A systematic approach to writing and rating entrepreneurial business plans

This investigation is part of a series of studies in the field of venture capital deal screening. At issue is the use of theory-based standards for the systematic creation and assessment of entrepreneurial business plans. A synthesis of research-based principles contained in the literature culminated in the formal articulation and operationalization of 10 principles in the form of a questionnaire, titled the Entrepreneurial Business Plan Assessment Regime (EBRAR). The EBRAR can serve as a guide for both writing and rating entrepreneurial business plans. Discussion focuses on the utility of assessment, as well as future research directions.

Career in writing : Judah Waten and the cultural politics of a literary career

This thesis examines the literary career of Judah Waten (1911-1985) in order to focus on a series of issues in Australian cultural history and theory. The concept of the career is theorised as a means of bringing together the textual and institutional dimensions of writing and being a writer in a specific cultural economy. The guiding question of the argument which re-emerges in different ways in each chapter is: in what ways was it possible to write and to be a writer in a given time and place? Waten's career as a Russian-born, Jewish, Australian nationalist, communist and realist writer across the middle years of this century is, for the purposes of the argument, at once usefully exemplary and usefully marginal in relation to the literary establishment. His texts provide the central focus for individual chapters; at the same time each chapter considers a specific historical moment and a specific set of issues for Australian cultural history, and is to this extent self-contained. Recent work in narrative theory, literary sociology and Australian literary and cultural studies is brought together to revise accepted readings of Waten's texts and career, and to address significant absences or problems in Australian cultural history. The sequence of issues shaping Waten's career in writing is argued in terms of the following conjunctions of theoretical and historical categories: proletarianism, modernity and theories of the avant-garde; the "e;migrant"e; writer and minority literatures; realism, political purpose and narrative self-situation; communism, nationalism and literary practice in the cold war; utopianism and the "e;literary witness"e; narrative of the Soviet Union; assimilationism, multicultural theory and the "e;non-Anglo-Celtic"e; writer; theories of autobiographical writing, and autobiography in Waten's career. The purpose of the thesis is not to discover a single key to Waten's writing across the oeuvre but rather to plot the specific occasions of this writing in the context of the structure of a career and the cultural institutions within which it was formed.

Water's edge and the water's edge writing

Thesis consists of a novel and an exegesis with bibliography. There is no title page or abstract provided by the author.

Writing public space : design, philosophy, art

Among the factors explaining the emotional poverty of contemporary urban spaces is the dissociation of those who think, design and adorn them. Using his experience in designing high profile public artworks in Australia, notably Relay (Homebush Bay, Sydney, 2000 Olympics), Nearamnew (Federation Square, Melbourne) and Solution (Docklands, Melbourne), Paul Carter argues that a new dialogue between designers, philosophers and artists is urgently needed. The basis of this dialogue will be an expanded notion of graphicality, a new engagement with the discursive character of public space, and the evolution of postrepresentationalist art practices that make surface the psychic violence and cultural waste involved in the provision of new functionallydefined “places”. This paper traverses a number of projects: Relay (1998‑2000), Nearamnew (1998‑2003), Solution (2002), Save the Wall (2004‑) Golden Grove (2004‑).

Water's edge : And the water's edge writing

Water's Edge, and The Water's Edge Writing, is a work of practice-led research in the field of creative writing. Practice-led research, which refers to research undertaken in the process of making a creative artwork, has become a significant and innovative type of research particularly in the disciplines of the creative arts. This book consists of two parts in dialogue with one another. These include Water's Edge, a novel, and The Water's Edge Writing, an exegetical component. Water's Edge is the story of Serena, a midnight-to-dawn radio announcer, who discovers information about her family's past and future via the act of creative writing. The Water's Edge Writing addresses issues of practice-led research, including a teasing out of the nexus between creative arts practice and higher research in universities. This book represents an important example of how creative arts practice can constitute the discovery of new knowledge, in the form of practice-led research.

Social identities and law students' writing

This paper argues that social identities, discursively speaking, consist of ‘positions’ that are individuated by distinctive linguistic features. These include distinctive patterns of representation indicated by clause structure and type, a set of priorities for attending to what is important indicated by thematic structure, and an orientation to the represented world and to self as indicated by modality, propositional attitudes and tense. A social identity comprises an array of these often contradictory ‘positions’ associated with a social or professional role. A person’s identity is constituted dynamically by the way they ‘reconcile’ the various positions that make up the social identity, and also, as Archer and Ivanic argue, by the way they reconcile a social with a personal or autobiographical identity. It is argued that this process of reconciliation gives clues about identity formation in the traces it leaves in grammatical texture.

This paper uses a simulated letter of advice to a client written by a group of first year law students to explore the discursive construction of social or professional identity. This letter is poorly written and full of grammatical mistakes and infelicities. It is argued that the mistakes provide a linguistic trace of the students’ struggle to reconcile the conflicting roles and positions they occupy as authors of the letter. In particular the students’ problems result from a struggle to reconcile their multiple positions as: students writing for assessment by a tutor about a legal problem, as a simulated firm of solicitors advising to a client, and as potential litigators anticipating the future course of events in their simulated moot court appearance.

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.

Writing across boundaries

This thesis examines a range of recent Australian fiction written in a magical realist mode. It uses the work of Russian literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin to foreground the cross-cultural dialogues represented in these narratives, and it reads these dialogues in the context of contemporary negotiations of cultural difference in Australia.

Eleven seasons : a creative writing journey through modern Australian football

This thesis offers a novel, 'Eleven seasons', that traces the physical and emotional journey of a young male footballer through the mid-1980s and mid-1990s. It also offers a comparative review of creative writing about Australian football, and a critical analysis of the book's creative gestation from idea to completed text.