Notable Journal Publications
Title:Indigeneity and Classical Reception in The Voyage of Governor Phillip to Botany Bay
Journal: Classical Receptions Journal (OUP)
Author: Dr Marguerite Johnson
Abstract:
This paper examines six plates depicting Indigenous peoples from the monograph entitled, 'The Voyage of Governor Phillip to Botany Bay' (1789). It is the first piece of scholarship to study the specific artwork separately (as opposed to constituents in broader surveys), and provides an in-depth background to the origins of the plates, their design history, manufacture, contextual placement within the book, and public reception. The primary means by which the plates are viewed is based on the tenets of Classical Reception in order to make sense of the artistic decision to cast the Indigenous peoples of Australia and Micronesia as either Arcadian rustics or Greek sculptures.
The Äiwoo verb phrase: Syntactic ergativity without pivots
Journal: Journal of Linguistics
Author: Åshild Næss
Abstract:
This paper demonstrates that the Oceanic language Äiwoo shows a type of syntactically ergative structure not previously known from the literature: it has an ergative verb-phrase structure, i.e. ergative intraclausal syntax, but this is not matched by any ergative properties at the level of interclausal syntax. Specifically, the language lacks a syntactic pivot, the property usually referred to in accounts of syntactic ergativity. This combination of pivotlessness and an ergative VP is unexpected from the point of view of formal theories of syntax, as “syntactic ergativity” is generally defined in terms of interclausal syntax only, and as the VP-external syntactic position is assumed in most syntactic theories to have a privileged status in the overall syntactic structure of a language; in other words, an ergative VP should entail an S/O pivot. However, the ergative structure of the Äiwoo verb phrase, with S and O being VP-external and A being VP-internal, is purely a historical accident and entails no syntactically privileged status of the VP-external arguments.
This is clearly a problem for any theoretical approach that seeks to assign universal linguistic functions to aspects of constituent structure. Instead, the Äiwoo facts support the view that any linguistic system at any point in time is the outcome of a number of interacting factors which do not add up to either a universal structural template or a set of functionally based competing motivations. This is essentially the point made by Evans & Levinson (2009), who state that ‘most linguistic diversity is the product of historical cultural evolution operating on relatively independent traits’. That is, there is a tendency for languages to converge on similar structural patterns, but there is more variability inherent in these patterns than rigidly universalist models allow for.
Title:Propositional Idea Density in women’s written language over the lifespan: Computerized analysis
Journal: Accepted by Cortex, 31 May 2013
Author: Alison Ferguson, Elizabeth Spencer, Hugh Craig and Kim Colyvas
Abstract:
The informativeness of written language, as measured by Propositional Idea Density (PD), has been shown to be a sensitive and predictive index of language decline with age and dementia in a number of studies. The present study investigated the influence of age and education on the written language of three large cohorts of women from the general community, born between 1973-78, 1946-51 and 1921-26. Written texts were obtained from the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women’s Health in which participants were invited to respond to an open-ended question about their health. The informativeness of written comments of 10 words or more (90% of the total number of comments) was analyzed using the Computerized Propositional Idea Density Rater (CPIDR 3). Over 2.5 million words used in 37,705 written responses from 19,512 respondents were analyzed. Based on a linear mixed model approach to statistical analysis with adjustment for several factors including number of comments per respondent and number of words per comment, a small but statistically significant effect of age was identified for the older cohort with mean age 78 years. The mean PD per word for this cohort was lower than the younger and mid-aged cohorts with mean age 27 and 53 years respectively, with mean reduction in PD 95% CI of 0.006 (0.003, 0.008) and 0.009 (0.008, 0.011) respectively. This suggests that PD for this population of women was relatively more stable over the adult lifespan than has been reported previously even in late old age. There was no statistically significant effect of education level. Computerized analyses were found to greatly facilitate the study of informativeness of this large corpus of written language. This research also contributes information about clinical use of CPIDR in relation to sample size parameters and large data set processing. Directions for further research are discussed in relation to the need for extended investigation of the variability of the measure for potential application to the identification of acquired language pathologies.
Title:Passport Plots. B. Traven's Das Totenschiff and the Chronotope of Movement Control
Journal: German Life and Letters
Author: Jesper Gulddal
Abstract:
This article analyses B. Traven’s 1926 novel Das Totenschiff in view of its persistent references to the emerging international passport system of the Interwar period. Building on Bakhtin’s concept of the chronotope, understood in this context as a principle of narrative organisation, I argue that these references can be analysed productively as a ‘chronotope of movement control’ - an interface linking a specific historical movement control regime and a specific mode of literary expression. Pursuant to this idea, I provide an overview of contemporaneous passport and movement control practices and proceed on this basis to demonstrate how these practices are not merely documented in Traven’s novel, but activated as a means of articulating its spatial, narrative and thematic dimensions. By way of conclusion, I offer a broader characterisation of the novel’s chronotopical strategy of emplotment while at the same time sketching its place within a hitherto unacknowledged tradition in European literary history of actively engaging with movement control as one of the defining institutions of modernity.
Title: Circus and Sumo: Tradition, Innovation and Opportunism
at the Australian Circus
Journal: Theatre Research International V 37 No 3, October 2012
Author: Gillian Arrighi
Abstract:
In this essay Gillian Arrighi examines an early example of martial arts performance in Australia occasioned by the tour of purportedly the first team of Sumo wrestlers to leave Japan. By examining the performances and reception of the Japanese Sumo wrestlers against the backdrop of international political relations—the duration of the wrestlers’ sixteenmonth contract coincided with the Russo-Japanese war—this study contributes to our understanding of the trans-national circulation of the martial arts on popular stages, and to our understanding of the circus as a politically dynamic site that nurtured performative transnational encounters. The case of the Sumo wrestlers reveals furthermore ways in which the circus worked to undermine negative racial stereotypes prevalent in Australia’s homeland culture.
Title: Structural parallels between Vaeakau-Taumako and the Vanuatu Outliers: Capell revisited
Journal: Oceanic Linguistics 51(2), December 2012
Author: Næss Åshild
Abstract:
This paper examines a set of structural parallels between Vaeakau-Taumako (Pileni), a Polynesian Outlier spoken in Temotu Province in the Solomon Islands, and the Vanuatu Outliers Emae, Ifira-Mele, and Futuna-Aniwa. It shows that these four languages share a set of structural features which is not, as a whole, shared by other known Polynesian languages; other languages may show one or two of the features under discussion, but not all four. It argues that the parallels are too detailed to be coincidental, and asks why it should be the case that just these four languages show such detailed similarities in structure. While it is not possible on the basis of the available data to decide whether the similarities should be assumed to result from shared origins or contact (or both), it is proposed that they may be seen as tentative support for the suggestion made by Bayard (1976) that the Vanuatu Outliers (and West Uvea) received their primary settlement from the Vaeakau-Taumako area, rather than directly from Triangle Polynesia.
Title: Narrativies of Resentment. Notes toward a Literary History of European Anti-Americanism
Journal: New Literary History
Author: Jesper Gulddal
Abstract
This essay investigates the history and internal functioning of a specifically literary form of anti-Americanism that for more than two hundred years has played a key role in the propagation of negative images of the United States. Literary anti-Americanism, as I propose to call this tradition in European literature in particular, is important both in terms of literary history and the history of anti-American discourse in general. Not only is antagonism towards American civilization a significant thematic strain in literature from the late eighteenth century to the present day; literature also articulates this antagonism in a distinctive and highly effective manner based on its capacity for narrative and figurative representation. The essay draws out three distinctive strands of this trend in European literature with the aim of demonstrating how literary anti-Americanism, while retaining a basic set of medium-specific properties, is inflected by shifting narrative strategies and ideological biases. Ultimately, I argue, these instances of resentment-driven writing tell us less about the reality of the United States than about the construction of Europe as a common cultural space through the negative representation of its American “other”.
Title: Borderwork in Indigenous South-Eastern Australia
Journal: Oceania 82, 2012
Author: Dr Barry Morris
Abstract:
This article provides some reflections on borderwork derived from social anthropological research with Indigenous people in south-eastern Australia (S.E. Australia). In post-settler states, boarderwork traverses a range of fields – employment, health, education and politics. It engages both Indigenous and the non-Indigenous who grapple with the issues associated with socially and culturally luminal spaces. Borderwork provides a focus on the way boundaries are continually constructed as well as dismantled and reconstructed as a result of historical, political and social change. The article draws upon the work of Bourdieu (2000) to interrogate the ‘naturalisation’ of conditions that give rise to particular interpretive frameworks and the specific relations of power that legitimate one interpretive framework over others.
‘First Nations people are border workers by the nature of their aboriginal claims and their persisting marginalization …’ (Celia Haig- Brown, 1992:230)
Title: Embracing Failure Though Performative Pedagogy: A Report From The Margins
Journal: Performance Research. 17.1 ‘On Failure’
Authors: Dr. Jocelyn McKinnon and Dr. Sean Lowry
Abstract: McKinnon, Lowry (2011)
Working at a satellite campus of an Australian regional university, where many students are the first in their family to attend university, fear of failure can present a strong disincentive to creative experimentation. Consequently, the authors have developed a number of tacit strategies with which to gently engender students with critical and creative skills at the expense of short-term vocational expectations. This de-emphasis of vocational specificity is particularly radical in a social context in which unemployment is high, cultural diversity is low (despite a higher than average Indigenous population) and education levels remain low. This paper seeks to explore the challenge of fostering a climate of critically engaged creative experimentation in a relatively conservative and socially disadvantaged regional context. The authors consider whether there is pedagogical value in facilitating the creation of liminal spaces between community and classroom in a social environment more attuned to vocational aspiration and economic sustenance than critical self -reflexive agency. The paper also addresses the role of student centred learning and the idea of the undergraduate student as researcher as critical to facilitating a holistic educational experience. This case study proposes a pedagogical climate that might performatively emphasise the importance of students re-imagining their own ethical, philosophical, spiritual and political futures. The authors find that the potential for failure is incontrovertibly linked to each of these aims. In a world in which previously unimagined contexts are routinely traversed the author’s assert that the transformative potential of failure can unlock a transposable ability for students to critically navigate the complexity of contemporary cultural landscapes.
Title: The Secret of England’s Greatness: Medievalism, Ornithology and Anglican Imperialism in the Aboriginal Gospel Book of Sir George Grey
Author: Hilary Carey
Journal of Victorian Culture, forthcoming 16.3 (2011) or early 2012.
Abstract
The Bible was a central symbol of the Victorian age and one which was readily adapted to the Gothic style which became fashionable from the middle of the nineteenth century. This essay provides an analysis for the Aboriginal Gospel Book (Auckland Public Library, Grey MS 82) which was once owned by the colonial administrator Sir George Grey (1812-1898). This contains a translation of the Gospel of St Luke which was completed by the missionary Lancelot Threlkeld (1788-1859) and his Aboriginal collaborator Johnnie M ‘Gill or Biraban (fl. 1819- d. 1842) into the language of the Hunter River and Lake Macquarie people of New South Wales. After Threlkeld’s death, Grey’s Aboriginal Gospel Book was decorated by the artist Annie Layard (c.1826-1886), wife of ornithologist Edgar Leopold Layard (1824-1900), in the style of a great, medieval illuminated manuscript. This essay analyses the relationship between missionary, manuscript, patron and artist and the medievalising context of the 1860s and 1870s including the Gothic revival in heraldry and calligraphy and the Gothic mode of the Anglican missionary movement. It argues that the medieval scheme adopted by Annie Layard for the Aboriginal Gospel Book was not an eccentric choice but can be understood in the light of the cultural, scientific and religious context of imperial Anglicanism.
Title: Astrology, Prophecy and the Tudor Renaissance: Henry VII’s Book of Astrology (London, British Library MS Arundel 66) and its Context.
Author: Hilary Carey
Journal: Renaissance Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract
This essay considers the place of astrology in the early Tudor court through an analysis of one of the finest of all English scientific manuscripts, London, BL, MS Arundel 66. This manuscript has long been associated with Henry VII (r. 1485-1509), though it is argued that it is of limited value as a guide to the king’s personal interest in the science of the stars. This paper provides a full description of the manuscript and its Tudor associations. It goes on to consider the activities of three astrologer courtiers, William Parron, Richard Fitzjames and Lewis of Caerleon, as well as the construction of the Merton Zodiac arch in 1497, and the great astrological pageants of 1501. It is argued that Arundel 66 provides evidence of the significant cultural investment in astrology by the Tudor regime at the time of the negotiations and marriage of Arthur prince of Wales and Katherine of Aragon.
Title: The Effects of Teachers’ Motivational Strategies on Learners’ Motivation:A Controlled Investigation of Second Language Acquisition
Authors: Christo Moskovsky
Fakieh Alrabai
Stefania Paolini
Silvia Ratcheva
Journal: Language Learning
Abstract
While consensus exists about the critical role of learners’ motivation in second language acquisition, controlled investigations of the effects of teachers’ motivational strategies are limited. The research reported here used a quasi-experimental design to assess the effects of motivational strategies used by Saudi EFL teachers (N = 14) on Saudi EFL learners’ (N = 296) self-reported learning motivation. The experimental treatment involved class-time exposure to 10 pre-selected motivational strategies over an 8-week period; the control group received traditional teaching methods. Multivariate analyses revealed a significant rise in learner motivation over time exclusively or predominantly among experimental vs. control learners, which held robust even when controlling for pre-treatment group differences. These results provide compelling evidence that teachers’ motivational behaviors cause enhanced motivation in SL learners.
Title: 'Contact-induced change in southern Bougainville: Papuan features in a grammatically aberrant Austronesian subgroup'
Journal: Oceanic Linguistics [A*]
Authors: Bethwyn Evans & Bill Palmer
Abstract:
The Northwest Solomonic Austronesian languages of Bougainville (Papua New Guinea) and the northwestern Solomon Islands display numerous linguistic characteristics that are atypical of other Austronesian languages of the Oceanic subgroup. These changes are assumed to reflect linguistic contact with the non-Austronesian or Papuan languages of the region. However, while contact-induced change resulting from social contact between speakers of Austronesian and Papuan languages has been shown to play a significant role in the history of a number of languages and groups of languages in Melanesia, there has been little detailed research on the Northwest Solomonic subgroup. The Mono-Uruavan languages (Mono, Uruava and Torau), a subgroup within Northwest Solomonic, are particularly aberrant with regards to grammatical structures. They display right-headed structures including verb-final clauses, postpositions and preposed possessors. In this paper we demonstrate that these innovative structures appear to have arisen through Mono-Uruavan speakers’ social contact with speakers of neighbouring Papuan languages of the South Bougainville family (Nasioi, Nagovisi, Buin, Motuna).
Title: A and an in English plays, 1580-1639
Author: Hugh Craig
Accepted; for Texas Studies in Literature and Language 22 September 2010
Abstract;
The determiner a, and its alternative form an, are inconspicuous elements of language but they are nevertheless powerful markers of perspective, especially in implying a degree of detachment and abstraction. Playwrights use steadily more as and ans over the six decades from the 1580s to the 1630s. Shakespeare’s frequencies are somewhere in the middle. His plays do not show any increase in use from early to late. His characters, though, are distinguished by different levels of use, in ways that correspond closely with Robert Weimann’s distinctions between locus and platea modes of performance. Jonson, Middleton, Webster and Ford also form part of a wider pattern of increasing a and an use, and this broader trend complements Weimann’s ideas in suggestive ways.
Title: Reading Bale Reading Anne Askew:Contested Collaboration in The Examinations
Author: Pender, Patricia
Journal: Huntington Library Quarterly vol. 73, no. 3
Acceptance Date: 9 September 2010
Abstract;
Focusing on The Examinations of Anne Askew (1546–47), Patricia
Pender considers three acts of reading, showing how this process is material and
textual, embodied and interpretative. The first is Askew’s selective reading of the
Christian scriptures, which she uses to confound her Catholic interrogators; the
second is Bale’s strategic “elucydation” of Askew, which he uses to place her in a
tradition of Protestant dissent; and the third is a late modern critical paradigm
that can mourn Askew as the victim of masculinist literary history but that might
also reassess her as a sophisticated reader and rhetorical agent in her own right.
keywords: biblical reading by women, sixteenth-century editorial practices,
John Bale, John Foxe, Edmund Bonner