To write for children, and to write well : Protestant mission presses and the development of children’s literature in late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century China

This article uses a new historicist approach to examine the complexrelationships between translators, writers, and missionary publishersin China, and their financial supporters in the United States and Britainto demonstrate how they influenced the development of Chinese children’sliterature. It focuses on the case of the American Presbyterian MissionPress, Chinese Religious Tract Society, and Christian Literature Societyfor China, publishers of many texts for children. The article argues thatthe Western mission presses shaped Chinese children’s literature in thelate nineteenth and early twentieth century by introducing new narrativesthrough translation, highlighting the importance of including visual imagesin children’s texts by importing electrotypes and lithographic printsfrom the United States and Britain, and training Chinese students in newengraving and printing techniques which enabled them to establish theirown publishing houses.

Patterns of coronary heart disease mortality over the 20th century in England and Wales : possible plateaus in the rate of decline

Background
Coronary heart disease (CHD) rates in England and Wales between 1950 and 2005 were high and reasonably steady until the mid 1970s, when they began to fall. Recent work suggests that the rate of change in some groups has begun to decrease and may be starting to plateau or even reverse.

Methods
Data for all deaths between 1931 and 2005 in England and Wales were grouped by year, sex, age at death and contemporaneous ICD code for CHD as cause of death. CHD mortality rates by calendar year and birth cohort were produced for both sexes and rates of change were examined.

Results
The pattern of increased burden of CHD mortality within older age groups has only recently emerged in men, whereas it has been established in women for far longer. CHD mortality rates among younger people showed little variation by birth cohort. For younger women (49 and under), the rate of change in CHD mortality has reversed in the last 20 years, indicating a future plateau and possible reversal of previous improvement in CHD mortality rates. Among younger men the rate of change in CHD mortality has been consistent for the past 15 years indicating that rates in this group have continued to fall steadily.

Conclusion
Although CHD mortality rates continue to drop in older age groups the actual burden of coronary heart disease is increasing due to the ageing of the population. The rate of improvement in CHD mortality appears to be beginning to decline and may even be reversing among younger women.

History of the Geelong Regional Commission

This thesis is the first systematic history of the Geelong Regional Commission (GRC), and only the second history of a regional development organisation formed as a result of the growth centres policy of the Commonwealth Labor Government in the first half of the 1970s. In particular, the thesis examines the historical performance of the GRC from the time of its establishment in August 1977 to its abolition in May 1993. The GRC Commissioners were subject to ongoing criticism by some elements of the region's political, business, rural and local government sectors. This criticism focused on the Commissioners' policies on land-use planning, their interventionist stance on industrial land development, major projects and industry protection and their activities in revitalising the Geelong central business district. This thesis examines these criticisms in the light of the Commission's overall performance. This thesis found that, as a statutory authority of the Victorian Government, the GRC was successful over its lifetime, when measured against the requirements of the Geelong Regional Commission Act, the Commission's corporate planning objectives and performance indicators, the corporate performance standards of private enterprise in the late 1990s, and the performance indicator standards of today's regional economic development organisations in the United States of America, parts of the United Kingdom and Australia. With the change of Government in Victoria in October 1992 came a new approach to regional development. The new Government enacted legislation to amalgamate six of the nine local government councils of the Geelong region and returned regional planning responsibilities to the newly formed City of Greater Geelong Council. The new Government also made economic development a major objective of local government. As a result, the raison d'etre for the GRC came to an end and the organisation was abolished.

Victorianisms in twentieth century young adult fiction

Abstract: This thesis investigates the origins of contemporary fictional constructions of childhood by examining the extent to which current literary representations of children and childhood have departed from their Victorian origins. I set out to test my intuition that many contemporary young adult novels perpetuate Victorian ideals and values in their constructions of childhood, despite the overt circumstantial modernity of the childhoods they represent. The question this thesis hopes to answer therefore is, how Victorian is contemporary young adult fiction? To gauge the degree of change that has taken place since the Victorian period, differences and points of continuity between representations of nineteenth century childhood and twentieth century childhood will be sought and examined in texts from both eras. The five aspects of fictional representation that I focus on are: notions of innocence; sexuality; the child as saviour; the use of discipline and punishment to create the ideal child; and the depiction of childhood and adulthood as separate worlds. The primary theoretical framework used derives from Michel Foucault’s concepts of the construction of subjectivity through discourse, discipline and punishment, and his treatment of repression and power, drawn mainly from The History of Sexuality vol. 1 (1976) and Discipline and Punish; the Birth of the Prison (1977). I have chosen to use Foucault primarily because of the affinity between his work on the social construction of knowledge and the argument that childhood is a constructed rather than essential category; and because Foucault’s work on Victorian sexuality exposes links with current thinking rather than perpetuating assumptions about sexual repression in this period.

Matilda's last dance: death, gender, sexuality and Australian adolescent literature

This thesis examines representations of death in a selection of contemporary texts for Australian adolescent audiences. It demonstrates that, although death is a complex subject, a characteristically Australian 'way of death' is identifiable in these fictions and it is invariably associated with issues of sexuality, gender and power.

Murray and Marx

Theory from Marx and related thinkers challenges interpretation of Les Murray's poetry. Topics discussed are: dialectics and dreams; death and its place in our lives; and poetry and religion. Using Marx, religious ideas are given meaning for our lives and thus, it is argued, interest and complexity is discovered in Murray's poetry.

Fiction in oils

Comprises a collection of seventeen stories based on Australian women's paintings and a critical exegesis that together represent a creative and theoretical response to the ways in which short fiction writing can be informed by visual art.