Who says boys don`t read? They do in literature circles!

This article is about Literature Circles and its ongoing implementation at Parade College, where it is regarded as an innovative, flexible and inclusive strategy that motivates adolescent learners, particularly boys, to read for enjoyment, for independent learning, and for the enhancement of literacy knowledge, skills and capabilities.

Poetry and silence : "a sequence of disappearances"

[No Abstract]

Women's silence : in the space of words and images

My thesis is made up of words and images. This study investigates the way in which silence operates productively within and between the two modes of communication. I suggest that in the process of changing words into images or scripto-visual art-practice, the silence in women's lives can be articulated. I argue that women draw on the generative qualities of silence to create forms of speech that override the cultural constructions of gender which have placed them within the space of ‘mute’ silence. To gain an historical perspective of this practice by women, I consider the lives of medieval nuns within religious enclosure and their work with words and images in the illuminated manuscript. I make a comparative study of original illuminated manuscripts, focussing mainly on visual language and locating aspects of the work closest to my own art-practice: the visual treatment of the space and inter-textual components of the page or folio. This project does not include an examination of miniatures or historiated initials. Rather, its aim is to identify and compare the use of other aesthetic devices available to the medieval scribe/artist through which they might have interacted with the text. I suggest links between verbal and visual performances of language and the repetition, or copying of texts by medieval nuns, as a means of female embodiment of words and their spaces. From the outcomes of my studio investigations and my consideration of other contemporary feminist art practices, I demonstrate how women artists may ‘re-write’ the text and ‘speak’ their silence through visual language and the acts of writing, drawing and painting the words of others. Through my engagement with feminist critical theory, the work of medieval scholars, original illuminated manuscripts and my studio research, I propose that scripto-visual practice remains particularly significant for women despite the differences between the medieval period and our own. As a generative practice, it negotiates some of the societal constraints on women's speech and visibility, because its language is ‘silent and disembodied’ from the image of woman constructed by male discourse. It is a form of speech that acknowledges as it defies the social and cultural conditions that shaped its necessity, articulating an alternative voice of women in the space of words and images.

Encounters with silence : toward a pedagogics of silence in the education of adults

Educational theory, if distanced from experience, positions silence as a problem rather than as a site of possibility. This thesis presents and analyses experiences of silence in the lives of a composer, a novelist, a meditation teacher, an Orthodox priest, a high school teacher, an Anglican priest, an actor, a grief counsellor, and a university lecturer. It draws upon discourses of philosophy, theology, language, the arts and the environment. By focussing on silence as experience, it suggests new ways of enriching pedagogical practice.

Reading race, aboriginality in Australian children`s literature

This text looks at the ways in which Australia's indigenous peoples have been, and continue to be, represented in books for children. These varying representations have helped to colour the attitudes, beliefs and assumptions of different generations of Australians.

New world orders in contemporary children's literature : utopian transformations

"New World Orders shows how texts for children and young people have responded to the cultural, economic, and political movements of the last 15 years. With a focus on international children's text produced between 1988 and 2006, the authors discuss how utopian and dystopian tropes are pressed into service to project possible futures to child readers. The book considers what these texts have to say about globalisation, neocolonialism, environmental issues, pressures on families and communities, and the idea of the posthuman."--BOOK JACKET.

Mermaids and sirens as myth fragments in contemporary literature

This thesis examines three works: Margaret Atwood's The Robber Bride and Alias Grace, and Angela Carter's Nights at the Circus. All three novels feature female characters that contain elements or myth fragments of mermaids and sirens. The thesis asserts that the images of the mermaid and siren have undergone a gradual process of change, from literal mythical figures, to metaphorical images, and then to figures or myth fragments that reference the original mythical figures. The persistence of these female half-human images points to an underlying rationale that is independent of historical and cultural factors. Using feminist psychoanalytic theoretical frameworks, the thesis identifies the existence of the siren/mermaid myth fragments that are used as a means to construct the category of the 'bad' woman. It then identifies the function that these references serve in the narrative and in the broader context of both Victorian and contemporary societies. The thesis postulates the origin of the mermaid and siren myths as stemming from the ambivalent relationship that the male infant forms with the mother as he develops an identity as an individual. Finally, the thesis discusses the manner in which Atwood and Carter build on this foundation to deconstruct the binary oppositions that disadvantage women and to expand the category of female.

Holocaust literature : an exploration of second-generation publication in Australia

Normally we expect the magic of art to intensify, transfigure and elevate actuality. Touch the Holocaust and the flow is reversed (Clendinnen 1998, p. 185). This dissertation explores the relationships between the second-generation Holocaust writer, the Australian publishing industry and the reading public. It contends that a confluence of elements has made the 'genre' of second-generation Holocaust writing publishable in the late 20th century in a way that would not seem obvious from its major themes and the risk-averse publishing strategies increasingly adopted by the multinational conglomerates controlling the Australian industry. The research explores the nature of connections between writing, publishing and reading Holocaust literature, seeking to answer the following questions: What are the driving forces that compel children of Holocaust survivors to write about their parents' lives and their own experiences of growing up in a 'survivor' family? By what mechanisms are such stories published in an Australian industry dominated by international conglomerates focused on mass-market publishing? How do readers receive and make sense of this material?

Feminist perspectives on gender ideology in recent young adult literature

This study of gender in young adult literature examined a range of recently published texts in both the fantasy and realist genres and determined that narrative discourse contests the dominant patriarchal paradigm most sucessfully when female protagonists enact a trickster role.