Issue 33, August 2004

Editor: Elizabeth McMahon

Target Essay

In his essay “Is This Racism? Representations Of South Africa in the Sydney Morning Herald since the Inauguration Of Thabo Mbeki As President” Alan Morris monitors one of Australia’s leading dailies to identify recurrent tendencies of racialised reporting.


Essay

Tim Rowse compares Indigenous Autobiography in Australia and the United States.


Book Excerpt

Graeme Davison’s Car Wars: How the Car Won Our Hearts and Conquered Our Cities.


Review essay

In his review of Anita Heiss’ Dhuuluu-Yala (To Talk Straight): Publishing Indigenous Literature Greg Lehman considers current classifications of Indigenous identity according to notions of the “Authentic and Essential”


Interview

An interview with noted historian Jill Roe


Reviews

Anita Heiss reviews some new Aboriginal literature: Larissa Behrendt’s novel Home and Samuel Wagan Watson’s poetry collection Smoke Encrypted Whispers.

Angela Rockel reviews Peter Read’s Haunted Earth, as a record of “the conversations that are occurring with/in place for non-indigenous Australians”.

Katherine Russo reviews The Circle and the Spiral: A Study of Australian Aboriginal and New Zealand Maori Literature by Eva Rusk Knudsen.

Warwick Mules reviews Susan Sontag’s Regarding the Pain of Others

Christy Newman looks at how Barbara Creed’s Media Matrix: Sexing the New Reality is sexing up Australian media studies.


Ecological Humanities

An Invitation from Deborah Rose and Libby Robin

In her essay “Letting The World Do The Doing” Freya Mathews asks “What is nature, and how are we to live with it rather than against it?”

George Main’s essay “Red Steers and White Death: fearing nature in rural Australia” observes the erratic and halting nature of initial contact between people and land.

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