AustLit
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Notes
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Contents indexed selectively.
Contents
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No Place Like...: Home and School as Contested Spaces in Little Soldier and Idiot Pride,
single work
criticism
(p. 7-16)
Mallan is concerned with what she sees as a key relationship between location and identity and the way 'subjectivity is shaped by movements in time' (p.7). The focus here is on children and young people who are displaced and/or exiled and find themselves removed from their 'homeland'. The notion of a solid identity is inextricably linked to ideas about place and for children this is usually the home and school which are inhabited and experienced on a physical, mental and emotional level. Furthermore, textual representations of spatiality and temporality are realized through the ways in which 'rules and codes of conduct are enforced and boundaries and bodies are materially inscribed' (p.14). Mallan's comprehensive analysis of Little Soldier (Ashley, 1999, English) and Idiot Pride (Zurbo, 1997, Australian) concludes that in both texts, '...[T]he spatial parameters of neighborhood, gang membership, ethnic and class allegiances and familial relationships are variously resisted, contested and confirmed within gendered and other discursive limitations' (p.14).
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Schools of the Future : Analysing the Present,
single work
criticism
(p. 36-44)
In this analysis, Elizabeth Braithwaite looks at four novels which construct a futuristic images of school life and education, including The Inheritors by Jill Dobson (Dobson was born in England but came to live in Australia in 1972). She identifies three consistent themes regarding notions of truth, the power of language and communication and the negative effects of trying to fit into society and examines them under the headings of 'the function of schools in futuristic societies', the importance of school as 'place', representations of teachers in futuristic texts and how representations of futuristic schools comment on the reader's present (p.36). Braithwaite claims that despite the differences between the four texts they have one common factor and that is '...their main aim is still socialisation' and furthermore, the reader is positioned to accept that '...young people must take responsibility for their own lives and be prepared to take risks to find out what truth means for them' (pp.42-43).
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Reviewing Literature for Adolescents and Young Adults : Critical Pedagogy in Action,
single work
criticism
(p. 56-65)Nixon and Comber co-edit a column entitled 'Books for Adolescents' in the Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy and discuss the process they have devised to make the column a 'potentially pedagogical text' (p.56). They believe that literacy education journals have an important function in schools and universities as literary reviews can operate as a form of pedagogy by educating young adults on how 'reading may be productively read and used within the curriculum' (p.57). Their purpose is to highlight how multiple reviews of a text promote discussion about '... what is educative, the context of reading practices, and the politics of publishing and book consumption' (p.58). The consequence of critical pedagogical practice, they claim, is to 'encourage people to question and challenge the status-quo and to envisage how things might be different as well as reflecting on their own practices from this point of view' (p.63).
