English
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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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Item"1408" directed by Mikael Hafstrom [review](Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 2007-11-22) Prescott, Nicholas Adrian1408 is a puzzling film, in many ways. It’s puzzling primarily because John Cusack is in it, and it’s not a very good film. This is an oddity, in my opinion; the ever-likeable Cusack very rarely steps out of line, usually pairing engaging turns as co-writer with canny role choices onscreen. Sadly, this, Cusack’s latest outing as a leading man, is a very dull experience; he neither wrote nor produced nor executive-anythinged it; indeed it seems suspiciously like he might have been offered too good a deal as an actor to refuse, and that he took the money and ran. Don’t get me wrong, he’s fun to watch, and he plays the not-quite-average-Joe with great skill, but it’s all in service of a film that you’re likely to forget the moment the final credits’ reflection fades from your eyeballs.
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Item"16 Blocks" directed by Richard Donner [review](Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 2006-08-03) Prescott, NickTo say that audiences haven’t heard much of Bruce Willis lately isn’t quite accurate; the actor has voiced a number of animated characters recently, even if he hasn’t appeared in the visual sense terribly often. As a man who became a superstar in the 1980s, Willis doesn’t need to work constantly; I’m sure the villa in Tuscany or the castle in the Scottish Highlands would have been comfortably paid for by now. It’s interesting, then, to observe the kinds of roles that will draw Bruce back in front of the cameras: with 16 Blocks, the actor is returning to the kind of grungy, unshaven, hard-drinking cop he played in the third Die Hard film.
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Item2006 Reviewed.(Adelaide Review, 2006-12-15) Dooley, Gillian MaryA summary of the best books for 2006.
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Item"3:10 To Yuma" directed by James Mangold [review]( 2008-02-14) Prescott, Nicholas AdrianFifty years ago, Elmore Leonard (these days most revered as a crime writer, whose novels include Get Shorty, Out of Sight and Killshot, which has also just been filmed) wrote a short story called 3:10 to Yuma. It centred around the struggle to escort a nasty stagecoach-robber and gunslinger, Ben Wade (here played by Russell Crowe) to a train that would transport him to Yuma prison. Delmer Daves directed a film version in 1957 which starred Van Heflin and Glenn Ford, and which was well-received as a decent Western made during the classical Hollywood cycle. These days of course, really good, traditional Westerns are few and far between, but James Mangold’s updating and remake of Leonard’s story proves to be a terrific return to this tried and true genre. Mainly for lads it may well be, but it’s a hell of a pic if you fit the demographic.
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Item"44 Inch Chest" directed by Malcolm Venille [review](Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 2010-11-12) Prescott, NickI can’t quite believe that it was almost ten years ago that I was raving to everyone I knew about an independent film from England called Sexy Beast. The great Ray Winstone (who began his career on TV in Robin of Sherwood, of all things) gave a bravura performance as Gal, a retired British criminal living on the Costa del Sol, laying low and enjoying the sunshine. Into his idyllic retirement came the terrifying Don – a genuinely frightening Ben Kingsley – whose mission was to entice Gal back to Blighty for one last job. The fireworks began there and didn’t let up for another 100 minutes; Sexy Beast was the most bracing, hilarious, tense and unmissable film about British criminality and masculinity to come along for years.
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Item"Abaza" by Louis Nowra. [review - radio script]( 2002-05-11) Dooley, Gillian MaryLouis Nowra’s novel "Abaza" is an appalling history of despotism and violence in a fictional Pacific island nation, told using the unusual format of an encyclopedia.
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Item"Across the Universe" directed by Julie Taymor [review](Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 2008) Prescott, Nicholas AdrianDirector and co-writer Julie Taymor gets points here for concocting one of the strangest and most fascinating musicals of recent years. Across the Universe is a story of the 1960s and of the now, performed as a dramatic musical set entirely to the great songs of The Beatles. With a strong and affecting narrative tied together by often breathtaking modern performances of the great Lennon/McCartney pieces, Across the Universe is a strange and at times staggering trip.
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Item"Afterlife" by Donald Denoon. [review - radio script]( 2004-10-04) Dooley, Gillian MaryIt’s an old idea that the gods envy humans their mortality, with all its possibilities of ecstasy and intense experience. Donald Denoon plays with this idea in his novel "Afterlife", subtitled "A Divine Comedy". "Afterlife" is a genial, philosophical book. The hero, Geoffrey Kingston, dies and goes to heaven. Both these facts are unexpected: he is in the prime of life, and his conduct hasn’t been such that he expected to end up in heaven. But then, he didn’t think that heaven existed.
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ItemAgainst the grain : Beverley Farmer's writing(University of Queensland Press, 2001) Jacobs, LynThis is the first comprehensive critical study of Beverley Farmer's poetry, prose and criticism, in UQP's long-running Studies in Australian Literature series. Jacobs studies Farmer's work in relation to the dynamic changes in writing and reception that have occurred during Farmer's writing life.
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ItemAlien and Adrift: The Diasporic Consciousness in V.S. Naipaul’s 'Half a Life' and J.M. Coetzee's 'Youth'(New Literatures Review, 2003) Dooley, Gillian MaryIn this paper, I look at some similarities in sensibility of Naipaul and Coetzee, one clearly a diasporic writer and the other less identifiably so, as expressed in these two recent books. I discuss to what extent their differences in literal diasporic status are significant in forming the consciousness of these two writers and their characters, none of whom seem to owe any allegience to a group, a race, a class or a nation.
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Item"All Things Bright and Beautiful" by Susan Mitchell. [review - radio script]( 2005-07-04) Dooley, Gillian MaryGood versus Evil is the hook used to promote Susan Mitchell’s book "All Things Bright and Beautiful: Murder in the City of Light". Mitchell attended the trial of John Bunting and Robert Wagner, the two main perpetrators of the Snowtown killings, the worst serial murders in Australian history. She explores the role of social deprivation and endemic child abuse in the genesis of these particularly disgusting crimes. She wanted to find ‘the hidden underbelly to this city that I and many of its citizens either didn’t know about or simply refused to face.’ Mitchell’s thesis seems to be that Adelaide’s reaction to the Snowtown murders was denial.
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ItemAmbiguity and Ambivalence in R.A.K. Mason(Kunapipi, 1983) Daalder, JoostThe author examines one of R.A.K. Mason's best known poems, Ecce Homunculus, with concern for some of the poem's ambiguities and the possibility that they reveal ambivalence, or at least a richness of meaning, rather than trivial word games or ineptitude. The Christ figure in the poem could be seen as a disguise for the poet himself, victimized by New Zealand society, but no matter whether Mason saw himself as Christ or not, it is more important to note that his attitude to the Christ figure is ambivalent.
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ItemAn Analysis of George Saintsbury's "A History of English Prosody" [pre-print].(N.Y. Queens College Press, 2007) Daalder, JoostThis is a pre-print version of an article approved for publication in 'Language and Style: an International Journal', published by the City University of New York. The journal's editor states that Professor Daalder's "important article will certainly change the field of prosody for the better" and that this article re-establishes "George Saintsbury as a fundamental source for the study of the technical aspects of the prosody of English poetry." The editor considers this to be a welcome addition to studies of prosody, and says it is "a major contribution to linguistics and literary criticism."
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ItemAre Parody and Deconstruction Secretly the Same Thing?(Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997) Phiddian, Robert AndrewIn this essay, Robert Phiddian argues that Derridean deconstruction is not just a (serious) theory couched in a parodic mode (that it is a parodic theory of language), but also that it treats language and questions of truth and reference as if they were already in a play of parody (that it is a theory of parodic language). Though some recent work is beginning to look at ways of taking it less "seriously," this is decidedly not the way it has generally been received in the academic community.
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ItemAre Wyatt's Poems in Egerton MS 2711 in Chronological Order?(Routledge, part of the Taylor & Francis Group, 1988) Daalder, JoostIn this article, Daalder's intention is to consider the question whether the poems in Egerton MS 2711 are in chronological sequence. The question is, after all, one of considerable importance. If the poems are in chronological order, we would have an opportunity for studying Wyatt's development as a poet, while otherwise that opportunity is denied to us (no primary source other than E is considered to offer it). Daalder therefore examines the relevant evidence here.
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ItemThe Art of Persuasion(Adelaide Review, 2007-12-07) Dooley, Gillian MaryA survey of seven non-fiction titles published in 2007.
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Item"Ash Rain" by Corrie Hosking. [review](Adelaide Review, 2004-04) Dooley, Gillian Mary"Ash Rain" is a strong, beautiful novel about troubled and wonderful people who brim with vitality. Hosking has managed that unusual and winning combination, poetic evocative prose with a compelling narrative. The story is full of contrasts. One of the most striking is between the vast skies of the Eyre Peninsula in summer and the wet cramped spaces of wintertime Edinburgh, where Dell travels to be with her lover Pat.
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Item"Ashes to Ashes" directed by Johnny Campbell, Bille Eltringham [review](Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 2009-10-22) Prescott, NickSeveral years ago, audiences in both the UK and Australia were introduced to the wondrous BBC drama Life on Mars. Taking its name from a David Bowie song, Life on Mars followed the intriguing exploits of a 2006 Manchester cop, Sam Tyler, (played by the wonderful John Simm) who was hit by a car and seemingly sent back in time to 1973. The show functioned as a compelling psychological thriller, following Tyler’s efforts to discover what had sent him back in time (was he in a coma, dying, dreaming, or in some kind of limbo-land or Purgatory?) and his attempts to escape 1973 and get back to his life in 2006. At the same time, the show was a loving and at times hilarious re-creation of the 1970s British cop-show milieu (think of The Sweeney crossed with The Professionals, but shot with today’s filmmaking technology), and it featured the wonderful Philip Glenister as the now-iconic DCI Gene Hunt, a politically-incorrect, hilariously foul-mouthed and utterly lovable character who infuriated Tyler as often as he helped him in his various quests.
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ItemAspects of Australian culture(Abel Tasman Press, Adelaide, 1982) Daalder, Joost (Editor) ; Fryar, Michele (Editor)This book is designed to give the general reader an indication of the variety and fascination of Australian culture as it exists today. In addition to examples of creative writing, the book contains a large number of authoritative but lively and readable essays on various aspects of Australian culture. This collection is notable not only for its scope but also for the quality of its contributions by 26 authors from all over Australia and beyond.