Australian Public Intellectual [API] Network

Network Scholars

The Flapper in the Heterosexual Scene

Liz Conor
If it’s naughty to rouge your lips, shake your shoulders, shake your hips let a lady confess I wanna be bad. This thing of being a good little girl is all very well But what can you do when you’re loaded with plenty of hell?1These lyrics pose a rhetorical and somewhat risqué question and in the 1920s they were provided with an emphatic answer: if a young Australian woman yearned to exhibit that she was ‘loaded with plenty of hell’ she should appear to be a ‘Flapper’. In the 1920s women began to appear in significantly different ways within the modern ...
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Network Review of Books

Australian Literature in Contexts (2004)

Reviewed by David Crouch in the October 2005 issue.
Australian Literature in Contexts by Jaroslav Ku�n�r, Associate Professor at the University of Pre�ov, Slovakia, is part of the research project 'Foreign Literatures in the Slovak Context'. The book itself is a curious thing, cheaply printed in Slovakia with a design like an ephemeral travel brochure from the '80s; it is only really interesting as a strange textual object. It does however give a rare look into an outsider's imperfect perspective on aspects of Australian literature. At first glance it seems to be little more than a collection of notes on Australian literature. The final chapter ... read more.

Inventing Anzac: The Digger and National Mythology (2004)

Reviewed by David Ritter in the March 2005 issue.
Graham Seal is a prolific historian whose area of expertise is the production and transmission of 'folklore', by which he means people's 'informal, unofficial, private ethos and expressions' as transmitted through shared 'language, narratives, verse, song, customs and beliefs.' (3) Existing volumes by Seal include studies on Australian urban myths, the legend of Ned Kelly and the work of Banjo Patterson. Seal's most recent book, entitled Inventing Anzac: The Digger and National Mythology, concerns the folkloric historicisation of the Australian military experience of the Great War. The ... read more.

Jews and Australian Politics (2004)

Reviewed by Marion Spies in the October 2005 issue.
This book contains 13 new pieces about the prominence of Jewish individuals and groups in Australian politics. Additionally, there is an introduction by the editors, a commentary on Jewish politics serving as a conclusion (by Peter Y Medding), and an appendix, listing Jewish parlamentarians (by Hilary L Rubinstein). The book is divided into three parts, 'identifying the Jewish community', 'partisanship and ideologies', and 'issues and controversies'. Most of the essays are written by well-known Jewish-Australian academics, as one would usually say. But for this collection, there is a better ... read more.

How Australia Compares (2004)

Reviewed by Mike Emmison in the July 2004 issue.
It was the English statesman Benjamin Disraeli who reportedly gave us the quip about 'lies, damned lies and statistics', sentiments which those who harbour any suspicions about the power of quantitative description have been only too eager to trot out. No such fears for Tiffen and Gittins, however. The closest these two dedicated number crunchers come to expressing anything other than complete faith in the statistical picture they present of contemporary Australia are some minor cautions about the interpretations of trends in one or two of the numerous tables which they have assembled. The ... read more.

My Natives and I (2004)

Reviewed by Christine Cheater in the May 2005 issue.
I made my first acquaintance with Daisy Bates in primary school. Her name was on the list for the obligatory 'famous Australians we should all know and love' project. My next meeting with Daisy occurred at university when I picked up a copy of The Passing of the Aborigines while researching an assignment. These brushes with the enduring figure of Daisy Bates -- the research topic -- reflect not only her almost iconic status (at least in the field of Australian Indigenous studies) but also the controversies surrounding both her life and her writings. The controversies start with her personal ... read more.

The Red Book (2004)

Reviewed by Natasha Giardina in the September 2005 issue.
The Red Book, self-published by Chris Devir (2004), adheres to some of the key traits of good science fiction and post-apocalyptic fiction. It engages with a range of contemporary social issues, which it extrapolates into a future context in order to examine them and contribute a particular moral and political position. Although significantly hampered by poor editing, Devir's story still manages to provide a timely warning to readers on the consequences of our political, social, and environmental management systems. The Red Book tells the story of the remnants of our civilisation. Nuclear ... read more.

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