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.

The work of death in Brontë's and Dickinson's poetry

Death determines distinctly different, almost inverse, responses and outcomes for Emily Dickinson and Emily Brontë. Death is an imaginative poetic solution for Dickinson, demonstrating her belief that art is the only way to transcend death. But death is the ultimate solution for Brontë, for whom freedom of the imagination leads to mystical unity and continuity.

Building the perfect beast : scientific romance and Jewish representations 1880-1914

Various cultural mediums portrayed Jews in Britain in the late Victorian and Edwardian periods. Scientific romance harnessed past communicative 'discourses' such as history, folklore, theology, and mythology and was an innovative form of literature that heralded a new era in the construction of Jewish identity between 1880 to 1914.

Beyond the road : Beat writing and its socio-cultural contexts

This study looks at the contribution of Beat Generation writers to the post-World-War II reinvigoration of the American literary tradition. It challenges the reductive judgements of many critics and demonstrates that the Beat phenomenon was as much an expression of its historical moment as a rebellion against it.

Cross talk : collaborative indigenous life writing in Australia and Canada

This thesis argues that the critical reading of Indigenous life writing needs to move beyond its concern for power relations operating between the narrators and editors of collaboratively produced texts. It discusses the role of Indigenous families and communities in both the production and the reading of Indigenous texts.

(Post)colonial ambivalences : Christina Stead and Janet Frame

This thesis is an evaluative comparison of two significant writers, the Australian Christina Stead, and New Zealander Janet Frame. In a detailed analysis of the novels, the writerly ambivalences of each author are explored. Their writings are revealed to be creative of new possibilities for female (post)colonial agency.

The history and development of trotting in Victoria to 1946

This thesis sought to explain the development of a code that has been under-represented in Victoria's sporting history. The pioneers of trotting built a foundation of experience, skills and bloodlines that was able to be built upon when the sport re-emerged from the control of John Wren in 1946.

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.

An investigation into the origins of the British romantic tradition in art, its subsequent thematic legacy and its influence upon my own work

This study is comprised of a written exegesis and a folio of paintings and drawings. It explores the view that Romanicism in Britain survived its historical period and continues to influence contemporary British artists. Concentrates upon the prominence given by the Romantics to symbols, most commonly located in nature, which express spiritual impulses and ideas related to human destiny and feelings.

Painful wrench for a European mind : land claims and representations of history and aboriginal tradition in the Darwin hinterland

The first longitudinal study of the way the statutory recognition of Aboriginal traditional rights to land has affected Aboriginal groups in the north western Northern Territory. An interdisciplinary approach is used drawing on methods from both history and anthropology.