Monash contributor
John Hawke reviews 'Feeding the Ghost 1: Criticism on contemporary Australian poetry' edited by Andy Kissane, David Musgrave, and Carolyn Rickett
Perhaps the most encouraging sign in this Puncher & Wattmann collection of critical essays on contemporary Australian poets is the prominent ‘1’ on its front cover, promising that this will be the first in a series. Given that last year’s Contemporary Australian Poetry anthology by the same publisher featured more than two hundred poets ...
... (read more)James Walter reviews 'Tiberius with a Telephone: The life and stories of William McMahon' by Patrick Mullins
Billy McMahon, Australia’s twentieth prime minister, held the post for less than two years (March 1971–December 1972). In surveys of both public esteem and professional opinion, he is generally ranked as our least accomplished prime minister. He is also, until now, the only prime minister for whom there has been no ...
... (read more)Kate Murphy reviews 'Shifting the Boundaries: The University of Melbourne 1975–2015' by Carolyn Rasmussen
During the 1960s and 1970s, student radicals protested that their places of learning were getting too close to industry and government. In 1970, Monash University students occupied the university’s Careers and Appointments Office to oppose the use of the university as a recruiting ground for companies ...
... (read more)In 1996 the pre-eminent political economist Susan Strange published her final book, The Retreat of the State. Strange had dedicated most of her career to studying the ability of the state to tame the power of international finance. The nexus between state and firm had empowered the United States for more than a century ...
... (read more)What I’ve come to expect of a new Mike Leigh film is, above all, the unexpected. His first feature, Bleak Moments (1971), of which there were quite a few in that contemporary study of urban, lower-middle class life, made him a potent force in British film. Think of Naked (1993) and Secrets & Lies (1996) ...
... (read more)David Goldblatt: Photographs 1948–2018 (Museum of Contemporary Art)
Perhaps the best way to influence the thoughts of another is to do so without intent. South African photographer David Goldblatt once said he did not believe that ‘any photograph of mine would ever influence anybody in the slightest degree’. Yet his photographs of his country’s apartheid era reach down into the very heart of ...
... (read more)Josh Specht reviews 'The Indian World of George Washington' by Colin G. Calloway
As a young man, George Washington (1732–99) worked as a surveyor. Looking at a landscape, he could plan its division into orderly tracts. These skills would prove useful when he became the first president of the United States in April 1789. At the time ...
... (read more)Timothy Verhoeven reviews 'An American Language' by Rosina Lozano
Many recent American politicians have believed that they could speak Spanish. Presidential candidate George W. Bush stumbled through a Spanish-language interview and was rewarded with thirty-five per cent of the Latino vote in the 2000 election. His brother Jeb, whose wife is Mexican-born ...
... (read more)Paul Strangio reviews Quarterly Essay 71: 'Follow the Leader' by Laura Tingle
As chief political correspondent for the ABC’s 7.30, Laura Tingle was a ringside commentator of the latest knockout bout of leadership pugilism in Canberra. Calling the crazed week-long events in the Liberal Party that climaxed in Malcolm Turnbull’s removal from office in August ...
... (read more)Australian musical theatre has had a long if chequered history going back to the popular, localised melodramas and pantomimes of the nineteenth century. In the more recent past, we think of successes such as Priscilla Queen of the Desert (1994) and The Boy from Oz (2003) ...
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