Fiction in oils

Comprises a collection of seventeen stories based on Australian women's paintings and a critical exegesis that together represent a creative and theoretical response to the ways in which short fiction writing can be informed by visual art.

Identity as radical alterity : critiques of Eurocentrism, coloniality and subjectivity in contemporary Australian and Latin American poetry.

This article presents a comparative analysis of Australian and Latin American contemporary poetry which is informed by theories of Eurocentrism derived from contemporary Latin American critical thought.

‘Coded in a code of the world' : minor literature and the time-image hidden in Janet Frame’s late fiction?

This article seeks to demonstrate how Janet Frame’s late fiction can be read as a theoretical engagement with the conceptual investigations of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, especially the notions of minor literature and the in her late novels Living in the Maniototo (1981) and The Carpathians (1989). For this reason, my approach must be sharply distinguished from a more commonplace analogical framing of Frame or a simple one-to-one translation of her fiction into alternative terms. By weaving theory through her fiction, Frame makes a significant contribution to literature that responds to the still-emerging field of Deleuzean literary critical theory.

Popular fiction and the emotional turn : the case of women in late Victorian Britain

Many within the history profession today consider that we are experiencing an ‘emotional turn’, a perception that has been spurred by a recent proliferation of research centres and outpouring of publications exploring the concept of emotion. Interest in this field looks likely to grow, although there are methodological challenges that have yet to be overcome, as, of course, there are with any newly emerging field of study. One main concern is source material. Attempting to access such an elusive and intensely subjective area of historical inquiry as emotions requires seeking out new sources, as well as returning to old ones with a fresh eye, with new questions in mind. In the specific realm of the emotional lives of women living in Victorian and Edwardian Britain, fiction proves a promising source – popular fiction especially. This is due to the fact that this was the era that ushered in the modern bestseller, novels that more often than not explored the everyday and the emotional, novels that were thought to have been ‘devoured’ by women in particular. This essay plots recent developments in the burgeoning area of emotions history, as well as those that have taken place in relation to the use of fiction as evidence in a history of women’s interior lives. It argues that, at this point in the development of emotions history, when questions of methodology, interdisciplinarity and sources are being addressed more widely, consideration should be given to popular fiction as a readily available pathway, if not an uncomplicated one, into the emotions of the past.

Sounding alien, touching the future : beyond the sonorous limit in science fiction film

In this paper I examine two particular aspects of sounding science fiction film: first, the ulterior, Othering sounds of the alien, whether it is creature, object, technology or environment; and second, the soundscape that accompanies or underscores the type of space travel that crosses temporal and spatial thresholds. In both instances of sounding science fiction film I suggest that human limits are reached and breached, leading to a deterritorialization of the self and a hearing that touches the future which is a moment of pure becoming. I focus on the womanly sonority of the alien to suggest that patriarchal and heterosexist sound devices can be ultimately corrupted. In the analysis of sounding space travel I suggest that science film can create a series of moments in which one experiences the double sublime. This spectacular rendering of a liquid chaos enables the viewer to experience the logic of sensation beyond bodily integrity. In this paper my over-arching position is one that hears in science fiction film the profound potential of a radical alterity that exists beyond the sonorous limit.

Multi-media and real fiction theatre making

Visual images, in the process of both the imagination and conception of a theatre production, are central to contemporary practice in drama-making. The use of multi-media in theatre is not only a fruitful way to represent the visual component of a particular experience, it but also constitutes a way of speaking the unspoken. Visual language expresses through multi-media and allows broaching taboo subjects, speaking directly to the audience in spite of the indirect form and drawing subtle connections with the live action so as to make meaning. The tension between live action and any form of visual art blurs the lines between imagination and reality. The multi-media theatre is a metaphor for the human mind exposed to social reality. It consists of interruptions, half-finished conversations and ideological aspersions including its primary function of meta-representation.

Introducing creative language learning in Japan through educational drama

Educational Drama as a teaching and learning methodology is already widely in use and well accepted by Australian teachers and students. This paper reports on a study in which the author investigated Japanese primary school students' and teachers' responses to educational drama as a pedagogical tool in their English language classes. The participants had no prior experience of drama in education. Along with the participants' responses, the applicability of educational drama as a teaching method for the Japanese teachers is also discussed. The author, as a teacher-researcher, used action research methods for this study. It became evident that educational drama tended to motivate the Japanese students' foreign language learning of English, by providing them with an opportunity for a higher level of engagement and participation in learning. In the study, the students showed enhancement of the skills necessary for learning, including social, communication, linguistic, non-linguistic and problem-solving skills.

The waterhole : using educational drama as a pedagogical tool in a foreign language class at a public primary school in Japan

This study investigates Japanese primary school students’ and teachers’ responses to educational drama as a pedagogical tool in their English language classes. Along with the participants’ responses, the applicability of educational drama as a teaching method for the Japanese teachers is also discussed. The study was conducted in Japan as ateacher-researcher using participatory action research methods. The participants of the study are three Year Six classes and their teachers in a public primary school in Japan. Educational drama is introduced as an alternative teaching and learning method to these participants who have had no experience of drama in education.

Joyce and the ‘Cultic Twalette’: Jocoserious jousts in the nationalist arena in the Cyclops episode of Ulysses

Set in a richly detailed Dublin of 1904, there has never been serious debate about the Irishness of Ulysses, but early critics and commentators, abetted by Joyce, made more of its European intertexts especially Homer, Dante, and closer to Ireland, Shakespeare. Its deep and suppressed debt to the Irish tradition was not fully explored until Maria Tymoczko’s The Irish Ulysses (1994). This paper examines how ancient Irish poetic material is used and strategically coopted for political use in the so-called Cyclops chapter of Ulysses, and demonstrates how Joyce reworked ancient Irish poetry to express a rather more inclusive and celebratory relationship with his cultural heritage than is sometimes recognised by commentators who more commonly insist that his use of ancient Irish material is parodic and satiric.