eligible writers and storytellers and includes works in English, in translations, and in Australian languages. Team members contextualise Australia's historical timeline by adding information on ancient stories and songs.

Readers are advised that BlackWords contains images of people who have died.

Explore BlackWords.

BlackWords Information Trails

The BlackWords Information Trails gather together detailed information on themes relevant to the inclusion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures in teaching. We have mapped a wide range of texts from regions and nations across Australia. You can discover writers and stories from Wiradjuri, Bundjalung, and Noongar lands, and explore themed collections of texts and information including relating to the stolen generations, identity and country, children's literature and life writing.

Explore the trails at your leisure here.

Or you can navigate directly to a specific trail through the links below.

• UQP and the David Unaipon Award: all past winners of the David Unaipon Award 
• Identity Trail: a trail exploring the multiplicity of Indigenous identity.

• Children's Trail: a sampling of information on Indigenous children's books.

• Indigenous Sporting Heroes: a lengthy list of fictional and non-fictional sports-themed work.

• Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders in War: from the Boer War to post-WWII conflicts.

The section also includes a number of trails specific to the people of particular regions, which you can explore directly via the links below:

Adnyamathanha People and Stories | Bundjalung People and Stories | Noongar People and Stories | Noongar Theatre and Film | Noonuccal/Nunukul People and Stories | Wiradjuri People and Stories | Gulf Country People and Stories [including Yanyuwa, Garawa, Waanyi, Mara, Yangkaal, Krtijar, Agwamin, Yanga, Kalkdoon, and Pitta Pitta people] | From Byron to Brisbane and Beyond [including Yugara, Gubbi Gubbi, Yugambeh, Butchulla, and Biri / Birri Gubba people]

Read a series of essays by Dr Anita Heiss. Each is accompanied by a trail and are available here:

• Aboriginal Children's Literature about Country

• Writers on Country

• Serious Issues for Young Readers

• Aboriginal Literature for Children

• Writers on Identity

• Indigenous Stories Told Collectively

• Aboriginal Writers and the Stolen Generations

Explore the Teaching with BlackWords for text, video, and lesson plan resources.

These projects explore the rich history of children's literature in Australia, including full-text versions of some out-of-print children's books.

Links:

• Asian Australian Children's Literature and Publishing investigates and records details of Australian children’s literature either set in Asia, works that contain Asian-Australian content or characters, works that represent Asian-Australian cultures and experiences, as well as hundreds of Australian works that have been translated into at least one Asian language.

• Australian Children's Literature includes records of works of fiction, poetry and drama written for children and young adults by Australian authors. It includes reviews of these works, information about their authors, information about organisations involved in the creation and publication of Australian children's literature and critical articles on Australian children's literature.

• Children's Literature Digital Resource is a full-text digital repository of Australian children’s literature from 1830 to 1945.

• Children's Literature and the Environment includes a variety of records (fiction, information books, film, poetry, and multimedia) relevant to children and young adults that deal with the environment in imaginative, scientific, educational, and creative ways.

• Reading in the Victorian Classroom provides information on the Victorian Readers, a series of school readers produced between 1927 and 1930 for school children in Victoria and used (with revisions) until the 1950s.

This exhibition has been designed in partial fulfilment of a 2017 Postgraduate Fulbright Scholarship by Travis Franks, a PhD candidate in the Department of English at Arizona State University in the US. Travis's dissertation work critiques notions of settler belonging in the US and Australia through the concept of settler nativism--that is, how settlers imagine their sense of belonging against Indigenous and immigrant populations.    

Here you will find an introduction to settler colonial theory and contemporary settler colonial literature. This exhibition is intended to survey the major and minor authors, works, and ideas involved with settler colonial writing in Australia, and, to a lesser extent, the United States, since the 1990s. 

Visit the Exhibition

AustLit selects and republishes articles from The Conversation that unpack or explicate various themes and ideas relevant to the study of arts and culture.

See the selection here.

Courting Blakness is a collection of resources relating to an art installation at The University of Queensland in 2014 where artworks by contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists were installed in the Great Court. This material provides rich discussion points around space and the way art can raise questions. It includes videos of talks by the artists and participants in a national symposium.

While not all the records on AustLit contain access to full text, many thousands do. In addition, AustLit publishes its own full-text critical works, and digitises otherwise unavailable works.

For guidance on how to identify and specifically search for full-text work on AustLit, go to the Identifying Full Text tab on the left-hand side of this page.

To see the AustLit Anthology of Criticism (full-text critical articles on eighteen key Australian authors), see the Anthology of Criticism tab on the left-hand side of this page, or go directly to the Anthology of Criticism page.

The following pre-set searches are set up to provide direct access to select full-text resources on AustLit. Follow the links below for a list of full-text resources on the following topics and authors:

Work searches

• peer-reviewed critical articles, including the following topics:

• Australian film
• Australian poetry
• Comparisons between Australian writing and international writing
• Australian children's literature

• poetry by Indigenous (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander) writers.

• criticism on young-adult fiction.

• speculative fiction (fantasy / horror / science fiction).

• writing by geographical setting:

• Western Australia
• Northern Territory
• Queensland
• New South Wales
• ACT
• Victoria
• Tasmania
• South Australia

Author searches

Henry Lawson:

Full-text works by Henry Lawson

Full-text works about Henry Lawson

'Banjo' Paterson:

Full-text works by 'Banjo' Paterson

Full-text works about 'Banjo' Paterson

Tim Winton:

Full-text works by Tim Winton

Full-text works about Tim Winton

Rolf De Heer:

Full-text works by Rolf De Heer

Full-text works about Rolf De Heer

Judith Wright:

Full-text works by Judith Wright

Full-text works about Judith Wright

Among AustLit's records are collections of interviews with Australian authors who write in a variety of forms and genres.

BlackWords Interviews

In late 2013, Dr Anita Heiss sent a series of questions to nineteen contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander writers. To complete the series, Anita Heiss herself was then interviewed by AustLit. Read the complete BlackWords interviews here.

Speculative Fiction Snapshot Series

In 2005, Australian author Ben Peek began what became the ongoing Australian Speculative Fiction Snapshot series, a collection of short interviews with Australian speculative-fiction authors, editors, artists, and fans. The series had subsequently been run five more times, sometimes with the same interviewees but always adding new people. The result is a fascinating overview of more than ten years in Australian genre writing. Access the full series from this AustLit record.

Asian-Australian Children's Literature: Interviews with Seven Authors

This collection of interviews brings together seven Australian children's authors whose work has often featured Asian settings, or focused on Asian or Asian-Australian characters. The authors in question—Kirsty Murray, Sally Rippin, Steve Tolbert, Allan Baillie, Gabrielle Wang, Rosanne Hawke, and Christopher Cheng—were each asked several questions about their work, particularly with regard to setting. Some authors were also asked about the relationships between their own experiences of travel or migration and their writing

Coming soon! Interviews with young adult fantasy authors: this collection is forthcoming in 2018. It is part of a professional development event about Teaching with Fantasy.

These exhibitions seek to explore different aspects of how the Great War was experienced by various facets of Australian culture from 1914 to the present day.

You can explore the exhibitions in their entirety on the World War I in Australian Literary Culture research page, available here.

Or you can navigate directly to a specific exhibition through the links below:

• Anzac Field Theatres

• Children's Literature

• Conscription

• Dissenting Voices

• Films from 1914 to 2014

• Gertrude Hart: The War after 1918

• Indigenous Diggers

• Professional Digger and Post-war Entertainment

• Recruiting and Enlistment

• Research Insights

• Soldier and Nurse Writers

• Songs of War

• Sumner Locke: War Romances

• The Anzac Book

• The Anzac Memorial

• The Kia-Ora Coo-ee

• Women Writing Women's Roles

The Garret is a podcast service established in 2016 celebrating the best writers writing today. The podcasts are diverse showcasing successful writers who are willing to share their insights into how to 'start, draft, complete and market their writing.'

Writers interviewed include:

• Anita Heiss
• Leigh Hobbs
• Tony Birch
• Andy Griffiths and Jill Griffiths

Learning and Teaching in Darug Country: this site was 'developed to encourage teachers and pre-service teachers working on Darug country to set their teaching of Aboriginal histories and cultures within Darug country, and to include Darug people in their planning and teaching.'

The National Library of Australia Digital Classroom: this resource brings the collection of the NLA's Treasure Gallery into the classroom, by providing primary resources divided into resources for Year 3 to Year 10 inclusive.

Respect Relationships Reconciliation: still a prototype site, Respect Relationships Reconciliation provides resources to support teacher educators delivering Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander education units in teacher education programs, with a particular focus on strategies for teaching Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students and on understanding and respecting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to promote reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.

ABC Splash: an enormous site devoted to student-friendly, accessible material, ABC Splash is particularly rich in videos and other visual materials. While it covers all aspects of the school curriculum, specific areas that might be of use include Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Histories and Cultures, Drama, and Poems.

Read more about AustLit

Explore Exhibitions and Information Trails

Investigate AustLit's extensive Research projects