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We live in a world of words, and a world where English is the world language.
In the Discipline of English, we deal with this fact in two ways: first by studying
literature written in English, and second by studying English in the workplace.
English has been taught at Flinders since the foundation of the university. Over the years the discipline has developed a strong reputation for teaching and research in literature in English (from Old English to Postcolonialism). This work continues, and you can find out about it by following the teaching and research links from the department's homepage (see sidebar to the right).
More recently, we have added a focus on the teaching of writing, both creative writing and writing for professional purposes.
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Browsing English by Author "Douglas, Kate"
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Item "Blurbing" Biographical: Authorship and Autobiography(University Press of Hawaii for the Biographical Research Center, 2001) Douglas, KateIn the community that consumes autobiographical writing, how is the author positioned, and what are the implications of this positioning? One method for exploring the author construct and its impact upon readership is the initial point of introduction and consumption of the material autobiographical text: the book jacket. Book jackets provide the glue binding author and text together; they are the site where the author's biography meets with marketing and criticism. This is especially acute in autobiographies, where the constructed author is such an integral part of a book's reception. Despite its public visibility, however, book publicity, and its particular significance to discussions of authorship, is one issue that has remained mostly unexamined.Item Cyber-Commemoration: Life Writing, Trauma and Memorialisation. [abstract].(2006) Douglas, KateIn this paper, Kate Douglas explores one of the ways in which life narratives of trauma are circulating in contemporary Australian cultural landscapes: through the internet. Using the example of the Bali bombings, Dr Douglas wants to consider the role internet media have played in traumatic remembering and commemoration. Like many (actual) commemorative sites, these websites foreground life narratives in their representation of the traumatic event: testimonies from first- and second-person witnesses, photographs, poems and letters that assume significance beyond the individual. These narratives function as metonyms for survivors’ experiences.Item Review of "Big Bother: Why did that reality-tv show become such a phenomenon" by Toni Johnson-Woods.(Australian Research Institute, Curtin University of Technology, 2002-03) Douglas, KateKate Douglas's review of "Big Bother: Why did that reality tv-show become such a phenomenon?" by Toni Johnson-Woods (Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 2002).Item Review of "Making Stories: How Ten Australian Novels Were Written" by Kate Grenville and Sue Woolfe.(Australian Research Institute, Curtin University of Technology, 2002) Douglas, KateKate Douglas's review of "Making Stories: How Ten Australian Novels Were Written" (Crows Nest: Allen and Unwin, 2001, 1993).Item Review of "Other People's Words" by Hilary McPhee.(Australian Research Institute, Curtin University of Technology, 2002) Douglas, KateKate Douglas's review of "Other People's Words" by Hilary McPhee (Sydney: Picador, 2001).Item Review of "The Olympics at the Millenium: Power, Politics and the Games" by Kay Schaffer and Sidonie Smith (eds).(Australian Research Institute, Curtin University of Technology, 2001-12) Douglas, KateKate Douglas's review of "The Olympics at the Millenium: Power, Politics and the Games" by Kay Schaffer and Sidonie Smith (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2000).Item The Universal Autobiographer: The Politics of Normative Readings.(Australian Research Institute, Curtin University of Technology, 2002) Douglas, KateIn Australia, autobiographies occupy a cultural space which commonly sees them marked as socially valuable, functional texts. Autobiographies are thought to be concerned with the dominant concerns of our time, representing individuals who, through their strength and resilience, become universalised exemplars for the wider community. In this paper Dr Douglas examines the implications of reading an autobiographical narrative through such established autobiographical standards and models. She discusses the socio-literary positioning of one contemporary indigenous Australian autobiography, Donna Meehan’s "It is no Secret" (published in 2000), through its production and circulation. This reading reveals one way in which contemporary autobiographies are affected by the prevalence of normative readings. These normative readings result in this autobiography being read primarily through two frames: 1. the figure of the innocent child and 2. the successful, resilient, writer who overcame adversity to author this autobiographical work. Dr Douglas addresses the ways in which the political act of autobiography, in this instance, indigenous autobiography, is affected by mainstream publishing’s more general commodification of autobiographical narratives, which in turn creates sanctioned positions for writing and reading these texts.Item We Don't Need No Education: Adolescence and the School in Contemporary Australian Teen TV(British Film Institute, 2004) Douglas, Kate; McWilliam, KellyTelevision remains the number one leisure pursuit of Australian teenagers, yet teenagers occupy a number of complicated, sometimes contradictory, spaces on contemporary Australian television. Non-fictional teen representations range from the routinely apocalyptic (such as the ‘street kids’ and ‘drug addicts’ of news media), to the conventionally 'beautiful' (on reality programmes such as "Search for a Supermodel" and "Popstars"). Alongside these images are a variety of fictional teen images dominated by soap operas such as "Home and Away" and "Neighbours", which have successfully targeted teen and young adult demographics for a number of years. Since the mid-1990s, there has also been a (relatively unsuccessful) shift in Australia towards 'quality teen television drama' — programmes fundamentally for and about youth. In this chapter we focus on "Heartbreak High", arguably the most significant Australian 'quality teen television drama' of the 1990s. We explore how the programme’s diegesis negotiates and maps identities for contemporary Australian teenagers. More specifically, we examine constructions of teenage identities in contemporary Australian ‘quality teen television drama’ (hereafter referred to as ‘teen TV’) via representations of ‘the school’ and ‘post-school’ options within the programme. We investigate how "Heartbreak High" has responded to (whether by conforming to, or exceeding) the available cultural spaces for narrating adolescent experiences, but also to the broader social relationship between adolescents and schools. How does this programme represent the accord and tension between teens and schools? Do these representations offer diverse or uniform outcomes for their teen characters in relation to educational and post-school options, and what are the implications for Australian teen identities more broadly? We overview "Heartbreak High" and its reception, but also make comparative references to other Australian programmes that feature teens prominently.