Being Australian

Author: Catriona Elder
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000256359
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 337

Book Description
After a century of speculation by writers, filmmakers, travelers and scholars, being Australian' has become a recognisable shorthand for a group of national characteristics. Now, in an era of international terrorism, being seen as un-Australian' has become a potent rhetorical weapon for some, and a badge of honour for others. Catriona Elder explores the origins, meaning and effects of the many stories we tell about ourselves, and how they have changed over time. She outlines some of the traditional stories and their role in Australian nationalism, and she shows how concepts of egalitarianism, peaceful settlement and sporting prowess have been used to create a national identity. Elder also investigates the cultural and social perspectives that have been used to critique dominant accounts of Australian identity, including ideas of class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity and race. She shows how these critiques have been, in turn, queried in recent years. Being Australian is an ideal introduction to studying Australia for anyone interested in understanding Australian society, culture and history. A clever work: incisive and original. At a time when Australian identities have never been more debated, Elder finds an open way through the closed doors which often restrict cultural representations of Australian-ness.' Professor Adam Shoemaker, Dean of Arts, ANU This is a timely and significant new analysis essential reading on issues of identity and our own anxieties about national belonging and what it means to be Australian' in a globalising world.' Kate Darian-Smith, Professor of Australian Studies and History, University of Melbourne

The Australian Book of Atheism

Author: Warren Bonett
Publisher: Scribe Publications
ISBN: 1921640766
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 449

Book Description
Does the Anzac ethos have roots in atheism? Does prayer have a place in Parliament? Should 'creation science' be taught in Australian schools? The Australian Book of Atheism is the first collection to explore atheism from an Australian viewpoint. Bringing together essays from 33 of the nation's pre-eminent atheist, rationalist, humanist, and sceptical thinkers, it canvasses a range of opinions on religion and secularism in Australia.

How to be Australian

Author: Ashley Kalagian Blunt
Publisher: Affirm Press
ISBN: 192240019X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 280

Book Description
When Ashley persuades her new husband Steve to leave snowy Canada and join her for a year Down Under, she looks forward to an easy transition. After all, Australia's just Canada with more sunshine and strange animals, right? But they soon discover things aren't so simple. Steve struggles to settle and Ashley fears he will come to regret both the move and the marriage - especially after she loses her wedding rings on Bondi Beach. Baffled, homesick and increasingly anxious (in a land renowned for 'no worries'), she is preparing to return to Canada when Steve shockingly announces that he wants to stay in Australia. Forever. For the sake of her marriage and her happiness, Ashley must find an Australia she can belong to: she decides to travel the country, learn its history, decode its cultural quirks and connect with as many residents as she can meet. How to Be Australian is a remarkable memoir, at once familiar and faraway, that shines a fresh, funny and fascinating light onto the country we think we know.

Dark Emu

Author: Bruce Pascoe
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781922142436
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 176

Book Description
Dark Emu puts forward an argument for a reconsideration of the hunter-gatherer tag for pre-colonial Aboriginal Australians. The evidence insists that Aboriginal people right across the continent were using domesticated plants, sowing, harvesting, irrigating and storing - behaviors inconsistent with the hunter-gatherer tag. Gerritsen and Gammage in their latest books support this premise but Pascoe takes this further and challenges the hunter-gatherer tag as a convenient lie. Almost all the evidence comes from the records and diaries of the Australian explorers, impeccable sources.

Quarterly Essay 64 The Australian Dream

Author: Stan Grant
Publisher: Schwartz Publishing Pty. Ltd.
ISBN: 1863958894
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 141

Book Description
In a landmark essay, Stan Grant writes Indigenous people back into the economic and multicultural history of Australia. This is the fascinating story of how fringe dwellers fought not just to survive, but to prosper. Their legacy is the extraordinary flowering of Indigenous success – cultural, sporting, intellectual and social – that we see today. Yet this flourishing co-exists with the boys of Don Dale, and the many others like them who live in the shadows of the nation. Grant examines how such Australians have been denied the possibilities of life, and argues eloquently that history is not destiny; that culture is not static. In doing so, he makes the case for a more capacious Australian Dream. ‘The idea that I am Australian hits me with a thud. It is a blinding self-realisation that collides with the comfortable notion of who I am. To be honest, for an Indigenous person, it can feel like a betrayal somehow – at the very least, a capitulation. We are so used to telling ourselves that Australia is a white country: am I now white? The reality is more ambiguous … To borrow from Franz Kafka, identity is a cage in search of a bird.’ —Stan Grant, The Australian Dream

Imagined Australia

Author: Renata Summo-O'Connell
Publisher: Peter Lang
ISBN: 9783034300087
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 416

Book Description
From Terra Nullius to Land of Opportunities and Last Frontier, the European dream has constructed and deconstructed Australia to feed its imagination of new societies. At the same time Australia has over the last two centuries forged and re-invented its own liaisons with Europe arguably to carve out its identity. From the arts to social sciences, to society itself, a complex dynamic has grown between the two continents in ways that invite study and discussion. A transnational research group has begun its collective investigation project of which this first volume is the outcome. The book is a substantial multidisciplinary collection of current research and offers critical perspectives on culture, literature and history around themes at the heart of the Imagined Australia project. The essays instigate reflection, discovery and discussion of how reciprocal imagining between Australia and Europe has articulated itself and ways and dimensions in which a relationship between communities, imagined and not, has unfolded.

A Companion to Australian Cinema

Author: Felicity Collins
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 111894254X
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 608

Book Description
The first comprehensive volume of original essays on Australian screen culture in the twenty-first century. A Companion to Australian Cinema is an anthology of original essays by new and established authors on the contemporary state and future directions of a well-established national cinema. A timely intervention that challenges and expands the idea of cinema, this book brings into sharp focus those facets of Australian cinema that have endured, evolved and emerged in the twenty-first century. The essays address six thematically-organized propositions – that Australian cinema is an Indigenous screen culture, an international cinema, a minor transnational imaginary, an enduring auteur-genre-landscape tradition, a televisual industry and a multiplatform ecology. Offering fresh critical perspectives and extending previous scholarship, case studies range from The Lego Movie, Mad Max, and Australian stars in Hollywood, to transnational co-productions, YouTube channels, transmedia and nature-cam documentaries. New research on trends – such as the convergence of television and film, digital transformations of screen production and the shifting roles of women on and off-screen – highlight how established precedents have been influenced by new realities beyond both cinema and the national. Written in an accessible style that does not require knowledge of cinema studies or Australian studies Presents original research on Australian actors, such as Cate Blanchett and Chris Hemsworth, their training, branding, and path from Australia to Hollywood Explores the films and filmmakers of the Blak Wave and their challenge to Australian settler-colonial history and white identity Expands the critical definition of cinema to include YouTube channels, transmedia documentaries, multiplatform changescapes and cinematic remix Introduces readers to founding texts in Australian screen studies A Companion to Australian Cinema is an ideal introductory text for teachers and students in areas including film and media studies, cultural and gender studies, and Australian history and politics, as well as a valuable resource for educators and other professionals in the humanities and creative arts.

Identity and Belonging Among Chinese Australians

Author: Jennifer Martin
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031478622
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 162

Book Description
This book describes the ethnic identity construction involved in ‘being’, ‘feeling’ and ‘doing’ Chinese for multi-generation Australian-born Chinese, who were born and raised in a different social environment. It demonstrates how Chineseness is manifested in a multitude of ways and totally debunks any notion that being Chinese is a simple identity marker. The book shows that while there are commonalities with the American-born, the experiences of Australia-born Chinese are distinct in many ways. This book is a timely and critically examination of the inescapability of Chineseness particularly when social and economic stability is threatened and those in power are looking for a scapegoat.

Growing Up Queer in Australia

Author: Benjamin Law
Publisher: Black Inc.
ISBN: 1743821085
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 370

Book Description
‘No amount of YouTube videos and queer think pieces prepared me for this moment.’ ‘The mantle of “queer migrant” compelled me to keep going – to go further.’ ‘I never “came out” to my parents. I felt I owed them no explanation.’ ‘All I heard from the pulpit were grim hints.’ ‘I became acutely aware of the parts of myself that were unpalatable to queers who grew up in the city.’ ‘My queerness was born in a hot dry land that was never ceded.’ ‘Even now, I sometimes think that I don’t know my own desire.’ Compiled by celebrated author and journalist Benjamin Law, Growing Up Queer in Australia assembles voices from across the spectrum of LGBTIQA+ identity. Spanning diverse places, eras, ethnicities and experiences, these are the stories of growing up queer in Australia. ‘For better or worse, sooner or later, life conspires to reveal you to yourself, and this is growing up.’ With contributions from David Marr, Fiona Wright, Nayuka Gorrie, Steve Dow, Holly Throsby, Sally Rugg, Tony Ayres, Nic Holas, Rebecca Shaw and many more.

The Chinese Face in Australia

Author: Lucille Lok-Sun Ngan
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1461421314
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 241

Book Description
The book explains how multi-generational Australian-born Chinese (ABC) negotiate the balance of two cultures. It explores both the philosophical and theoretical levels, focusing on deconstructing and re-evaluating the concept of ‘Chineseness.’ At a social and experiential level, it concentrates on how successive generations of early migrants experience, negotiate and express their Chinese identity. The diasporic literature has taken up the idea of hybrid identity construction largely in relation to first- and second-generation migrants and to the sojourner’s sense of roots in a diasporic setting somewhat lost in the debate over Chinese diasporas and identities are the experiences of long-term migrant communities. Their experiences are usually discussed in terms of the melting-pot concepts of assimilation and integration that assume ethnic identification decreases and eventually disappears over successive generations. Based on ethnography, fieldwork and participant observation on multi-generational Australian-born Chinese whose families have resided in Australia from three to six generations, this study reveals a contrasting picture of ethnic identification.