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Katrin Althans Katrin Althans i(A121739 works by)
Gender: Female
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Works By

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1 'And in My Dreaming I Can Let Go of the Spirits of the Past' : Gothicizing the Common Law in Richard Franklin's No Way to Forget Katrin Althans , 2014 single work criticism
— Appears in: Decolonizing the Landscape : Indigenous Cultures in Australia 2014; (p. 255-274)

'In this essay I will discuss how Richard Frankland's award-winning short film No Way to Forget (1996) approaches the topic of Aboriginal deaths in custody in gothic terms. As I will show, Frankland reverses gothic dichotomies, employs tropes of haunting and trauma, and ultimately exposes the fictional quality of the gothic itself in his representations of the Australian common law and its institutions. Through an appropriation and transformation of both this originally European mode and the English legal tradition, he thus creates his very own version of an Indigenous gothic. By asserting the cultural strength of that vast body of knowledge summarized as "Dreaming/Law/ Lore,” Frankland reclaims Aboriginal identity and subverts what he and others have described as the de-humanizing quality of the law in civic and spiritual terms? I will therefore first outline the benefits that the field of law and literature offers for questioning the factual discourse of law through the study of fiction before I turn to the dangers the use of the gothic mode holds for Aboriginal appropriations. The opportunities filmmaking offers for re-claiming Koori culture and identity will conclude my theoretical outline. I will also draw on the doctrine of reception and the legal foundations of the Australian common-law tradition in order to introduce my following analysis of Frankland's No Way to Forget. This analysis will be supplemented by readings of Frankland's 2002 play Conversations with the Dead, according to the author "a much heavier and harder version of 'No Way to Forget'".

Source: p.256.
1 White shadows: The Gothic Tradition in Australian Aboriginal Literature Katrin Althans , 2013 single work criticism
— Appears in: A Companion to Australian Aboriginal Literature 2013; (p. 139-154)

In this chapter, the author argues '...to appreciate the many shapes of the Gothic in Aboriginal literature takes, it is necessary to consider the discursive peculiarities of the Gothic and to rewind to the eighteenth century before fast-forwarding to contemporary Aboriginal literature.' (Introduction)
1 Trans-Muting Cinema : Tracey Moffatt's Films Katrin Althans , 2010 single work criticism
— Appears in: Darkness Subverted : Aboriginal Gothic in Black Australian Literature and Film 2010; (p. 147-182) In this essay, Althans analyses two of Tracey Moffatt's films: Night Cries: A Rural Tragedy (1989) and BeDevil (1993).
1 Con-Juring the Phantom : Spectral Memories Katrin Althans , 2010 single work criticism
— Appears in: Darkness Subverted : Aboriginal Gothic in Black Australian Literature and Film 2010; (p. 116-146)
1 Un-Singing Historiography : Kim Scott's Benang Katrin Althans , 2010 single work criticism
— Appears in: Darkness Subverted : Aboriginal Gothic in Black Australian Literature and Film 2010; (p. 103-115)
1 De-Composing the Epic : Sam Watson's The Kadaitcha Sung Katrin Althans , 2010 single work criticism
— Appears in: Darkness Subverted : Aboriginal Gothic in Black Australian Literature and Film 2010; (p. 89-102) Althan's analysis of Sam Watson's The Kadaitcha Sung shows that the 'hybridity identified in the amalgamation of the profane and the sacred takes a turn for the darker and joins different aspects of white and black Australia in a Gothic critique of colonialism and its consequences'. (p89-90)
1 Re-Biting the Canon : Mudrooroo's Vampire Trilogy Katrin Althans , 2010 single work criticism
— Appears in: Darkness Subverted : Aboriginal Gothic in Black Australian Literature and Film 2010; (p. 32-88)
1 Aboriginal Gothic Katrin Althans , 2010 single work criticism
— Appears in: Darkness Subverted : Aboriginal Gothic in Black Australian Literature and Film 2010; (p. 11-29) In this essay, Althans ‘treats the Gothic as being a mode which continues to endow genres with a certain set of menacing stock elements and unstable characteristics of which the interrogation of boundaries, binaries, and identity are particularly useful in an Aboriginal Australian context’. (p.11-12)
1 Introduction : Resistance to the Un-Australian Katrin Althans , 2010 single work criticism
— Appears in: Darkness Subverted : Aboriginal Gothic in Black Australian Literature and Film 2010; (p. 1-10) 'The Australian mind seems to be obsessed with the invocation of its 'un-national' apart from newspaper headlines, advertisements on television, or in signs tacked to lamp-posts in suburban Sydney, even the Macquarie Dictionary shows a preoccupation with the 'un-Australian'. Having introduced the lemma only as recently as 2001 in their Federation edition, the lexicographers already updated it in the subsequent 2005 edition by adding a fourth entry to account for the increased use of the word in the popular domain:' violating a pattern of conduct, behaviour, etc., which, it is implied by the user of the term, is one embraced by Australians'. Despite this zeal for determining the' un-national', little attention has been paid to its positive counterpart, thus making it easier to exclude people on grounds of their 'un-Australianness' than to welcome a national diversity.' (Author's introduction)
1 2 y separately published work icon Darkness Subverted : Aboriginal Gothic in Black Australian Literature and Film Katrin Althans , Goettingen : Bonn University Press , 2010 Z1796030 2010 multi chapter work criticism 'At the heart of the Gothic novel proper lies the discursive binary of self and other, which in colonial literature was quickly filled with representations of the colonial master and his indigenous subject. Contemporary black Australian artists have usurped this colonial Gothic discourse, torn it to pieces, and finally transformed it into an Aboriginal Gothic. This study first develops the theoretical concept of an Aboriginal Gothic and then uses this term as a tool to analyse novels by Vivienne Cleven, Mudrooroo, Kim Scott, Sam Watson, and Alexis Wright as well as films directed by Beck Cole and Tracey Moffatt. It centres on the question of how a genuinely European mode, the Gothic, can be permeated and thus digested by elements of indigenous Australian culture in order to portray the current situation of Aboriginal Australians and to celebrate a recovered cultural identity.' (Publisher's blurb)
Contents include:
  • Aboriginal Gothic
  • Aboriginal Appropriations
  • Re-Biting the Canon: Mudrooroo's Vampire Trilogy
  • De-Composing the Epic: Sam Watson's The Kadaithcha Sung
  • Un-Singing Historiography: Kim Scott's Benang
  • Con-Juring the Phantom: Spectral Memories
  • Trans-Muting Cinema: Tracey Moffatt's Films
  • Conclusion: Creation in Resistance
1 Nightmares in the Dreamtime : On Aboriginal Australian Weird Fiction Katrin Althans , Gerry Turcotte , 2008 single work criticism
— Appears in: Studies in Australian Weird Fiction , no. 2 2008; (p. 163-171) This article takes the form of a symposium where Aboriginal authors and works in the genre of weird fiction are discussed. Critics Katrin Althans and Gerry Turcotte answer several questions posed by Studies in Australian Weird Fiction and provide fans of the genre with personal insights and interpretations never before discussed.
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