Australian Public Intellectual [API] Network

Network Scholars

An Australian Ohio? Fighting for Mildura, 1919–1921

David Nichols
In the years immediately following the first world war, the frontier town of Mildura, situated in Victoria’s far-flung northwest, was rocked by an extraordinary battle between two public figures. C J De Garis (1886–1926) was seen by Australians as embodying a progressive American spirit, though he did not claim it for himself. Grant Hervey (1880–1933) was a delusional egotist who drew much of his rhetoric from American themes and pro-American progressivism. The personalities, backgrounds and outlooks of the two men differed greatly, yet both viewed America as a model for ...
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Network Review of Books

Islam in Australia (2003)

Reviewed by Victoria Mason in the November 2003 issue.
Abdullah Saeed's Islam in Australia is a concise and excellently written book for general readership that - particularly in the wake of September 11, the asylum seeker debate and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq - is timely and very necessary. Saeed should be commended for the way in which he has prepared this book. It is frankly written and seeks to inform, rather than attempting to lionise the subjects of his book, and as a result he succeeds in bridging many of the gaps of understanding concerning Islam within the Australian context. As Saeed himself acknowledges in his introduction, ... read more.

Banana Bending: Asian-Australian and Asian-Canadian Literatures (2003)

Reviewed by Rita Wong in the February 2004 issue.
A timely contribution to East Asian-Australian and East Asian-Canadian literary studies, Banana Bending situates texts within layers of nation, community and the gendered self. The simultaneous existence of diasporic and nationally located multicultural communities means that texts racialised as 'Asian' are always both inside and outside the nations in which they were written and published; as such, Tseen Khoo fruitfully uses her comparative study to examine the tensions imposed and offered by national contexts. Banana Bending provides readings that facilitate the active rebuilding and ... read more.

Friendly Street New Poets 8 (2003)

Reviewed by John Blahusiak in the Aug/Sep 2003 issue.
Friendly Street New Poets Eight presents three new poets, Elaine Barker, Tess Driver and David Mortimer, before the reader of Australian verse. As David Ad�s points out in his brief introduction to the volume, the term new is relative in its application, for these writers have each dedicated a large amount of time and energy towards finding their best practice for poetry. The three poets, for instance, have all been published previously, though not in collected form, and they have all collected higher degrees relating to the vocation. Reminiscences upon youth and the invocation of a ... read more.

Venus Steps Out (2003)

Reviewed by Andrew Johnson in the April 2004 issue.
The New Poets series from Five Islands Press has, with the addition of this group of six, now put fifty-four Australian poets into print. The 'new' of the series title might suggest to some that the poets presented are young, and if not previously unpublished at least relatively unknown in print. Neither of these assumptions is correct. All of the poets have appeared, frequently, in print in a variety of Australian and international journals, magazines and daily papers, and while it is irrelevant as a category for judging the merit of the poetry, or much else for that matter, it might also be ... read more.

Ingenious: Emerging Youth Cultures in Urban Australia (2003)

Reviewed by Julie Ustinoff in the March 2004 issue.
Ingenious, as the editors indicate in their acknowledgements, grew largely out of research conducted for the GENERATE project conducted in New South Wales in 2000. That project aimed to 'realise the contemporary nature of migration heritage and highlight the positive contribution that young people from migrant backgrounds make to the creation of that heritage, and to dynamic culture in Sydney and Australia.' Clearly that research uncovered a thriving youth culture among Australian young people with migrant backgrounds, and revealed an enormous degree of diversity in their expressions of ... read more.

Flight (2003)

Reviewed by Andrew Johnson in the April 2004 issue.
The New Poets series from Five Islands Press has, with the addition of this group of six, now put fifty-four Australian poets into print. The 'new' of the series title might suggest to some that the poets presented are young, and if not previously unpublished at least relatively unknown in print. Neither of these assumptions is correct. All of the poets have appeared, frequently, in print in a variety of Australian and international journals, magazines and daily papers, and while it is irrelevant as a category for judging the merit of the poetry, or much else for that matter, it might also be ... read more.

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