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      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        December 2000

        Contemporary Australian cinema

        An introduction

        by Jonathan Rayner

        Provides an introduction to the products and context of the new Australian film industry which arose toward the end of the 1960s. Traces the development of Australian film, in terms of prominent directors and stars, consistent themes, styles and evolving genres. The evolution of the film genres peculiar to Australia, and the adaptation of conventional Hollywood forms (such as the musical and the road movie) are examined in detail through textual readings of landmark films. Films and trends discussed include: the period film and Picnic at Hanging Rock; the Gothic film and the Mad Max trilogy; camp and kitsch comedy and the Adventures of Pricilla, Queen of the Desert. The key issue of the revival (the definition, representation and propagation of a national image) is woven through analysis of the new Australian cinema. ;

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        July 2023

        The imperial Commonwealth

        Australia and the project of empire, 1867-1914

        by Wm. Matthew Kennedy

        From the late 1800s to the early 1900s, Australian settler colonists mobilised their unique settler experiences to develop their own vision of what 'empire' was and could be. Reinterpreting their histories and attempting to divine their futures with a much heavier concentration on racialized visions of humanity, white Australian settlers came to believe that their whiteness as well as their Britishness qualified them for an equal voice in the running of Britain's imperial project. Through asserting their case, many soon claimed that, as newly minted citizens of a progressive and exemplary Australian Commonwealth, white settlers such as themselves were actually better suited to the modern task of empire. Such a settler political cosmology with empire at its center ultimately led Australians to claim an empire of their own in the Pacific Islands, complete with its own, unique imperial governmentality.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        April 2023

        Becoming a mother

        An Australian history

        by Carla Pascoe Leahy

        Becoming a mother charts the diverse and complex history of Australian mothering for the first time, exposing the ways it has been both connected to and distinct from parallel developments in other industrialised societies. In many respects, the historical context in which Australian women come to motherhood has changed dramatically since 1945. And yet examination of the memories of multiple maternal generations reveals surprising continuities in the emotions and experiences of first-time motherhood. Drawing upon interdisciplinary insights from anthropology, history, psychology and sociology, Carla Pascoe Leahy unpacks this multifaceted rite of passage through more than 60 oral history interviews, demonstrating how maternal memories continue to influence motherhood today. Despite radical shifts in understandings of gender, care and subjectivity, becoming a mother remains one of the most personally and culturally significant moments in a woman's life.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        January 2025

        Arctic state identity

        Geography, history, and geopolitical relations

        by Ingrid A. Medby

        This book sets out to answer what it means to hold a formal title as one of the eight 'Arctic states'; is there such a thing as an Arctic state identity, and if so, what does this mean for state personnel? It charts the thoughtful reflections and stories of state personnel from three Arctic states: Norway, Iceland, and Canada, alongside analysis of documents and discourses. This book shows how state identities are narrated as both geographical and temporal - understood through environments, territories, pasts and futures - and that any identity is always relational and contextual. As such, demonstrating that to understand Arctic geopolitics we need to pay attention to the people whose job it is to represent the state on a daily basis. And more broadly, it offers a 'peopled' view of geopolitics, introducing the concept and framework of 'state identity'.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        December 2022

        Distant sisters

        Australasian women and the international struggle for the vote, 1880–1914

        by James Keating

        In the 1890s Australian and New Zealand women became the first in the world to win the vote. Buoyed by their victories, they promised to lead a global struggle for the expansion of women's electoral rights. Charting the common trajectory of the colonial suffrage campaigns, Distant Sisters uncovers the personal and material networks that transformed feminist organising. Considering intimate and institutional connections, well-connected elites and ordinary women, this book argues developments in Auckland, Sydney, and Adelaide-long considered the peripheries of the feminist world-cannot be separated from its glamourous metropoles. Focusing on Antipodean women, simultaneously insiders and outsiders in the emerging international women's movement, and documenting the failures of their expansive vision alongside its successes, this book reveals a more contingent history of international organising and challenges celebratory accounts of fin-de-siècle global connection.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        March 2022

        Civic identity and public space

        Belfast since 1780

        by Dominic Bryan, Sean J. Connolly, John Nagle

        Civic identity and public space, focussing on Belfast, and bringing together the work of a historian and two social scientists, offers a new perspective on the sometimes lethal conflicts over parades, flags and other issues that continue to disrupt political life in Northern Ireland. It examines the emergence during the nineteenth century of the concept of public space and the development of new strategies for its regulation, the establishment, the new conditions created by the emergence in 1920 of a Northern Ireland state, of a near monopoly of public space enjoyed by Protestants and unionists, and the break down of that monopoly in more recent decades. Today policy makers and politicians struggle to devise a strategy for the management of public space in a divided city, while endeavouring to promote a new sense of civic identity that will transcend long-standing sectarian and political divisions.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        June 2021

        Insanity, identity and empire

        Immigrants and institutional confinement in Australia and New Zealand, 1873–1910

        by Catharine Coleborne

        Insanity, identity and empire examines the formation of colonial social identities inside the institutions for the insane in Australia and New Zealand. Taking a large sample of patient records, it pays particular attention to gender, ethnicity and class as categories of analysis, reminding us of the varied journeys of immigrants to the colonies and of how and where they stopped, for different reasons, inside the social institutions of the period. It is about their stories of mobility, how these were told and produced inside institutions for the insane, and how, in the telling, colonial identities were asserted and formed. Having engaged with the structural imperatives of empire and with the varied imperial meanings of gender, sexuality and medicine, historians have considered the movements of travellers, migrants, military bodies and medical personnel, and 'transnational lives'. This book examines an empire-wide discourse of 'madness' as part of this inquiry.

      • Trusted Partner
        September 2022

        Identity or Not?

        by Jean-Pierre Wils (ed.)

        Questions of identity trigger controversial and highly emotional discussions in the political and social debate. The positions range from radically emancipatory perspectives to authoritarian and restorative efforts on the far right wing of politics. Liberal democracies are now opening up – slowly – as identity- and gender-sensitive forums. Opposite them are the 'new ethics' of illiberal democracies and totalitarian states that are aimed at ethnic homogeneity and gender uniformity. But that's not to say that there is unity in the liberal settings on the necessary degree of identity politics. Both language and gender politics are deeply controversial. Do we need an 'identity' and, if so, which one or how many? Can the identity debate be extended by means of other concepts?

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        August 2017

        Cultivating political and public identity

        by Rodney Barker

      • Trusted Partner
        Medicine
        April 2021

        Leprosy and identity in the Middle Ages

        From England to the Mediterranean

        by Elma Brenner, François-Olivier Touati

        For the first time, this volume explores the identities of leprosy sufferers and other people affected by the disease in medieval Europe. The chapters, including contributions by leading voices such as Luke Demaitre, Carole Rawcliffe and Charlotte Roberts, challenge the view that people with leprosy were uniformly excluded and stigmatised. Instead, they reveal the complexity of responses to this disease and the fine line between segregation and integration. Ranging across disciplines, from history to bioarchaeology, Leprosy and identity in the Middle Ages encompasses post-medieval perspectives as well as the attitudes and responses of contemporaries. Subjects include hospital care, diet, sanctity, miraculous healing, diagnosis, iconography and public health regulation. This richly illustrated collection presents previously unpublished archival and material sources from England to the Mediterranean.

      • Trusted Partner
      • Trusted Partner
        Biography & True Stories
        November 2024

        Walking in the dark

        James Baldwin, my father and I

        by Douglas Field

        A moving exploration of the life and work of the celebrated American writer, blending biography and memoir with literary criticism. Since James Baldwin's death in 1987, his writing - including The Fire Next Time, one of the manifestoes of the Civil Rights Movement, and Giovanni's Room, a pioneering work of gay fiction - has only grown in relevance. Douglas Field was introduced to Baldwin's essays and novels by his father, who witnessed the writer's debate with William F. Buckley at Cambridge University in 1965. In Walking in the dark, he embarks on a journey to unravel his life-long fascination and to understand why Baldwin continues to enthral us decades after his death. Tracing Baldwin's footsteps in France, the US and Switzerland, and digging into archives, Field paints an intimate portrait of the writer's life and influence. At the same time, he offers a poignant account of coming to terms with his father's Alzheimer's disease. Interweaving Baldwin's writings on family, illness, memory and place, Walking in the dark is an eloquent testament to the enduring power of great literature to illuminate our paths.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        March 2017

        Cultural identities and the aesthetics of Britishness

        by Dana Arnold

        Considers how notions of Britishness were constructed and promoted through architecture, landscape, painting, sculpture and literature. Maps important moments in the self-conscious evolution of the idea of 'nation' against a broad cultural historical framework. An important addition to the field of postcolonial studies as it looks at how British identity creation affected those living in England - most study in this area has thus far focused on the effect of such identity creation upon the colonial subject. Broad appeal due to wide subject matter covered. Examines just how 'constructed' a national identity is - past and present.

      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        November 2009

        Portraiture and social identity in eighteenth-century Rome

        by Sabrina Eliasson

        Portraiture and Social Identity in Eighteenth-Century Rome sheds new light on the relationship between portraiture, social affirmation and the myth of Antiquity as it was experienced and elaborated in eighteenth-century Rome. Drawing upon a wealth of unpublished documents and previously unexamined literary texts, it offers new insights and readings into how the experience of the City in terms of abstract or concrete appropriation affected the ways of portraying native or visiting elite sitters. The Grand Tour portrait, usually discussed as a purely British phenomenon, is here put in its original context of production and compared to the portraits of the Romans themselves. Portraiture and social identity in eighteenth-century Rome will become essential reading for anyone with a particular interest in eighteenth-century art and its social use. ;

      • Trusted Partner
      • Trusted Partner
        International relations
        September 2005

        Naming security - constructing identity

        ‘Mayan-women’ in Guatemala on the eve of ‘peace’

        by Maria Stern

        How do people seek security in relation to their sense of 'who they are'? How can one make sense of insecurity at the intersection of competing identity claims? Based on the voices of Mayan women, Stern critically re-considers the connections between security, subjectivity and identity. By engaging in a careful reading of how Mayan women 'speak' security in relation to the different contexts that inform their lives, she explores the multiplicity of both identity and security, and questions the main story of security imbedded in the modern 'paradox of sovereignty.' Her provocative analysis thus raises vital questions about what might constitute 'security', and the 'insecurity' that is its inevitable supplement. Her study also offers an innovative methodology that bridges many different disciplines and substantively develops the method of 'reading' politics as a 'textual practice'. It will be essential reading for students of security, identity politics, feminism, and Latin American studies.

      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        May 2009

        Auto/biography and identity

        by Kate Dorney, Maggie B. Gale, Viv Gardner, Maggie B. Gale

        This groundbreaking book shows how female performers - one of the first groups of professional women - used and still use autobiography and performance as both a means of expression and control of their private and public selves, the 'face and the mask'. It looks at how a range of women in the theatre - actors, managers, writers and live artists - have done this on the page and on the stage from the late eighteenth-century to the present day, testing the boundaries between gender, theatre and autobiographical form. This paperback edition facilitates connections - between texts and performances, past and present practitioners, professional and private selves, individuals and communities, all of which have in some way renegotiated identity through autobiography and the creative act. 'Auto/biography and identity' is a landmark in theatre history and performance analysis, in gender and cultural theory, and autobiographical studies. ;

      • Trusted Partner
        Historiography
        June 2004

        Reconsidering Gallipoli

        by Jenny Macleod

        The British cultural history of the Gallipoli campaign has been overlooked until now - this is a significant book as it offers the first real opportunity for this important campaign to be included in undergraduate courses on WWI. The commemoration of war is a particularly vibrant area of study - Anzac Day, commemorating the landings that began the Gallipoli campaign, is central to Australian national consciousness and this book examines why. A crucial argument in the cultural history of the First World War was sparked by Paul Fussell's contention that the war signified a profound cultural rupture; in widening the debate from the Western Front, this book supports the counter argument that romantic modes of expression retained resonance and utility. In Australia, the renewal of the story of Gallipoli by historians and film-makers (notably Peter Weir's 1981 film starring Mel Gibson) has profoundly altered the national sense of identity and society's perceptions of the armed forces; the authors explains how the writing of this particular event has developed and achieved this central position. An essential volume for those interested in British military and Australian history, postcolonialism and nation building, from academics and students through to the general reader.

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