Writing Australian History on Screen reveals the depths in Australian history from convict times to the present day. The essays in this book are thematically driven and take a rounded historical-cultural-sociological-psychological approach in analyzing the various selected productions. In their analyses and interpretations of the topic, the contributors interrogate the intricacies in Australian history as represented in Australian filmic period drama, taken from an Australian perspective. Individually, and together as a body of authors, they highlight past issues that, despite the societys changing attitudes over time, still have relevance for the Australia of today. In speaking to the subject, the contributing writers show a keen awareness that addressing new areas arising from the humanities is key to learning; and hence to developing an understanding of the Australian culture, the society, and sense of the ever-unfurling flag of an Australian something that is not yet a national identity.
Chapter
1. Kings in Grass Castles: The Duracks and Screened Mythology
Andrew Howe
Chapter
2. Its a bastard of a place takes a bastard to lick it:
Violence, Victimhood, and Nationalism on the Frontier in Lukes Kingdom
(1976), and Against the Wind (1978)
James Findlay
Chapter
3. Love, Lust, and Land Rights in The Naked Country (1985)
Chelsea Barnett
Chapter
4. Fisher Queens Versus the White Australia Policy: Challenging
Orientalism in Miss Fisher and the Crypt of Tears, and Ms Fishers Modern
Murder Mysteries?
Dirk Gibb
Chapter
5. Its the War That Didnt Suit Me: Miss Fishers Jack Robinson as
Emblematic First World War Ex-Serviceman
Jessica Meyer
Chapter
6. Beyond Changi: Australians, Singapore and World War Two Films
Donna Brunero and Leong Yew
Chapyer
7. Labor History in Australian Film and Television: Sunday Too Far
Away (1975), and Bastard Boys (2007)
Grace Brooks
Chapter
8. I belong to me and no one else: Jennifer Kents The Nightingale
(2018) Reimagines an Australian Frontier Myth
Kathryn M. Keeble and Emmett H. Redding
Chapter
9. Plus ēa change: Mainstream Representation of Post-war Migrants
from Theyre a Weird Mob to Ladies in Black
Wenche Ommundsen
Jo Parnell is honorary lecturer in the School of Humanities, Creative industries, and Social Science, College of Human and Social Futures at University of Newcastle.
Julie Anne Taddeo is research professor in the Department of History at University of Maryland.
