School of Culture and Communication - Theses
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ItemVariations of difference(University of Melbourne, 2009)
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ItemThe Forty-seventh r�nin and an existential guide to travel(University of Melbourne, 2008)
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ItemTemporality and Australian narratives of racial science; or, thesis as lynch mob(University of Melbourne, 2008)
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ItemSeparatism to soap opera ; lesbian communities and the community gaze in cinema and television.(University of Melbourne, 2008)
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ItemThe billycan in Australian poetry(University of Melbourne, 2007)
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ItemSonic intersections : subjectivity within punk aesthetics(University of Melbourne, 2007)
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ItemSpirit possession and healing rites in a Balinese village( 1978)This thesis seeks to describe and analyse a ritual known as the sanghyang dadara-dadari. It is a religious ritual, which will be shown to communicate through its use of known symbolic, metaphoric and metonymic forms of language and behaviour, the nature of the supernatural, and the interaction between the supernatural and the people of this Balinese village. It is the nature of this supernatural power, the cosmological order, and the role which this ritual played in the religious belief system of this village between 1974-6, that this thesis seeks to clarify. In addition, I will attempt to identify any change which may have occurred in the form or content of the ritual over the past fifty years, and attempt to account for the reasons for this change. In order to do this the scope of the study has been widened to include all accounts of the ritual in Bali, and three other rituals of the same genre, including one example from Java, which have been recorded between 1901 and 1970. The existing literature concerning the sanghyang dadara-dadari is meagre. Only very sketchy accounts have been located, the majority written by foreigners who just happened to observe the ritual and described it for the benefit of other foreign tourists, as one of the weird and exotic attractions of this island. Written with this aim in mind, accurate accounts of the ritual cannot be expected. These accounts cover a period between 1925 and 1941 only. Since that date no written records of the ritual have been located, which suggests, and which is supported by my research during my period of field work in Bali, that the ritual is now defunct in those villages where it was recorded prior to 1941 and in any other villages where it may have been part of the religious belief system. Only in Cemenggacn has it continued to flourish. It was therefore important to record it on tape and observe many performances in order to provide an accurate record. (From Preface)
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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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ItemRevealing the light: stained glass and the art of John Trinick( 2008)Australia has an important legacy of stained glass, but there has been limited scholarship undertaken on the artists who have chosen to specialise in the medium. One artist to whom this applies is John Trinick (1890-1974). Educated at Melbourne's National Gallery School, Trinick immigrated to England in 1920 and went on to execute over fifty stained glass window schemes in that country. He regularly exhibited his work at the Royal Academy of Arts and had a collection of his stained glass drawings acquired by the Victoria and Albert Museum. Despite these achievements, he has not received recognition for his work in either England or in his place of birth, Australia. The significance of Trinick's contribution to stained glass design will be demonstrated in this thesis through an examination of the John Trinick Study Collection held at the Ian Potter Museum of Art at the University of Melbourne. This Collection consists of seventy-five works, the majority of which are large-scale stained glass cartoons for the windows Trinick produced. This thesis represents the first time the Collection has been examined in depth. The thesis assesses how Trinick can be positioned within Australian stained glass history. It will be argued that as part of the wider University of Melbourne Art Collection, the John Trinick Study Collection has been given a renewed meaning, providing researchers with a different insight into the development of the medium in Australia. The important links that the Collection reveals between Trinick and fellow stained glass artists, Napier Waller (1894-1972) and Christian Waller (nee Yandell) (1894-1954) are also assessed. The thesis is divided into four chapters. Two chapters focus on the biographical details of the artist's life. These chapters argue that Trinick's introduction to the Arts and Crafts Movement while he was a student in Melbourne and his initial employment in some of England's leading Arts and Crafts stained glass studios had a lasting impact on the type of stained glass artist he was to become. The other two chapters focus on the John Trinick Study Collection as a case study to assess the collection management and curatorial challenges that these types of collections pose. A series of recommendations is then put forward as to how these problems can be addressed in relation to the management and care of the John Trinick Study Collection. Trinick is one of the forgotten practitioners of Arts and Crafts stained glass. The many years he spent as an Anglo-Australian artist working in England have contributed to his neglect within Australian art circles. It is hoped that this study will reveal his skills as a stained glass artist and introduce his work to a new audience.