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Monday, 21st July 2008
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API Review of Books

Altitude BirdIssue 44
Features reviews by Kathleen Broderick, Linn Miller, Christine Choo, Bill Thorpe, David Ritter, Eve Vincent, Stephanie Bishop, Alison Miles, Richard Kay, Amanda Day, Bernard Whimpress, Mads Clausen, Marion May Campbell, Sylvia Alston, Catie Gilchrist, Eva Chapman, Lucy Dougan, Stephen Lawrence and Nathanael O'Reilly. Click here for more details.


Altitude

Altitude BirdPopular Music: Practices, Formations and Change - Australian Perspectives
The papers collected here in this special edition of Altitude offer a brief snapshot of popular music research broadly connected with Australia. The essays demonstrate the variety of theoretical and methodological approaches used by researchers in the fields of popular music studies and cultural studies to explore themes of popular music practice, formation and change in an Australian context. Click here for more details.



 
 
 
 
Network Scholars

Japanese Newspaper Representations of Australia 1970-1996

  • Masayo Tada
    In the past three decades a closer relationship between Australia and Japan has officially been pursued, with both governments referring positively to closeness in recent years. This essay discusses Australia-Japan relations in the 1970s, 80s and 90s, decades which have witnessed significant political changes in both societies relating to national identity. Analysis of Japanese newspaper representations of Australia offers not only a different perspective on the relationship between the two countries but also an insight into its key characteristics. The specific foci of representations of ...
    Click here to read more.

Network Review of Books

The Ethics of Waste: How we relate to rubbish (2006)

  • imageReviewed by Lisa McDonald in the May 2006 issue.
    I am standing in the local supermarket while renovations are made around me. I scan my list. Things have been moved: shelves, boxes, all kinds of items. Entire walls have disappeared. I stare at grime newly exposed which has set into some type of resin. Its crusty heritage contrasts in silent relief the otherwise polished architecture of supermarket things. A woman walks past and traces the direction of my eye. She winks this at me as I catch hers: 'Tsk'. And all this right here in the aisle of bleach, inside the colony of clean. Waste is nothing if not perverse, I think. I've been reading ... read more.
     

Beyond Good and Evil? Essays on the Literature and Culture of the Asia-Pacific Region (2006)

  • imageReviewed by Mads Clausen in the May 2006 issue.
    Haskell, McKinlay and Rich's Beyond Good and Evil: Essays on the Literature and Culture of the Asia-Pacific Region is borne out of what the authors see as the re-emergence of perilously rigid notions of evil in post-September 11 discourse. The editors see this monolithic conception of evil as 'a theological term of frightening certitude and simplification' particularly evident in the Bush administration's rhetoric, but that it also spills over into other debates about culture and identity, sustaining existing chasms in political and cultural discourse. The collection seeks to query this ... read more.

Network Dialogue

  • The Australian Public Intellectual Network is conducting a survey on the best minds in the country: these might include academics, writers, activists, professionals, religious leaders, politicians, community leaders, etc. The API Network keen to know who you might rank as the ten most influential and/or important thinkers in Australia at this present moment? You may want to make a distinction between importance and influence in compiling your list. Are there reasons for your selection?
    Click here to take part today.

Network Books
Please click here to order from our full catalogue online

Comic Commentators: Contemporary Political Cartooning
  • imageEdited by Robert Phiddian and Haydon Manning
    Anyone who reads a newspaper reads the political cartoons. Each is an island of condensed visual humour in a sea of print. For more than a century, Australia has had a particularly potent and much-loved cartooning tradition, but we have only a limited understanding of how cartoons work and what they really do. As the response to the Danish Mohammed cartoons and the debate over the 2006 Sedition laws suggest, there is a growing sensitivity to cartoons' potential impact in public ... ($34.95) -- TO ORDER ONLINE, please click here or contact the Network Books office at 08 9266 4788 with your details. Alternatively, you can email [email protected] or download our mail-order form.

     
ACH 26: Australian Television History
  • imageEdited by Liz Jacka
    In 2006, Australia commemorated the fiftieth anniversary of television in Australia.� This led to a flurry of celebrations by the various free-to-air networks, but it also provided the occasion for renewed academic attention to the history of television in Australia, an area, it is quickly discovered, that has been almost shamelessly neglected by historians and media scholars, with a few honorable exceptions.� In the year leading up to the anniversary a number of media academics and historians joined ... ($24.5) -- TO ORDER ONLINE, please click here or contact the Network Books office at 08 9266 4788 with your details. Alternatively, you can email [email protected] or download our mail-order form.

     
Australian Rock: Essays on Popular Music
  • imageJon Stratton
    "Stratton has been writing authoritatively on aspects of Australian popular music for a number of years. This book brings together for the first time some of his most important work in this under-represented field of popular music studies.An absolutely essential read for all those with an interest in the highly complex interplay between popular music, space and place." (Andy Bennett, Professor of Cultural Sociology at Griffith University. Author of Popular Music and Youth Culture and the ... ($34.95) -- TO ORDER ONLINE, please click here or contact the Network Books office at 08 9266 4788 with your details. Alternatively, you can email [email protected] or download our mail-order form.

     
Big Stars
  • imageJohn Castles, with afterword by John Frow
    Why does the crowd scream when the star appears? They can hardly be surprised. Nor can they be registering critical approval for a performance that has not begun. Rather, they are performing the essential task of making themselves into a crowd, which then tumbles down into the star figure who absorbs it and can then give it back or withhold it. The star is like a black hole. His appearance creates a massive object, the crowd, which experiences itself moving, tumbling towards an ... ($34.95) -- TO ORDER ONLINE, please click here or contact the Network Books office at 08 9266 4788 with your details. Alternatively, you can email [email protected] or download our mail-order form.

     
ACH 21: To the Islands: Australia and the Caribbean
  • imageEdited by Russell McDougall
    Historically, the degree of contact between the West Indies and the Antipodes has been considerable, particularly in the colonial period. But the Empire vestiges of the Caribbean in Australia are now quite eclipsed; and the sum present meaning of the Caribbean for most Australians is probably cricket, rum, exotic holidays and a residual childhood mythology of pirate adventure. This volume seeks to salvage something of the history and meaning of the Caribbean in Australia, simultaneously begging ... ($24.5) -- TO ORDER ONLINE, please click here or contact the Network Books office at 08 9266 4788 with your details. Alternatively, you can email [email protected] or download our mail-order form.

     
JAS 70: Romancing the Nation
  • imageEdited by Richard Nile
    Contributions include: "Romanticism, Nationalism and Myth" by Andrew McCann; "Subverting the Empire" by Paul Genoni; "Les Murray's Fredy Neptune" by Ian J Bickerton; "Unsettled Country" by Perrie Ballantyne; "Historical Collections" by James Gore; "Remembering Eureka" by Anne Beggs Sunter; "Wild Children" by Lynette Russell; "A Cure for all Seasons" by Peter Davies. ... ($24.5) -- TO ORDER ONLINE, please click here or contact the Network Books office at 08 9266 4788 with your details. Alternatively, you can email [email protected] or download our mail-order form.

     
JAS 75: Country
  • imageEdited by Richard Nile
    Contributions include: "History in Black and White: a critical analysis of the Black Armband debate" by Anna Clark; "Why We Need Black Armbands" by Adi Wimmer; "A Poetics of Failure is No Bad Thing: Stephen Muecke and Margaret Somerville's White Writing" by Fiona Probyn; "Aboriginal Affairs: Monologue or Dialogue?" by Vanessa Castejon; "Racial Essentialism: A Mercurial Concept at the 1937 Canberra Conference of Commonwealth and State Aboriginal ... ($24.5) -- TO ORDER ONLINE, please click here or contact the Network Books office at 08 9266 4788 with your details. Alternatively, you can email [email protected] or download our mail-order form.

     
JAS 77: Sojourners and Strangers
  • imageEdited by Richard Nile
    Contributions include: "Australia's New Other: Shaping Compassion for Onshore Refugees" by Sonia Magdalena Tasc�n; "Woomera 2002 Festival of Freedoms: Experiencing community in tragic recognition of the other" by David Monson; "A Fair Queue? Australian Public Discourse on Refugees and Immigration" by Katharine Gelber; "Teaching Democracy and Human Rights: A Curriculum Perspective" by Eva Dobozy; "Rethinking Australian Studies in Japanese Universities: ... ($24.5) -- TO ORDER ONLINE, please click here or contact the Network Books office at 08 9266 4788 with your details. Alternatively, you can email [email protected] or download our mail-order form.

     
JAS 78: Grit
  • imageEdited by Richard Nile
    Contributions include: "The Dole Wars" by Anthony Yeates; "The Housewives' Wages Debate in the 1920s Australian Press" by Louie Traikovski; "The New Face of Police Governance in Australia" by Beno�t Dupont; "Youth Workers, Professional Identities and Narratives of Workplace Change: A Preliminary Report" by Judith Bessant and Ruth Webber; "The Age of Transition: Nursing and Caring in the Nineteenth Century" by Wendy Madsen; "Nursing Gallipoli: ... ($24.5) -- TO ORDER ONLINE, please click here or contact the Network Books office at 08 9266 4788 with your details. Alternatively, you can email [email protected] or download our mail-order form.

     
JAS 79: Rezoning Australia
  • imageEdited by Richard Nile
    Contributions include: "Cartography and Native Title" by Alexander Reilly; "Localising National Identity: Albany's Anzacs" by Robyn Mayes; "Tourists and Pilgrims: (Re)Visiting the Rocks" by Grace Karskens; "Selling the Snowy: The Snowy Mountains Scheme and National Mythmaking" by Grahame Griffin; "Imaging a Nation: Australia's Representation at the Venice Biennale, 1958" by Sarah Scott; "Queensland Shows the World: Regionalism and Modernity at ... ($24.5) -- TO ORDER ONLINE, please click here or contact the Network Books office at 08 9266 4788 with your details. Alternatively, you can email [email protected] or download our mail-order form.

     
JAS 81: Colonial Post
  • imageEdited by Richard Nile
    Contributions include: "Myths and Non-Myths: Frontier 'Massacres' in Australian History -- The Woppaburra of the Keppel Islands" by Michael Rowland; "The 'little empire of Wybalenna': Becoming Colonial in Australia" by Anna Johnston; "Develop the North: Aborigines, Environment and Australian Nationhood in the 1930s" by Russell McGregor; "'Their Ultimate Absorption': Assimilation in 1930s Australia" by John Chesterman and Heather Douglas; "Beyond Orality ... ($24.5) -- TO ORDER ONLINE, please click here or contact the Network Books office at 08 9266 4788 with your details. Alternatively, you can email [email protected] or download our mail-order form.

     
JAS 82: Colour
  • imageEdited by Richard Nile with Denise Tallis
    Contributions include: "Dark Tourism and the Celebrity Prisoner: Front and Back Regions in Representations of an Australian Historical Prison" by Jacqueline Zara Wilson; "The Tempest: Creating dialogue from points of difference" by Angela Campbell; "'It pulsates with dramatic power': White Slavery, Popular Culture and Modernity in Australia in 1913" by Jeannette Delamoir; "Understanding History as a Rhetorical Strategy: Constructions of Truth and ... ($24.5) -- TO ORDER ONLINE, please click here or contact the Network Books office at 08 9266 4788 with your details. Alternatively, you can email [email protected] or download our mail-order form.

     


 
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The Australian Common Reader Project

Richard Nile's Blog

  • God’s waiting room
    06/18/2008
    DEPARTMENTAL meetings were once the great theatre of university life. read more
  • Academic advice for nothing
    06/04/2008
    MY name is Sam Kickabit.  You know I am right.  I am an academic.  read more
  • Robert Hughes’s skid marks
    05/28/2008
    NINE years ago, I set out in search of Robert Hughes’s skid marks.  read more
  • Testicular ticks
    05/21/2008
    WHEN the Adelaide to Darwin rail link opened a few years back to great political enthusiasm on the realisation of a century-old dream of connecting… read more
  • Cigs and beer up
    05/14/2008
    GRAHAM Kennedy’s crow-like caw should reverberate through the hallowed halls of higher education as a sign of renewed scepticism against the charms of politicians at… read more
  • Hire education
    05/07/2008
    AUSTRALIANS seemingly possess ship-loads of intelligence — of the practical and rat-cunning varieties, mostly — but they have been deficient in intellectual leadership for several… read more
  • The vice of vice-chancellors
    04/30/2008
    THE use of the nomenclature vice-chancellor has become increasingly silly but also dangerous across much of Australian higher education.  read more
  • A legend that kills
    04/23/2008
    IF 21st century wars are communicated through cyberspace and mobile phones, and Vietnam was the first televised war, then the Great War of 1914-1918 was… read more
  • The conceits of silence
    04/16/2008
    A DEFINING tenet of contemporary historical studies is that a prolonged silence on indigenous and contact history persisted throughout much of the 20th century. read more
  • Academia nuts
    04/09/2008
    IRONY is not specifically an Australian virtue but Australians make reasonable claims to its refinement and, on occasion, near perfect use as part of vernacular… read more
  • It's a PhD Stupid
    08/29/2007
    imageI HAVE a hunch that the most famous PhD in contemporary Australia is the one that does not exist ... read more
  • Richard Nile
    imageis Professor of Australian Studies at Curtin University and general editor of the Australian Public Intellectual Network.


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