AustLit

'How did Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population go from being the objectified subjects of documentary films to the directors and producers in the digital age? What prompted these changes and how and when did this decolonisation of documentary film production occur? Taking a long historical perspective, this book is based on a study of a selection of Australian documentary films produced by and about Aboriginal peoples since the early twentieth century. The films signpost significant shifts in Anglo-Australian attitudes about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders and trace the growth of the Indigenous filmmaking industry in Australia.

'Used as a form of resistance to the imposition of colonialism, filmmaking gave Aboriginal people greater control over their depiction on documentary film and the medium has become an avenue to contest widely held assumptions about a peaceful colonial settlement. This study considers how developments in camera and film stock technologies along with filmic techniques influenced the depiction of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. The films are also examined within their historical context, employing them to gauge how social attitudes, access to funding and political pressures influenced their production values. The book aims to expose the course of race relations in Australia through the decolonisation of documentary film by Aboriginal filmmakers, tracing their struggle to achieve social justice and self-representation.' (Publication summary)

'This study of Voss by the Anglo-Australian Patrick White analyses the historical novel, set in the 1850s and concerning Voss’s exploration of the interior of Australia, as a parable of the writer’s exploration of the Australian historical, social and cultural context of the 1950s. The study employs a variety of critical apparatus including a post-structuralist and postcolonial approach, which also encompasses linguistics, sociolinguistics and comparative studies. This multi-level critical aid allows the examination of four levels of exploration utilised by the author.

'Following an analysis of the protagonist’s geographical movement into the desert and his personal transformation, the study moves on to an exploration of the narrative itself. It explores how the novel becomes subject to change, absorbing and contesting a variety of literary genres ranging from the ‘chronicle’ to the parable. Through this multi-level approach, the study demonstrates the variety of readings the novel stimulates and displays its rich intertextual and subtextual elements and links.' (Publication summary)

'This book explores the ways in which Australian Indigenous filmmakers, performers and writers work within their Indigenous communities to tell the stories of early Indigenous resistance leaders who fought against British invaders and settlers, thus keeping their legacies alive and connected to community in the present. It offers the first comprehensive and trans-disciplinary analysis of how the stories of Pemulwuy, Jandamarra and Yagan (Bidjigal, Bunuba and Noongar freedom fighters, respectively) have been retold in the past forty years across different media. Combining textual and historical analysis with original interviews with Indigenous cultural producers, it foregrounds the multimodal nature of Indigenous storytelling and the dynamic relationship of these stories to reclamations of sovereignty in the present. It adds a significant new chapter to the study of Indigenous history-making as political action, while modelling a new approach to stories of frontier resistance leaders and providing a greater understanding of how the decolonizing power of Indigenous screen, stage and text production connects past, present and future acts of resistance.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'Children's literature enables young readers to acculturate to socially desirable forms of knowledge, values and ideologies. An increasing number of children's books with Aboriginal themes and motifs, written by Indigenous and non-Indigenous writers in the post-Mabo era, seek to rewrite Aboriginal history through realistic or imaginative modes of expression and, as a counter-discursive agency, they open a path to inculcate young minds with Aboriginal culture and knowledge in a postcolonial context. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu's concept of cultural capital, Indigenous Cultural Capital: Postcolonial Narratives in Post-Mabo Australian Children's Literature explores how Aboriginal people's histories and cultures are deployed, represented, and transmitted as " Indigenous cultural capital " for young readers, with the purpose of illuminating the complex relations between Aboriginal agency and dominant forces in the postcolonial contact zone and identifying possible tactics of resistance within the domination. The notion of Indigenous cultural capital provides a fresh perspective in the postcolonial readings of Australian children's books.'  (Publication summary)

'The book series World Science Fiction Studies understands science fiction to be a global phenomenon and explores the various manifestations of the genre in cultures around the world. It recognizes the importance of Anglo-American contributions to the field but promotes the critical study of science fiction in other national traditions, particularly German-speaking. It also supports the investigation of transnational discourses that have shaped the science fiction tradition since its inception. The scope of the series is not limited to one particular medium and encourages study of the genre in both print and digital forms (e.g. literature, film, television, transmedial). Theoretical approaches (e.g. post-human, gender, genre theory) and genre studies (e.g. film shorts, transgenre such as science fiction comedy) with a focus beyond the Anglo-American tradition are also welcome.' (Source : Publisher's website)