Feminine transports and transformations : textual performances of Australian women convicts and emigrants from 1788 to 1850

While scholars have critiqued early representations of the white colonial female in the form of the novel, short story, or historical narrative, analyses of poetry tend to be located only on that produced in Australia and often in light of a nascent national identity. This article examines how poetic renditions of the desolate woman might be viewed as part of imperialism's mythologising process, displacing more worrying versions of womanhood in relation to the new colonies. While social anxieties over the identity of the white colonial female would result in highly controlled productions of the female convict and female emigrant, this article demonstrates how they also prove unstable and point to a disruptive reality beyond language.

Civilisation, culture and the hybrid self in the work of Robert Ezra Park

Contemporary discussions on hybridity in cultural and ethnic studies have overlooked the work of the Chicago sociologist Robert E. Park. Park's idea of the “marginal man” and his work on cultural and racial hybridity can shed further light on the construction and representation of the hybrid self. The contribution that Park has made to a social theory of hybridity has been overshadowed by research conducted within post-colonial and cultural studies. I do not suggest that recent conceptualisations of hybridity are inadequate; rather that Park has something to contribute to contemporary accounts and in some cases anticipates some of the themes and issues surrounding the concept of hybridity. The following examination connects Park's work on hybridity with ideas such as civilisation, culture and modernity and argues that a mild form of primitivism underlines his notion of the “marginal man”.