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Australian Perspectives: Representing Place, Nation and Identity (ENGL200)
Department of English - Macquarie University
Semester 2 / 2015

Texts

y separately published work icon My Country Ezekiel Kwaymullina , Sally Morgan (illustrator), North Fremantle : Fremantle Press , 2011 Z1779765 2011 single work picture book children's (taught in 3 units) 'The book was inspired by my Nana and Gran, who passed on their love of country to me. When I wrote the book I imagined what it would have been like for them as little girls, playing in their country without a care in the world. At the same time, I wanted to encourage self esteem in Indigenous youth as I feel Australia is in need of more Indigenous heroes. Because all heroes begin as children with a dream, hopefully books like this one bring them closer to that dream.' — Ezekiel Kwaymullina

Source: Fremantle Press website, http://www.fremantlepress.com.au/
Sighted: 17/05/2011
y separately published work icon Collected Poems : Francis Webb Francis Webb , Toby Davidson (editor), Crawley : UWA Publishing , 2011 Z1706175 2011 collected work poetry (taught in 9 units)

'UWA Publishing welcomes the return of Australia's most gifted and prodigious poet, Francis Webb, whose work has been out of print for thirty years in collected form.

'This collection of Francis Webb's poems is the first edition to incorporate Webb's final changes - previously ignored by editors - to several of his poems written in 1969.

'Webb wrote on varied subjects: the sea, postwar Australian cities, mental illness, colonial histories as well as religious and political figures, including St Francis and Hitler.

'His poems are written in a range of styles, from humorous short verse to epics and radio plays.

'The book is introduced by award-winning poet Toby Davidson and accompanied by 100 pages of notes drawing on the latest scholarship and commentaries.'

Source: UWA media release, February 2011, http://www.uwap.uwa.edu.au/
Sighted: 01/03/2011
y separately published work icon Voss : A Novel Patrick White , London : Eyre and Spottiswoode , 1957 Z872480 1957 single work novel (taught in 33 units)

'Set in nineteenth-century Australia, Voss is the story of the secret passion between an explorer and a naïve young woman. Although they have met only a few times, Voss and Laura are joined by overwhelming, obsessive feelings for each other. Voss sets out to cross the continent. As hardships, mutiny and betrayal whittle away his power to endure and to lead, his attachment to Laura gradually increases. Laura, waiting in Sydney, moves through the months of separation as if they were a dream and Voss the only reality.

'From the careful delineation of Victorian society to the sensitive rendering of hidden love to the stark narrative of adventure in the Australian desert, Patrick White's novel is a work of extraordinary power and virtuosity.'

Source: Random House Books (Sighted 21/09/2012)
y separately published work icon Death of a River Guide Richard Flanagan , Ringwood : McPhee Gribble , 1994 Z822275 1994 single work novel (taught in 5 units) 'Beneath a waterfall on the Franklin, Aljaz Cosini, river guide, lies drowning. Beset by visions at once horrible and fabulous, he relives not just his own life but that of his family and forebears. As the river rises his visions grow more turbulent, and in the flood of the past Aljaz discovers the soul history his country'. (Source: Trove)
y separately published work icon Contemporary Asian Australian Poets Michelle Cahill (editor), Kim Cheng Boey (editor), Adam Aitken (editor), Glebe : Puncher and Wattmann , 2013 6169988 2013 anthology poetry (taught in 3 units)

This ground-breaking anthology collects poems written by Australian poets who are migrants, their children, and refugees of Asian heritage, spanning work that covers over three decades of writing. Inclusive of hitherto marginalised voices, these poems explore the hyphenated and variegated ways of being Asian Australian, and demonstrate how the different origins and traditions transplanted from Asia have generated new and different ways of being Australian. This anthology highlights the complexity of Asian Australian interactions between cultures and languages, and is a landmark in a rich, diversely-textured and evolving story. Timely and proactive this anthology fills existing cultural gaps in poetic expressions of home, travel, diaspora, identity, myth, empire and language. [from Trove]

Description

This unit explores the multiple ways in which Australia has been represented through cultural narratives. Its three modules focus on one Australian city (Sydney), one state (Tasmania) and one region (Northern Australia), examining the different ways in which literature, film, historical writing, life writing and other cultural forms have responded to, contested, and made sense of the new and often paradoxical place Australia can be. This unit extends to its students the benefits of an interdisciplinary approach between Australian literary and historical studies, exposing students to representations from sources as diverse as nineteenth-century frontier narratives, Nobel Prize-winning fiction and twenty-first century Indigenous, Chinese-Australian, eco-fictive and queer perspectives.

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