AustLit

'This thesis explores the genre of Australian soccer literature by way of a close textual analysis that draws on the inter-related literary theories and practices of genre and reflexivity. It contends that this marginal literature pertaining to a still relatively marginal sport might counter-intuitively provide an excellent framework for examining key aspects of Australia that are frequently missed in scholarly analyses, as well as popular discourses around what it is to be Australian. More specifically, this thesis argues that Australian soccer literature provides vital insights into the rich, complicated, intersecting, and continuously changing lives of the individuals and groups that make up Australia. In short this thesis demonstrates the important role played by Australian soccer writing and its contribution to Australian soccer culture. In addition, the thesis details how Australian soccer literature ties into, reveals, and complicates Australian notions of identity, ethnicity, and gender, among other aspects of Australian cultural life. The thesis begins with a discursive overview of scholarly perspectives on sport and culture that gives a sense of what is at stake in writing about sport, paying particular attention to the frequent tensions and antipathies that exist between sport and literature. Then follows a literature review which situates sport and literature in global and Australian contexts, as well as analysing what constitutes Australian soccer literature, and how this has been categorised in the past. The ensuing methodology chapter defines Australian soccer literature, how it is collated, what is absent, and the difficulties of finding obscure materials. The methodology chapter also analyses the different writers who are included in this genre, including their soccer backgrounds, their motivations for including soccer or not including it. The bulk of the thesis then follows, with chapters four through eight analysing the ways in which ethnicity and gender are discussed in the various primary texts. Chapters four, five and six discuss the nuances and subtleties of ethnicity as they are explored in Australian soccer literature, with a particular focus on the depiction of Anglo-Celtic Australians, British-Australians, and those Australians not considered part of mainstream Australian identity. Chapters seven and eight consider matters of gender, focussing on the striking lack of direct participation by women in Australian soccer, and the ground-breaking and yet still often conservative world of girls and young women as depicted in Australian soccer literature.'

Source: Abstract.

'As argued in this thesis, a Macedonian-Australian identity is an elusive and evolving category. Nonetheless, the various Macedonian-Australian institutions and organisations, as well as the activities that they perform, described in this thesis, give definition and shape to a distinctive Macedonian identity. The thesis argues that Macedonian identity is not fixed, but is the product of lived experience and engagement with the issues that confront them in the modern context. This identity is not a static fusion of discrete 'traditional' and 'modern' identities, which come together to constitute another (composite) self-contained identity. Rather, the Macedonian-Australian identity is viewed as representing dynamic processes of 'negotiation' between various cross-cutting trajectories, that are constructed in response to changing social and cultural circumstances. The thesis describes these processes as they are enacted in the Australian context, including the contestation of Macedonian identity that was part of what has come to be known as 'the Greek-Macedonian debate'. The thesis argues that Macedonians draw on their historic heritage and culture, as well as on elements that are part of their lives in Australia, in order to construct an evolving identity unlike any other. The thesis also poses some important questions about the future development of a tolerant and democratic multicultural policy for Australia.'

Source: Abstract.

Before the establishment of the Australian Women's Book Review, new books on feminist issues from small presses were mainly reviewed by a few small magazines such as Hecate. In the established literary magazines or other mainstream publications such books were reviewed inadequately or not at all. In 1989, hoping to provide a stable periodical for a more comprehensive review of new women's writing from Australia and overseas, Sara White and Michelle de Kretser produced the first issues of the Australian Women's Book Review.

From the first issues, the editors aimed to publish 'accessible, intelligent writing that will offer a range of books by women to a broad readership'. Reviews addressed a range of general areas such as fiction, poetry, history, biography, health, sexuality, social and cultural issues, and literature for children and adolescents. Regular review essays and feature articles provided deeper analyses and special issues have concentrating on geographical regions such as New Zealand, India, Africa and Singapore.

During the 1990s, the Australian Women's Book Review secured several advertisers and sponsors to support production costs and provide payment to contributors. The magazine's publication by the Victoria University of Technology (1992-1997) also provided some security, but the failure of an application to the Literature Board in 1997 caused some concern for the future of the magazine. Closure was avoided when Carole Ferrier offered to publish the Australian Women's Book Review under the auspices of Hecate at the University of Queensland.

Since moving to the University of Queensland, the Australian Women's Book Review has gone online (in 2000) and is now freely available on the internet. It remains the only Australian book review in print or online that is devoted to women's writing.