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Four major women's autobiographies of the twentieth century are discussed together here for the first time. Valérie Baisnée reinterprets the autobiographical writing of Simone De Beauvoir, Maya Angelou, Janet Frame and Marguerite Duras, finding some striking similarities in these women's resistance to a conservative order. Deploying a variety of theoretical approaches, from linguistic to Marxist, Baisnée endeavours to break the restrictive patterns of author-centred studies, to go beyond simple oppositions between truth and fiction, and to dispense with the facile interpretation of these texts as confessional. For Valérie Baisnée, Autobiography is meant to represent not the true but the official version of a life, signed by the author herself and revered as hagiography by the public. ... Instead of analysing women's autobiographies as confessional, it is possible to see this mode of discourse as a means to counteract the effect of exposure of women's private lives. By revealing their past, however painful it may be, the four autobiographers studied in this book also enhance their present strength, and therefore underline the political nature of the autobiography.
A fascinating study of the importance of ideas of friendship in late eighteenth-century explorations of the Pacific.
The fascinating story of the Scott sisters, who transformed nature into art in their extraordinary paintings of butterflies and moths, is told here for the first time.With their collecting boxes, notebooks, and paintbrushes, Harriet and Helena Scott entered the masculine worlds of science and art and became two of nineteenth-century Australia's most prominent natural history painters. Transformations tells the complete story of the Scott sisters for the first time--their early lives in colonial Sydney, their training as naturalists and artists on the isolated Ash Island, and their professional triumphs. This is a rare pictorial record of two talented and determined women who transformed nature into art in their extraordinary paintings.
Around 1870, Ferdinand von Mueller, the greatest Australian botanist of the nineteenth century, began to advertise in several newspapers across Australia for 'lady' plant collectors. This was at a time when women typically had little recourse to science, or contact with men outside their circle of friends, making Mueller's network of ladies quite extraordinary. Collecting Ladies profiles 14 of Mueller's coterie of women collectors. Included are Fanny Charsley, Louisa Atkinson, Annie Walker and Ellis Rowan for whom Mueller made time to assist in pursuit of their own passions. He identified the plants they painted and provided letters of introduction to publishers and scientists. Together, these ladies produced some of the most beautiful books and botanical art to come out of Australia in the nineteenth century, covering all the Australian colonies.
For lovers of natural history, this is the first book to explore Allan Riverstone McCulloch’s scientific genius, artistic talents and his crucial role in the development of the Australian Museum. Allan Riverstone McCulloch (1885–1925) was a leading scientist and talented illustrator, the Australian Museum’s most senior curator and its star exhibition designer. So why has history ignored his many contributions? A free spirit and an expert on Australia’s fish species, McCulloch was happiest collecting specimens on field trips to the Great Barrier Reef, Lord Howe Island and beyond. He escaped office politics at the museum to accompany cinematographer Frank Hurley on an expedition to tro...
Museum collections are often perceived as static entities hidden away in storerooms or trapped behind glass cases. By focusing on the dynamic histories of museum collections, new research reveals their pivotal role in shaping a wide range of social relations. Over time and across space the interactions between these artefacts and the people and institutions who made, traded, collected, researched and exhibited them have generated complex networks of material and social agency. In this innovative volume, the contributors draw on a broad range of source materials to explore the cross-cultural interactions which have created museum collections. These case studies contribute significantly to the...
‘I know no place where firm and paternal government would sooner produce beneficial results then in the Solomons … Here is an object worthy indeed the devotion of one’s life’. Charles Morris Woodford devoted his working life to pursuing this dream, becoming the first British Resident Commissioner in 1897 and remaining in office until 1915, establishing the colonial state almost singlehandedly. His career in the Pacific extended beyond the Solomon Islands. He worked briefly for the Western Pacific High Commission in Fiji, was a temporary consul in Samoa, and travelled as a Government Agent on a small labour vessel returning indentured workers to the Gilbert Islands. As an independent ...
Published in association with the Australian Museum in conjunction with the exhibition Capturing Nature: Early scientific photography 1857-1893.
"Questions of Power: The Politics of Women's Madness Narratives explores the ways in which women have used autobiographical writing in response to psychiatric symptoms and treatment. By addressing health and healing from the patient's perspective, the study raises questions about psychiatric practice and mental health policy. The ultimate thesis is that autobiographies by women psychiatric patients can expose many of the problems in psychiatric treatment and indicate directions for change."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Janet Frame's literary career was inextricably woven into the fabric of the twentieth-century New Zealand literary scene. However, she also became New Zealand's best-known international writer and her great literary influence in both fields has not been charted before now. This study also seeks to redress the excessive commitment in scholarship to maintaining, even celebrating, Frame's reputation as a psychologically disturbed writer. This book surveys all aspects of Janet Frame's biographical legend by considering her later literary and autobiographical works, Jane Campion's film adaptation of the autobiographies, An Angel at my Table, as well as biographies and literary histories that both rely on and contribute to her well-known legend. In doing so, the author hopes to offer novel perspectives on Frame's literary production, on Frame scholarship, on auto/biographical theories and on New Zealand literary history.