Beauty and the market: Actress postcards and their senders in early twentieth century Australia

A hundred years ago the international craze for picture postcards distributed millions of images of popular stage actresses around the world. The cards were bought, sent, and collected by many whose contact with live theatre was sometimes minimal. Veronica Kelly's study of some of these cards sent in Australia indicates the increasing reach of theatrical images and celebrity brought about by the distribution mechanisms of industrial mass modernity. The specific social purposes and contexts of the senders are revealed by cross-reading the images themselves with the private messages on the backs, suggesting that, once outside the industrial framing of theatre or the dramatic one of specific roles, the actress operated as a multiply signifying icon within mass culture – with the desires and consumer power of women major factors in the consumption of the glamour actress card. A study of the typical visual rhetoric of these postcards indicates the authorized modes of femininity being constructed by the major postcard publishers whose products were distributed to theatre fans and non-theatregoers alike through the post. Veronica Kelly is working on a project dealing with commercial managements and stars in early twentieth-century Australian theatre. She teaches in the School of English, Media Studies, and Art History at the University of Queensland, is co-editor of Australasian Drama Studies, and author of databases and articles dealing with colonial and contemporary Australian theatre history and dramatic criticism. Her books include The Theatre of Louis Nowra (1998) and the collection Our Australian Theatre in the 1990s (1998).

Wishing for political dominance: Representations of history and community in 'Queer Theory'

Suggests that one's sense of one's self and one's sexuality may also have a close relationship to non-fiction texts about gay and lesbian cultures. Reliance of people's sense of being gay on literary representations; Popularity and authority of the book "Queer Theory," by Annamarie Jagose; Disagreements that characterize lesbian and gay historiography in Australia.

Career development: A project for the 21st century

This article reports of the papers present at the International Symposium 2006 'Shaping the future: connecting career development and workforce development'. The International Symposium 2006 provided an opportunity to move the project forward by considering career development in relation to the workforce development issues of human capital, labour supply, employability skills and older workers. In addition to these specific issues, it examined the broader issues of how career development services might contribute to workforce development and the career development information base needed to support public policy making. By way of background to this special issue on the International Symposium 2006, this paper briefly examines the context and the reasons behind career development's rise to a more prominent position on the public policy arena. Following this, the process of the International Symposium 2006 that resulted in the writing of the documents contained in the special issue are briefly outlined.