Contesting Childhood

Contesting Childhood

Author: Kate Douglas

Publisher: Rutgers University Press

Published: 2010-01-21

Total Pages: 237

ISBN-13: 0813549159

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The late 1990s and early 2000s witnessed a surge in the publication and popularity of autobiographical writings about childhood. Linking literary and cultural studies, Contesting Childhood draws on a varied selection of works from a diverse range of authorsùfrom first-time to experienced writers. Kate Douglas explores Australian accounts of the Stolen Generation, contemporary American and British narratives of abuse, the bestselling memoirs of Andrea Ashworth, Augusten Burroughs, Robert Drewe, Mary Karr, Frank McCourt, Dave Pelzer, and Lorna Sage, among many others. Drawing on trauma and memory studies and theories of authorship and readership, Contesting Childhood offers commentary on the triumphs, trials, and tribulations that have shaped this genre. Douglas examines the content of the narratives and the limits of their representations, as well as some of the ways in which autobiographies of youth have become politically important and influential. This study enables readers to discover how stories configure childhood within cultural memory and the public sphere.


Mothers and King Baby

Mothers and King Baby

Author: Philippa Mein Smith

Publisher: Springer

Published: 1997-06-23

Total Pages: 349

ISBN-13: 1349143049

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This book is about infant mortality decline, the rise of the infant welfare movement, outcomes in terms of changing priorities in child health and what happened to mothers and babies. Infant welfare raised public awareness but did not contribute as powerfully to improved infant survival - and so longer life - as protagonists claimed. This work shows what it meant for reformers, babies and mothers when the call was 'population is power: the nation that has the babies has the future'.


Clio’s Lives

Clio’s Lives

Author: Doug Munro

Publisher: ANU Press

Published: 2017-10-09

Total Pages: 331

ISBN-13: 176046144X

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Including contributions from leading scholars in the field from both Australia and North America, this collection explores diverse approaches to writing the lives of historians and ways of assessing the importance of doing so. Beginning with the writing of autobiographies by historians, the volume then turns to biographical studies, both of historians whose writings were in some sense nation-defining and those who may be regarded as having had a major influence on defining the discipline of history. The final section explores elements of collective biography, linking these to the formation of historical networks. A concluding essay by Barbara Caine offers a critical appraisal of the study of historians’ biographies and autobiographies to date, and maps out likely new directions for future work. Clio’s Lives is a very good scholarly collection that advances the study of autobiography and biography within the writing of history itself, taking theoretical questions in significant new directions. The contributors are well known and highly respected in the history profession and write with an insight and intellectual energy that will ensure the book has considerable impact. They examine cutting-edge issues about the writing of history at the personal level through autobiography and biography in diverse and innovative ways. Together the writers have provided reflective chapters that will be widely read for their impressive theoretical advances as well as being inspirational for new entrants to the disciplinary area. — Patricia Grimshaw, University of Melbourne Clio’s Lives brings together a most interesting and varied cast of contributors. Its chapters contain sophisticated and well-penned ruminations on the uses of biography and autobiography among historians. These are clearly connected with the general themes of the volume. This delightfully mixed bag makes very good reading and, as well, will serve as a substantial contribution to the study of the biography and autobiography. — Eric Richards, Flinders University


‘The Right Thing to Read’

‘The Right Thing to Read’

Author: Bronwyn Lowe

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-03-09

Total Pages: 338

ISBN-13: 1351008102

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‘The Right Thing to Read’: A History of Australian Girl-Readers, 1910-1960 explores the reading habits, identity, and construction of femininity of Australian girls aged between ten and fourteen from 1910 to 1960. It investigates changing notions of Australian girlhood across the period, and explores the ways that parents, teachers, educators, journalists and politicians attempted to mitigate concerns about girls’ development through the promotion of ‘healthy’ literature. The book also addresses the influence of British publishers to Australian girl-readers and the growing importance of Australian publishers throughout the period. It considers the rise of Australian literary nationalism in the global context, and the increasing prominence of Australian literature in the period after the Second World War. It also shows how access to reading material improved for girls over the first half of the last century.


Communism in Australia

Communism in Australia

Author: Beverley Symons

Publisher: National Library Australia

Published: 1994

Total Pages: 294

ISBN-13: 9780642106254

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This bibliography covers the 70 years of existence of the Communist Party in Australia . The material listed relates not only to the CPA but to its allied and breakaway movements from 1920 to 1991. Contains over 3400 references and includes a name index.


The Other Side of Absence

The Other Side of Absence

Author: Betty O'Neill

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2020-08-05

Total Pages: 318

ISBN-13: 1920727698

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Betty O’Neill grew up knowing very little about her father, Antoni. She knew that he had fled Poland after World War Two, that he had disappeared overnight when she was just an infant, and that his brief reappearance when she was a young adult had been a harrowing, painful ordeal. Fifty-five years after he deserted her family, Betty is determined to find out more. What drove him to abandon them, twice? What was his story? Who was Antoni Jagielski? Her search for truth takes Betty to Poland, where she unexpectedly inherits a family apartment from the half sister she never knew – a time capsule of her father’s life. Sifting through photos and letters she begins to piece together a picture of her father as a Polish resistance fighter, a survivor of Auschwitz and Gusen concentration camps, an exile in post-war England, and a migrant to Australia. But the deeper she searches, the darker the revelations about her father become, as Betty is faced with disturbing truths buried within her family. Honest, compelling, and meticulously researched, The Other Side of Absence is an elegant debut memoir of resilience and strength, and of a daughter reconciling the damage that families inherit from war.