Australia: Books, Films, Articles

Includes "Australia: the great princess of the south."

Includes "Australia" by David Yeadon.

"Thirty years ago, two young biologists named Robert MacArthur and Edward O. Wilson triggered a far-reaching scientific revolution. In a book titled The Theory of Island Biogeography, they presented a new view of a little-understood matter: the geographical patterns in which animal and plant species occur. Why do marsupials exist in Australia and South America, but not in Africa? Why do tigers exist in Asia, but not in New Guinea? Influenced by MacArthur and Wilson's book, an entire generation of ecologists has recognized that island biogeography - the study of the distribution of species on islands and islandlike patches of landscape - yields important insights into the origin and extinction of species everywhere..."

"Accompanying famed British nature writer Deakin through the woods of Britain, Europe, Kazakhstan, and Australia in search of what lies behind man's profound and enduring connection with trees. Deakin lives in forest shacks, goes "coppicing" in Suffolk, swims beneath the walnut trees of the Haut-Languedoc, and hunts bushplums with Aboriginal women in the outback. Along the way, he ferrets out the mysteries of woods, detailing the life stories of the timber beams composing his Elizabethan house and searching for the origin of the apple."

Includes the chapter "Between the covers: feminist, antiracist, and queer: performance art in Australia" by Andrea Breen.

Includes the chapter "The 'very poetry of frogs': Louisa Anne Meredith in Australia" by Judith Johnston.

"Collection of eighteen global environmental crisis statements from representatives of indigenous peoples of six continents."

"'The Struggle for Aboriginal Rights is the first book of its kind. Not only does it tell the history of the political struggle for Aboriginal rights in all parts of Australia; it does so almost entirely through a selection of historical documents created by the Aboriginal campaigners themselves, many of which have never been published. It presents Aboriginal perspectives of their dispossession and their long and continuing fight to overcome this.' " " 'In charting the story of Aboriginal political activity from its beginnings on Flinders Island in the 1830s to the fight over native title today, this book aims to help Australians better understand both the continuities and the changes in Aboriginal politics over the last 150 years: in the leadership of the Aboriginal political struggle, the objectives of these campaigners for rights for Aborigines, their aspirations, the sources of their programmes for change, their methods of protest, and the outcomes of their protest.' " " 'Through the words of Aboriginal activists, across 150 years, The Struggle for Aboriginal Rights charts the relationship between political involvement and Aboriginal identity.' "

"Draws upon both ancient and contemporary sources to examine the significance of the earth from the perspective of six different cultures and how these spiritual traditions have valued, percieved, and understood the earth."

"Illustrated with maps, color photographs, and graphics, this title presents a status report on the world's 100,000 parks, nature reserves, and other land and marine areas that are designated as protected areas. It offers an overview of where these protected areas exist worldwide, what they have and have not accomplished and what threats they face."

More current edition on reserve.

Includes the chapter "The Dreaming in contemporary aboriginal Australia" by Lynne Hume.

"The six contributors to this illustrated volume show how images of Plains Indians, World's Fair cards, and portraits from Africa, the Pacific Islands, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan documented distant cultures but also reinforced Western biases by emphasizing the seemingly vast cultural differences between viewers and subjects. The authors discuss the differences between original photographs and their postcard equivalents, and they explore in detail common practices - such as artificial settings, costumes and props, colorization, and patronizing captions - that perpetuated racist, sexist, and romantic stereotypes. Drawing on anthropological, historical, and art historical analyses, contributors examine examples from both public and private collections, tracing the postcard's overlapping roles as souvenir, collectible, and popular art form."

"At D.H. Lawrence's suggestion, a nurse and author, Mollie Skinner wrote about a young Englishman's reactions to late nineteenth-century Western Australia; then Lawrence completely rewrote it."

Includes: "Across Australia, Asia, and Africa, 1895-1896, Interviews 82-120."

Includes the chapter "Dreamers: languages in Northern Australia."

Our primary text for the seminar, "An account of the convict settlements in Australia based upon letters, diaries, and documents from the first landing in Botany Bay in 1788 to the last shipload of convicts in 1868."

"(C)onsidered a classic in the field of cultural and historical geography," THE ROAD TO BOTANY BAY "examines the poetic constitution of colonial society. Through a far-reaching exploration of Australia’s mapping, narrative description, early urbanism, and bush mythology, Paul Carter exposes the mythopoetic mechanisms of empire. A powerfully written account of the ways in which language, history, and geography influenced the territorial theater of nineteenth-century imperialism, the book is also a call to think, write, and live differently."

"Three drag queens from Sydney hit the road for Alice Springs in a bus dubbed "Priscilla". Their outrageous costumes, disco music and dancing get some pretty interesting feedback at every stop along the way."

Starring Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman. "Set in northern Australia before World War II, an English aristocrat who inherits a sprawling ranch reluctantly pacts with a stock-man in order to protect her new property from a takeover plot. As the pair drive 2,000 head of cattle over unforgiving landscape, they experience the bombing of Darwin, Australia, by Japanese forces firsthand."

"Lindy (Streep) lives the nightmare of seeing a wild dog carry off her infant, then endures a travesty of a trial by the courts and media." Based on the novel EVIL ANGELS by John Bryson. Based on a true story.

"Sixteen-year-old Irish immigrant Ned Kelly is sentenced to three years in prison for stealing horse. After his release, he finds work tending to horses owned by Richard Cook, whose wife becomes interested in Ned. Fitzpatrick, is a police officer interested in Ned's sister Kate. When she refuses his advances, Fitzpatrick steals the family's animals. Not being able to go straight, Ned goes on the run and steals from a string of banks to support himself and his gang."

"Radioactive fallout from a nuclear war has wiped out the entire northern hemisphere, with the exception of Australia. With fallout expected momentarily, the Australians review their lives, establish new relationships and prepare for their tragic demise." Based on the novel by Nevil Shute.

"In 1931, Molly and her younger cousins, Gracie and Daisy, were three half-caste children from Western Australia who were taken from their parents under government edict and sent to an institution where they were taught to forget their families, their culture, and re-invent themselves as members of "white" Australian society. The three girls begin an epic journey back to Western Australia, travelling 1,500 miles on foot with no food or water, and navigating by following the fence that has been built across the nation to stem an over-population of rabbits." Based on the book by Doris Pilkington Garimara.

"As Tolstoy asserted, every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. This unhappy family has never confronted its unhappiness: Sweetie, so called since childhood, the apple of her father Bob's eye and the bane of her mother Flo's smothered existence. Her sister Kay is shy, superstitious, and sexually repressed where Sweetie is loud, slovenly, and quite possibly mentally ill. The family has managed to lead relatively normal lives by denying their bizarre family reality. Sweetie has terrorized her family for years, but an unexpected tragedy is about to loosen her spoiled brat grip on their psyches. "

"Jane Elliott performs her famous blue-eyed/brown-eyed experiment on a group of white and aborigine adults in Australia. Considering how the government forcibly removed children of aboriginal parents in order to make the whole race extinct, the video illustrates what happens when the tables are turned, and the whites become the victim of this blatant discrimination."

"A married couple in Australia find themselves at odds when the wife wants to settle down on a farm of their own, but the husband finds settling down more than his untethered spirit can bear." From the novel by Jon Cleary.

"A young sister and brother are abandoned in the harsh Australian outback and must learn to exist in the natural world, without their usual comforts, in this hypnotic masterpiece. Along the way, they met a young aborigine on his 'walkabout, ' a rite of passage in which adolescent boys are initiated into manhood by journeying into the wilderness alone."