AustLit

'Making meaning from the First World War was not only the preserve of the poets, novelists and historians who helped shape Anglophone modern memory. In Australasian theatres, halls and cinemas in the 1920s and 1930s, the war formed a backdrop for drama, adventure, romance and comedy. “Tommies”, diggers, plucky nurses and courageous widows populated vaudeville and movies, helping Australians and New Zealanders make sense of their war. Exploring the remnant evidence of such ephemeral popular performances, this article focuses on popular, everyday narration of the Great War that was often shared as part of an audience. How can we understand war-themed comedies and romances in the context of widespread mourning and sometimes painful reintegration of soldiers back into civilian life? In what ways can popular visions of the Great War on screen and stage expand our notions of how the conflict was made sense of in the postwar decades? Moving away from a focus on trauma, this article broadens understandings of the emotional spectrum available in the interwar period for interpreting the impact of the First World War.'  (Publication abstract)

'Historians have long sought to compare Australian and New Zealand Anzac commemoration, finding that Australian commemoration tends to be more nationalistic and celebratory, while New Zealand’s is more solemn and inclusive of Māori, women’s and pacifist perspectives. This article examines war commemoration in Australia and New Zealand during the centenary of the First World War through the medium of four Anzac-themed television productions: Australia’s Gallipoli and The Power of Ten and New Zealand’s When We Go to War and Field Punishment No. 1. Due to their capacity to attract mass audiences, television and film are useful mediums for elucidating major cultural trends, including the changing nature of war commemoration and its relationship to ideals of nationhood. In particular, the article argues that the coexistence of myth-challenging representations in Australia with productions that reinforce the traditional Anzac legend reflects a longstanding tension between supporters of the state-sanctioned nationalist trope and its critics in artistic and academic communities; alternatively, the less controversial nature of the Anzac legend in New Zealand helps account for the more prosaic tone of some of its Anzac-themed television.' (Publication abstract)

'This article considers the work of official war artist Will Dyson in the context of the Australian War Memorial’s 2017 online interactive exhibition, Art of Nation: Australia’s Official Art and Photography of the First World War. A digital realisation of Charles Bean’s original vision for the memorial, Art of Nation revealed how individuals who witnessed the First World War attempted to commemorate it. Dyson was central to both shaping Bean’s plans and creating the memorial’s art collection. He was a renowned artist of the period, whose works were a prized part of this collection, yet today he is little known. This article considers both the reasons for his renown and importance during and immediately after the war and why this acclaim did not last, as an example of how national memory is shaped and reshaped.' (Publication abstract)

'In Dispossession and the Making of Jedda, Catherine Kevin offers a quietly compelling account of a paradox that defined settler colonialism in mid-20th century Australia: its fascination with Aboriginality at a distance—on screen and in the scenic centre and north of Australia—alongside its inability to see (let alone comprehend) the ongoing dispossession of Aboriginal people close to home. What prompted Kevin to explore this paradox was the casual revelation of a family connection to Charles and Elsa Chauvel, Sydney-based filmmakers who, in 1950, set up a production company with wealthy woolgrowers of the Yass Valley in southern New South Wales. The company would finance and shoot a Technicolor film in the Northern Territory, featuring “magnificent scenery and magnificent aborigine types” (59).' (Introduction)

'In Geoffrey Blainey: Writer, Historian, Controversialist, Richard Allsop provides a welcome study of a remarkable, and remarkably polarising, intellectual figure in Australian public life. Placing Blainey with Keith Hancock and Manning Clark in the pantheon of Australia’s leading historians, Allsop observes that, unlike them, Blainey’s body of work has not been comprehensively examined. He sets out to remedy this and to meet the need identified by Graeme Davison 20 years ago for a “more mature” review of Blainey’s writing—one that resists “reading his earlier work for signs of the emerging controversialist” (xiii). From this perspective, Allsop largely succeeds.' (Introduction)