Literary praxis : engaging with texts in classroom settings

This article focuses on a small group of teachers as they reflect on the strategies they use to support their students in their efforts to interpret literary texts. We argue that the interpretation of literary texts within classroom settings is mediated in complex ways: by the social context of the classroom, the insti-tutional setting of the school (including its curriculum and organization), as well as mandated educa-tional policies. These dimensions shape the relationships between teachers and students as they engage in the ‘social exchange of meanings’ (Reid, 1984) that is prompted by the texts chosen for study. Stu-dents bring their own biographies to this exchange, drawing on their experiences outside school in order to make meanings from the texts they are required to read. Teachers, on the other hand, also bring their biographies with them into classrooms, including their beliefs about the value of a literary educa-tion. By exploring the reflections in which a small group of teachers of literature engage about their work, we ask questions about the value of a literary education, reaffirming its significance in the con-temporary world.

Book review: Richard Lance Keeble and John Tulloch (eds), Global literary journalism: exploring the journalistic imagination

Reviews a new book on international literary journalism and includes critical commentary on the Australian field of literary journalism.

Delight and revolution: literary studies, aesthetics and ideology

 A commissioned article for the special edition on the future of English as a discipline.

Literary conversations: an Australian classroom

Teachers listen attentively to the classroom conversations in which their students engage. This often involves delicate judgments about whether to stay silent or intervene. Should I move the discussion along by asking a question or making a comment? Or would it be better to allow the conversation to continue, however awkwardly the students might be expressing their insights? Awkward or not, there is value in providing opportunities for young people to find the words they need in order to converse with one another in classroom settings, building on each other’s sentences in an effort to jointly construct meaning and reach understanding.

Colonial feminism and Australian literary culture in Ethel and Lilian Turner's the Parthenon (1889–92)

The Parthenon is a unique example of a colonial Australian magazine published for girl readers by two aspirant writers, Ethel and Lilian Turner. In addition to its domestic content, typical of women's magazines, it also sought to contribute to nascent Australian literary culture. This article locates the Parthenon within the history of colonial women's publishing and literary culture, and situates its content within the context of the Woman Movement of the period. It reads the Parthenon's telling picture of young women's perceptions of colonial literary culture and of the need to balance literary aspirations with domestic responsibilities through the lens of the “expediency feminism” advocated by the Dawn, a women's magazine published by Louisa Lawson from 1888. The article argues that the Parthenon's superficially conservative opinion of women's supreme calling being in the home rather than the newspaper office or university library was in alignment with the arguments made by the Woman Movement to advocate for women's greater participation in the public sphere. The comparison of these contemporaneous monthly publications written and produced by women enables an understanding of the ways in which late nineteenth-century attempts to encourage women's careers and independence were grounded in domesticity.

Looking and aesthetics: beyond literary representations of voyeurism

This thesis examines looking in literary and filmic representations to discover its aims and capacities beyond the conventional interpretations of the act as voyeurism.

Meursault (and Caligula) avec de sade: on the relations between the literary absurds and Camus’s philosophical discourses

This article considers the relation between L'Etranger and Caligula, with Camus' philosophical discourse. It aims at mediocra firma between the idea that the literary 'absurds' just illustrate Camus' philosophy; and the idea that they are wholly autonomous from that philosophy. Following threads from Camus' own responses to Melville, du Gard and others, we argue that Meursault and the crazed emperor Caligula are not illustrations of the absurd, let alone Camusian ethical ideals. They embody 'temptations' to forms of philosophical suicide and murder Camus systematically opposed in his philosophical writings, whose paradigm in The Rebel is the Marquis de Sade. Rather than rebelling against the unjust irrationality of the world, these figures (either passively or actively) become agents of this irrationality. Camus the man, or his thinking, should not be identified with them, as such, any more than Shakespeare should be identified with his Iago, or sundry other villains.