Not just another ball game : young adult and adult football fictions are different

Current media attention on the crossover novel highlights the increasing permeability of the boundaries between young adult and adult fiction. This paper will focus upon some of the difficulties around definitions of young adult fiction before considering the fiction of football, or soccer as it is more commonly known in Australia. The football genre exhibits a number of discrete and identifiable differences between young adult and adult readerships including, for example, the role of the protagonist, and the narrative’s distance from the game. This paper will use Franco Moretti’s Mapping as Distant Reading model of abstraction to highlight and unpack these and other characteristic differences in the narratological and stylistic techniques employed across adult and young adult texts. Close reading analysis of the adult football fiction Striker (1992) by Hunter Davies and young adult football fiction Lucy Zeezou’s Goal (2008) by Liz Deep-Jones’ will further illustrate the range of tensions and divergences as they are reflected across those readerships. The texts have been selected because they speak to themes of fear and safety; Joe Swift (Striker) is driven by a need to move away from childhood poverty and insecurity, while Lucy Zeezou shelters a homeless friend. With both protagonists being kidnapped for ransom for example, the texts have also been selected for their striking similarities in form and content.

Everything you do : young adult fiction and surveillance in an age of security

Espionage, surveillance and clandestine operations by secret agencies and governments were something of an East–West obsession in the second half of the twentieth century, a fact reflected in literature and film. In the twenty-first century, concerns of the Cold War and the threat of Communism have been rearticulated in the wake of 9/11. Under the rubric of ‘terror’ attacks, the discourses of security and surveillance are now framed within an increasingly global context. As this article illustrates, surveillance fiction written for young people engages with the cultural and political tropes that reflect a new social order that is different from the Cold War era, with its emphasis on spies, counter espionage, brainwashing and psychological warfare. While these tropes are still evident in much recent literature, advances in technology have transformed the means of tracking, profiling and accumulating data on individuals’ daily activities. Little Brother, The Hunger Games and Article 5 reflect the complex relationship between the real and the imaginary in the world of surveillance and, as this paper discusses, raise moral and ethical issues that are important questions for young people in our age of security.

Children's literature and the environment

Fiction offers creative and imaginative scenarios and solutions that may stimulate young people to consider their own relationship with the environment. Literature for young people also offers insights into ecocatastrophe, anthropocentrism, sustainability, and other important issues. A further significance of this project is that it aligns with the cross-curriculum priority of the Australian Curriculum, namely ‘sustainability’. The 'Children's Literature and the Environment' project in AustLit includes a variety of bibliographic records (fiction, information books, film, poetry, and multimedia) relevant to children and young adults that deal with the environment in imaginative, scientific, educational, and creative ways, which culminates in an online exhibition. There are a number of components clustered around key concepts and issues, such as sustainability, urban environments, and Indigenous perspectives. This exhibition allows researchers and students to access and engage with bibliographical data on a range of literary and critical texts that provide various environmental perspectives over a significant period of time.

Pilot study evaluating the effect of massage therapy on stress, anxiety and aggression in a young adult psychiatric inpatient unit

Objective: The aim of the present pilot study was to examine the effectiveness of a relaxation massage therapy programme in reducing stress, anxiety and aggression on a young adult psychiatric inpatient unit. Method: This was a prospective, non-randomized intervention study comparing treatment as usual (TAU) with TAU plus massage therapy intervention (MT) over consecutive 7 week blocks (May–August 2006). MT consisted of a 20 min massage therapy session offered daily to patients during their period of hospitalization. The Kennedy Nurses’ Observational Scale for Inpatient Evaluation (NOSIE), the Symptom Checklist-90–Revised (SCL-90-R), the State–Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) and stress hormone (saliva cortisol) levels were used to measure patient outcomes at admission and discharge from the unit. The Staff Observation Aggression Scale–Revised (SOAS-R) was used to monitor the frequency and severity of aggressive incidents on the unit. Results: There was a significant reduction in self-reported anxiety (p < 0.001), resting heart rate (p < 0.05) and cortisol levels (p < 0.05) immediately following the initial and final massage therapy sessions. Significant improvements in hostility (p = 0.007) and depression scores (p < 0.001) on the SCL-90-R were observed in both treatment groups. There was no group×time interaction on any of the measures. Poor reliability of staff-reported incidents on the SOAS-R limited the validity of results in this domain. Conclusions: Massage therapy had immediate beneficial effects on anxiety-related measures and may be a useful de-escalating tool for reducing stress and anxiety in acutely hospitalized psychiatric patients. Study limitations preclude any definite conclusions on the effect of massage therapy on aggressive incidents in an acute psychiatric setting. Randomized controlled trials are warranted.

Picturing Australian history: visual texts in nonfiction for children

Time is one of the most prominent themes in the relatively young genre of children's literature, for the young, like adults, want to know about the past. The historical novel of the West grew out of Romanticism, with its exploration of the inner world of feeling, and it grew to full vigor in the era of imperialism and the exploration of the physical world. From the end of the 18th century, children's books flourished, partly in response to these cultural and political influences. After Darwin, Freud, and Einstein, literary works began to grapple with skepticism about the nature of time itself. This book explores how children's writers have presented the theme and concept of time past. While the book looks primarily at literature of the 19th and 20th centuries, it considers a broad range of historical material treated in works from that period. Included are discussions of such topics as Joan of Arc in children's literature, the legacy of Robinson Crusoe, colonial and postcolonial children's literature, the Holocaust, and the supernatural. International in scope, the volume examines history and collective memory in Portuguese children's fiction, Australian history in picture books, Norwegian children's literature, and literary treatments of the great Irish famine. So too, the expert contributors are from diverse countries and backgrounds.
--Session data-->

At the limits : postcolonial and hyperreal translations of Australian poetry

This dissertation employs the methodologies of postcolonial theory and hyperreal theory (following Baudrillard), in order to investigate articulations of identity, nation and representation in contemporary Australian poetry. Informed by a comparative analysis of contemporary Latin American poetry and cultural theory (in translation), as a means of re-examining the Australian context, this dissertation develops a new transnational model of Australian poetics. The central thesis of this dissertation is that contemporary Australian poetry engages with the postcolonial at its limits. That is, at those sites of postcoloniality that are already mapped by theory, but also at those that occur beyond postcolonial theory. The hyperreal is understood as one such limit, traceable within the poetry but silenced in conventional postcolonial theory. As another limit to the postcolonial, this dissertation reads Latin American poetry and theory, in whose texts postcolonial theory is actively resisted, but where postcolonial and hyperreal poetics nevertheless intersect. The original critical context constructed by this dissertation enables a new set of readings of Australian identity through its poetry. Within this new interpretative context, the readings of contemporary Australian poetry articulate a psycho-social postcoloniality; offer a template for future transactions between national poetry and global politics; and develop a model of the postcolonial hyperreal.

Poetry, politics and place : black and white perceptions of landscape in modern Australian poetry 1965-1990

Argues that the most influential landscape poetry deals with landscape as an aesthetic concept, and also with the politics of land ownership. Several "landscape poets". Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal, have given voice to some of the most compelling social currents in society, and their work has an important place in contemporary political debate.

The ‘Australian Girl’ and the domestic ideal in colonial women’s fiction

The vast majority of novels and periodicals read by colonial Australian girls were written and published in Britain. ‘Daughters of the Southern Cross’ were more likely to have access to the Girl’s Own Paper by subscription or to imported fictions that had proven popular with British girl readers than any locally produced depictions of girlhood. From the 1880s, however, Australian authors produced several milestone fictions of girlhood for both adult and juvenile audiences. Rosa Praed's An Australian Heroine (1880) and Catherine Martin’s An Australian Girl (1890)  gave voice to the lived experience of Australia for young women, and their publication in Britain contributed to an emergent reciprocal transpacific flow of literary culture.

Two canonical Australian novels that focus on the maturation of girl protagonists who live on bush homesteads were also published in this period. Ethel Turner’s Seven Little Australians (1894) and Miles Franklin’s My Brilliant Career (1901) feature intelligent girls who are not able to be effectively socialised to embrace domesticity. Turner’s Judy Woolcot is distinct among her six siblings as a plucky girl who instigates trouble, while Franklin’s aspiring writer Sybylla Melvyn is informed that ‘girls are the helplessest, uselessest, troublesomest little creatures in the world.’

The 1890s saw an agricultural depression in Australia that only fuelled the urban perpet-uation of the idealised and nationalistic bushman myth in literary and popular culture. The ubiquity of the myth problematised any attempt to situate women heroically within the nation outside of the home. British fictional imaginings of Australian girls lauded their lack of conformity and physical abilities and often showed them bravely defending the family property with firearms. In contrast, Australian domestic fiction, this chapter argues, is unable to accommodate bracing female heroism, postulating ambiguous outcomes at best for heroines who deviate from the feminine ideal.

Judy’s grandmother describes her ‘restless fire’ as something that ‘would either make a noble, daring, brilliant woman of her’, or ‘would flame up higher and higher and consume her’. Turner does not allow Judy’s unconventionality to prosper. Instead, she is killed by a falling gum tree while saving the life of her brother, leaving the future fulfilment of the domestic ideal to her sister, Meg, whose subsequent story occupies Little Mother Meg (1902). Franklin’s Sybylla expresses her inability to be content with the simple pleasures of keeping a home, and this informs her decision to reject a marriage proposal from a wealthy suitor. The novel’s indeterminate conclusion does not allow fulfilment of Sybylla’s writing aspirations, situating her outside the feminine ideal yet not affirming the merits of her desire to reject married life.

While Sharyn Pearce suggests that Judy’s tragic end follows a narrative pattern that sup-ports the glorification of male heroes and renders ‘over-reaching women’ as ‘noble failures’, the novel might also productively be read within the context of other fictions featuring girl protagonists of the period, such as Praed and Martin's novels. This chapter makes the case that Turner and Franklin’s thwarted heroines critique the containment of Australian girls to the banalities of the home by exposing the negative and uncertain outcomes for those who desire the freedoms and aspirations permitted to boys and men. Unlike British fictions that champion adventurous girls, these Australian fictions critique the continuation of gendered restrictions in the colonies by proposing that girls who desire excitement and independence ‘should have been…boy[s]’ (as Sybylla’s mother remarks).

‘You just accept’: Australian parents’ and young adults’ feelings towards returning to co-residence

Drawing on a qualitative study of Australian families who returned to co-residence, this article focuses on the ways young adults and their parents come to accept the change in their living arrangement after time spent apart. Findings from in-depth interviews suggest that young adults  experience mixed feelings about returning home on the pathway to eventual acceptance, whereas  parents appear to be more accepting of the living arrangement from the outset. The current study  also revealed that, although parents and their young adult offspring may have different degrees of acceptance, family members generally appreciated how the other member of their dyad felt  towards the return. This acceptance meant that the return to co-residence proceeded and, in turn,  engendered mutual benefits for both young adults and their parents.

Cyclic-loading of the human gracilis and semitendinosus muscle tendons: Study of young adult cadavers

During knee ligament reconstruction, the tendon graft is tensioned to prevent the occurrence of excessive graft elongation during the postoperative period. Tensioning may be achieved by applying a cyclic or static load to the graft during fixation. Although this procedure is part of the surgery, there is no consensus in international literature regarding ideal tension levels to be used in this procedure. This study was conducted on 10 tendons of the human gracilis muscle and 10 tendons of semitendinosus muscle removed from five male cadavers whose mean age was 20.8 years. These tendons underwent 10 in vitro strain cycles at three levels of deformation (2.5, 3, and 4%) and the value of the deforming load used for each cycle was recorded. The statistical analysis demonstrated that in order to attain the same level of deformation during the 10 cycles there was a reduction in the value of strain applied to the graft, observed at the three levels of deformation. It was concluded that the semitendinosus tendon presents a more uniform mechanical behavior and that there is a need for new graft tensioning protocols that consider the force associated with deformation.

"Dar voce a una voce": diversità e rappresentazione nella letteratura young adult. Proposta di traduzione di Gabi, a Girl in Pieces di Isabel Quintero.

In this dissertation, I will present my translation into Italian of several excerpts from Gabi, A Girl in Pieces, a young adult (YA) novel by Mexican-American author Isabel Quintero, along with examining the issues of diversity and representation in YA literature. This study aims to demonstrate the benefits of multicultural literature for young readers and the importance of publishing stories that reflect the diversity of the world we inhabit. The translation of the novel is accompanied by an analysis of its social, cultural, and literary context. The first chapter provides an overview of Chican@ history, literature, and culture, focusing on the concepts of identity and hybridity. The second chapter describes YA literature and its characteristics, outlines its history, and discusses the value of diverse books in the lives of teenage readers. Additionally, it cites relevant studies and statistics proving the dearth of diverse literature for young readers in the United States. The third chapter focuses specifically on the representation of Latin@s and Chican@s in literature for young readers, examining the main stereotypes that have plagued the depiction of this community and the new perspectives offered by Mexican-American YA authors. In the fourth chapter, I introduce Isabel Quintero and her novel Gabi, A Girl in Pieces, analyzing its plot, style, format, and main themes. In the fifth chapter, I provide my translation, which is then analyzed in the sixth and final chapter. The translation commentary details some of the problems I encountered and the strategies I applied. The sixth chapter also includes some observations on the translation of teenage speech, of multilingual texts, and of children’s and YA literature.

Children's books in England & America in the seventeenth century : a history and checklist, together with The young Christian's library, the first printed catalogue of books for children.

The young Christian's library is a facsimile reproduction of the Bodleian Library copy of the original ed. published in 1710.