School of Culture and Communication - Theses
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Item'Once we had bread here, you gave us stone'. Food as a technology of biopower in the stories of Jack Davis, Ruby Langford Ginibi, and Alexis Wright( 2019)This thesis presents the first comprehensive study of food in the works of Indigenous Australian storytellers. It uses Foucault’s analyses of biopower as a grid of intelligibility through which to describe food’s various functions and effects as they are recorded, reproduced, refracted, and resisted in Jack Davis’s, Ruby Langford Ginibi’s, and Alexis Wright’s storytelling. The thesis reads food as a technology of biopower: a means by which life ‘passe[s] into knowledge's field of control and power's sphere of intervention’ (Foucault 1978, 142). Following a Foucaultian methodology, it presents close and contextualised readings of the ways that food is instrumentalised as a technology of biopower and the functions, effects, and networks of biopower that result in and through the storytellers’ works. The specific topics the thesis engages include accounts of rationing and food-centric resistance in Davis’s plays, food insecurity and obesity discourse in Langford Ginibi’s life stories, and food’s relationship with alcohol and imperilment in Wright’s stories. It traces continuities between the storytellers’ treatment of food as well as identifying the way food generates and is implicated in evolving configurations and networks of biopower. It explores various resistance strategies and their efficacy in and through their stories, as well as the new subjects, hegemonic relations, institutions, forms of government, and fields of power-knowledge that result.
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ItemWriting places: whiteness and the design of the built environment( 2018)The design of the built environment affects people. In Australia, designed spaces reflect specific ideas about nationhood that do not represent the reality of a diverse population. Instead, a white national identity pervades with unresolved issues of land often at the heart of such identity narratives. Whiteness, understood as a specific power structure, operates through landscapes and architecture in explicit and implicit ways. Indigenous cultural identities are also present within and against all of these expressions of whiteness. Such tensions arise in the first instance due to manifestations of whiteness in designed spaces being situated in Indigenous lands and Country while colonial histories and their associated violence, both symbolic and literal, remain largely unacknowledged. This thesis uses a mixed methodology to investigate a range of spaces, including demarcated national spaces, memorial sites, and places of exhibition, through the lens of critical race and whiteness studies to reveal how these identity tensions occur. Though the Australian context is the main focus of the study, an initial look to how similar issues are playing out in the US highlights the existence of transnational whiteness and the nature of the newly-formed relationship between the two nations at the time of Australia’s Federation. It is argued that the complicated relationship between these cultural identities affects the way landscapes and architecture are experienced, whether this is realised on a conscious level or not. Further, by using critical and reflexive modes of engagement, designers can gain deeper insights into place, see and feel their position in relation to these identity tensions, and understand how power is operating through them. This examination of the way cultural identities such as whiteness and Indigeneity are expressed through the design of national, memorial and exhibition spaces, allows a way into thinking about how the same tensions and power dynamics may also be taking place in more everyday spaces.
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ItemAustralia and the Pacific: the ambivalent place of Pacific peoples within contemporary Australia( 2018)My thesis examines the places (real and symbolic) accorded to Pacific peoples within the historical production of an Australian nation and in the imaginary of Australian nationalism. It demonstrates how these places reflect and inform the ways in which Australia engages with the Pacific region, and the extent to which Australia considers itself a part of or apart from the Pacific. While acknowledging the important historical and contemporary differences between the New Zealand and Australian contexts, I deploy theoretical concepts and methods developed within the established field of New Zealand- centred Pacific Studies to identify and analyse what is occurring in the much less studied Australian-Pacific context. In contrast to official Australian discourse, the experiences of Pacific people in Australia are differentiated from those of other migrant communities because of: first, Australia’s colonial and neo-colonial histories of control over Pacific land and people; and second, Pacific peoples' important and unique kinships with Aboriginal Australians. Crucially the thesis emphasises the significant diversity (both cultural and national) of the Pacific experience in Australia. My argument is advanced first by a historicisation of Australia’s formal engagements with Pacific people, detailing intersecting narratives of their migration to Australia and Australia’s colonial and neo- colonial engagements within the Pacific region. This is followed by case studies of two celebrated sites of Australian “Pacificness”: first, a mapping of the involvement of Pacific players in the sport of rugby league in Australia; and second, an analytic record of Australia’s representation at the 11th Festival of Pacific Arts, held in the Solomon Islands in 2012. A Pacific Studies methodology is developed to provide a theoretically sound and empirically informed approach to Pacific research that distinguishes it from current studies in or of the Pacific.
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ItemOswald Brierly and the art of patronage: a colonial journey( 2016)This thesis seeks to evaluate the nature and significance of artistic patronage in colonial Australia by an examination of the patronage received by Oswald Walters Brierly [later Sir Oswald] (1817-1894) associated with his time in Australia and the extent to which this patronage informed his art. The thesis explores Brierly’s role as a professionally trained artist in the emerging artistic environment of the Australian colonies in the 1840s and seeks to show how his colonial experiences influenced the subject matter of his later art; particularly the impact of his direct engagement with the whaling industry at Twofold Bay in New South Wales between 1843 and 1848, under the patronage of his first Australian mentor, the flamboyant entrepreneur, Benjamin Boyd (1801– 1851). It also examines his role as a shipboard artist on voyages of discovery aboard H.M.S Rattlesnake and to a lesser extent H.M.S. Maeander. It will be shown that following Brierly’s second visit to Australia with H.R.H. Prince Alfred, the Duke of Edinburgh (1844-1900), on the first Royal visit to Australia in 1867-1868, the artist attracted new Australian patronage: patrons who sought to enhance their own prestige and status by acquiring works by an artist who enjoyed strong royal connections. It proposes that the examination of Brierly’s work associated with Australia sheds new light on the changing nature of artistic patronage in Australia between the largely convict dependent society of the 1840s and the confident and prosperous world of the Boom Period following the discovery of gold, especially in Victoria. The thesis will demonstrate that Brierly’s art reflects these changed circumstances and the expanding aspirations of his Australian patrons.
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ItemCircuits, computers, cassettes, correspondence: the Clifton Hill Community Music Centre 1976 - 1984( 2016)This thesis examines the production and presentation of experimental music, art, performance and installation by a group of musicians, visual artists, writers, performers and film makers who were involved in the activities taking place at the Clifton Hill Community Music Centre, Melbourne from 1976 until 1984. This thesis will investigate the musical influence of the generation of practitioners who founded the Clifton Hill and taught at the La Trobe University Music Department. It will examine their influence upon the younger generation, with focus on the close relationships both generations had with the broader music and visual art scenes of Melbourne and Australia. This thesis traces a transitional moment in artistic production between the older and younger generations, which was an illustration of the broader shift in Australian artistic culture from modernism to postmodernism. I will document the artistic work of a younger generation at the Music Centre as a symptom of a new postmodern mode of engagement in order to determine what place the Clifton Hill occupies within a history of emergent postmodern theories in Australian art.
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ItemAustralian media representations of sea-level rise in the Pacific: an assessment of coverage around COP21( 2016)This study examines Australian mainstream media coverage of those in the Pacific most at risk of suffering due to climate change-related issues. It develops a multidimensional framework to assess the performance of news texts published by four key online outlets around the time of the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris. The study finds, through measuring performance against journalistic ideals, that there are many areas where the potential to improve coverage exists. This includes: better representation of Pacific Islanders, conveying the global and regional significance of the issue, the use of visioned cosmopolitan discourse, mentioning the potential for adaptation, critiquing climate policy and engaging in debate, including a vast range of diverse voices, and using environmental narrative to inspire action.
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ItemThe etched work of Jessie C.A. Traill, 1881-1967( 1982)Jessie C. A. Traill, 1881-1967, a Melbourne-born artist, was, during her heyday, well respected both in her home state and beyond, as a painter and etcher. Today her name is most readily associated with etchings, and it is generally recognised that her contribution to the etching revival in Australia is a major one and that her work in this medium warrants a thorough study in order that her relative place in this context be fully appreciated. Her prints are, moreover, of a high quality technically speaking, and show significant innovations for Australia in both this respect and in their subject matter. They are, as well, delightful and much sought after items for the collector and connoisseur of prints. This paper is the first written study of Traill's etchings, the present generation print lover having been introduced to her work in a retrospective exhibition at the "Important Women Artists" gallery in Melbourne in 1977, and in subsequent exhibitions of Australian etchings where her works have been included. As such, the study will add to a slowly growing body of information on the major Australian etchers, material which is invaluable for an adequate formulation of the history of printmaking in Australia.
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ItemUneasy allies: an Englishman in Australia: Henry Vigors Hewitt 1839-1931( 1985)This thesis is an edited selection from, and commentary on, a collection of many hundreds of letters written between 1864 and 1972, diaries written 1860-1864, 1867, 1869-1871 and 1903-1907, and poems. In the first chapter diaries written 1860-1864 by my greatgrandfather Henry Vigors Hewitt are edited. These diaries were written in England, before his emigration to Australia. In following chapters, later diaries written by Henry, and several letters and poems, record his early colonial experience. Henry's second wife Mary Simmons emigrated. to Australia in 1871, and letters written by her in that year are edited in Chapter 6. Subsequent chapters draw on letters written by Henry, Mary and their children, and poems written by Henry and several of the children. Diaries written 1903-1907 by Will Hewitt while on the Coolgardie goldfields are edited in Chapter 15. All of the original letters and diaries were kept, first by Henry, then by Will, my grandfather, and then by my father. Many of the poems appeared in various newspapers; none of the rest of the material has been previously edited or published. My treatment of the material has been chronological, with some overlapping, for instance in chapters concerning the West Australian goldfields and the Boer War. My intention has been to retain the distinctive voice of each writer, while providing an historical and literary framework. For example, in looking at Mary House's poems written on the subject of World War I, I have touched on the origins of her style and convictions, the political climate of the time, and contrasted her romantic and heroic notions with letters written from Gallipoli and the Somme by her brothers Tom and. Deane Hewitt, and of course I have used historical texts as well. Thus I have provided more of a mise en scene than does the editor of Rachel Hennings' letters for example. (The Letters of Rachel Henning, ed. David Adams, Penguin, Melbourne, 1969.) At the same time my outlines of various events are necessarily brief; the material spans, at its furthest stretch, one hundred and eighteen years. It would have been possible to concentrate on one period or theme, as for example Dr. James A. Hammerton does in Emigrant Gentlewomen (Australian National University, 1979), which uses letter books of the Female Middle-Class Emigration Society as a starting-point, or as Judith Wright does in Generations of Men (Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1959) in which she draws on her grandfather's diaries to explore the history of the pioneers of north Queensland. It would also have been possible to restrict my thesis to a biography of Henry alone, which was my original intention. However as Mary Simmons' presence became more insistent and active, she demanded equal billing with Henry, and their childrens' correspondence from, variously, the Coolgardie gold-fields, remote cattle-runs in the Gulf of Carpentaria, and the trenches of. World War I, also drew me on into increasingly tangled personal relationships and wider history. In order to untangle the lives and experiences of the eleven people whose letters, diaries and poems are edited here, I have in effect peacocked this large body of valuable source material. For example, Will's letters and diaries written in Coolgardie between 1896 and 1906 provide an extensive picture of daily life on a diggings. Only a fraction of that material is included in this thesis. The same is true for a wide range of topics which I have touched on: the colonial experience, emigrant women, the squattocracy and the labour movement, the 1890s, Australia at war and so on. My starting-point was not historical. It was a curiosity about the hedonistic and indolent young gentleman who wrote a diary in Bath in 1860. I followed him to Australia in 1864 and watched him change into a hardworking and ambitious landowner. In 1871 the indomitable Mary Simmons sailed into view and things became increasingly complicated. During the 1890s Henry lapsed into disappointment and apathy. But now their children were setting out to discover Australia all over again, this time seeing not through English, but through Australian eyes. Nearly all of the children shared their parents' facility for expression, and individuality of style, and many of them wrote poetry, like Henry. Thus the record of two very different Victorian English emigrants changes into the record of an Australian Victorian and Edwardian family.
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ItemEugene von Guerard and the science of landscape painting( 2007)Eugene von Guerard (1811-1901) is regarded as one of Australia's most important nineteenth century landscape painters. He was forty one when he arrived in Australia in 1852. His training, his contact with artists in Rome, Naples and Dusseldorf and his engagement with contemporary scientific thought in Europe shaped his response to the Australian landscape. In this thesis von Guerard's origins in Vienna and the role played by his artist-father in his early art practice are explored. The reconstruction of von Guerard's early life in Europe is based on the artist's sketchbooks and unpublished oil sketches. His training under Bassi in Rome (1830-32), his immersion in the German community of artists there, the significance of the Nazarene painters and the influence of Joseph Anton Koch for his career are examined. In Naples, where von Guerard lived and worked for six years, he painted with Pitloo and the School of Posillipo, he was introduced to Hackert's work and ideas and he undertook an extensive Sicilian expedition recorded in the sketchbooks of both father and son. In Naples von Guerard's interest in volcanic geology was ignited. Following the death of his father in 1836 von Guerard arrived in Dusseldorf 1838 where he studied landscape painting under Schirmer and Lessing, participating in their open air painting expeditions to the Neander Valley and the Eifel. He made studies volcanic phenomena in the Eifel, an important site for the emerging science of geognosy. In Dusseldorf he was exposed to the ideas of Humboldt and Carus, took sketching expeditions along the Rhine, met his future wife Louise Arnz and was a founding member of the Kunstlerverein Malkasten. An examination of the landscape paintings and lithographs that he produced during the almost thirty years he spent in Australia (1852-1882) indicates that Humboldt's ideas were the enduring imperative for von Guerard's journey to Australia. In a series of case studies von Guerard's career as a Humboldtian Reisekunstler is explored. Von Guerard's scientific interests were nurtured in mid-century Melbourne by the community of eminent German scientists resident there. His expedition to Kosciuszko with the eminent geophysicist, Georg von Neumayer, epitomized Carus's ideal of the complementary relationship between art and science. His interpretation of the volcanic Western District, prior to government geological surveys, was informed by his studies of parallel phenomena in Germany's Eifel region. In Victoria's fern gullies and the sub tropical rain forest of New South Wales von Guerard portrayed plant species from Humboldt's sixteen Urpflanzen in their natural groupings and environmental context. His album, Eugene von Guerard's Australian Landscapes, was recognized by the geologist of Novara expedition fame, Ferdinand von Hochstetter in Vienna in 1870 for its geological and botanical content. Carus and Humboldt looked for a poetic response to nature, one that would communicate a sense of the inner life of the subject and this von Guerard achieved through the sensitivity of his touch, the honesty of his response to nature and the compositional geometry of his works, works that brought Humboldt's vision of unity and interconnectedness to the Australian landscape.
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ItemShakespeare in Australia: the making of a colonial literary institution from 1788 to 1901( 1997)In the 1980s and 1990s Shakespeare scholarship in Britain and North America has produced powerful analyses of the ways in which Shakespeare operates as a cultural institution. In analysing Shakespeare as a cultural institution it is less the meanings of his plays or poems that are examined than the role that Shakespeare plays in securing important social and institutional relationships, both inside and outside the academy. This thesis adds to that body of scholarship an analysis of Shakespeare as a cultural institution in colonial Australia during the period from 1788 to 1901. Its aim is to examine the historical conditions for the development of Shakespeare's preeminent signifying power with a focus on the ways in which the "transportation" of Shakespeare from Britain to the Australian colonies occurred. The thesis develops the argument that the transportation of Shakespeare to the Australian colonies and his reproduction within the colonies were important enabling conditions for the formation of a colonial public domain. In the early years of colonial settlement the presence of Shakespeare in the colonies enabled them to exhibit evidence of the development of colonial culture both to imperial eyes and to the colonists themselves, while later in the century a number of literary and cultural organisations were established with the affirmation of Shakespeare as one of their central goals. Colonial reproduction of Shakespeare therefore helped to secure channels of communication between the colonies and the metropolitan centres of the British Empire and influenced the formation of central colonial cultural institutions - the theatre, criticism, and literature, for example - through which this communication occurred. At the same time, colonial Australia's Shakespeare helped the colonies to negotiate tensions and contradictions in their relationships with the metropolitan culture, in part because the colonies' constructions of Shakespeare registered complex interactions between discourses of colonialism, nationalism and imperialism. This thesis draws upon recent work in Shakespeare studies, postcolonial studies and Australian studies, and on original archival research into nineteenth-century Australia. Its analysis of Shakespeare as a colonial cultural institution aims to contribute to our understandings of Shakespeare's continuing influence in Australian culture and to revitalise discussion of established topics in Australian literary studies.