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Ethnicity, Indigeneity and Globalization: Renegotiating Identity Through a Study of Select Chhau Dance Performance
Full text linkResituating the ‘Dominant Caste’: A Critique of Existing Narratives about Brahmins in S. L. Bhyrappa’s Grihabhanga: A Broken Home
Full text linkReason and Representation of Children’s Disabilities in Works of Literature: A Critical Overview
Full text linkMcLeans from Drimnin, Morvern and Mitchells from Kingairloch, Lismore and Appin and Their Lives in Scotland, New South Wales and Queensland During the Nineteenth Century
Full text linkDecolonising Categories: Learning from “Water” by Ellen van Neerven
Full text linkThis essay offers a study of Yugambeh writer Ellen van Neerven’s short story “Water”. It will look at its creative use of a group of futuristic characters, who turn out to be Indigenous ancestral spirits. How do their long-debated identity question all sorts of categories, making them appear as socially-constructed and highlighting their material effects? Traits pertaining to the bildungsroman will be elucidated through an analysis of the main character whose quest for her Aboriginal identity finds an auxiliary in the spirits’ leader and an opponent in a representative of the government. The story unfolds as a political one of becoming-as-resistant against the latest form of segregation conducted in the name of national reconciliation. Drawing on the past, reflecting the present and imagining the future, at the intersection of Western and Indigenous worldviews, it challenges the literary genres and definitions of the real and the fiction. In its imagination of Indigenous futures, navigating between epistemologies, it may be called a work of Murri realism which draws a set of parallels to reflect on current postcolonising conditions
[Review]Iris Ralph, Packing Death in Australian Literature: Ecosides and Eco-Sides, Routledge, 2022, 174pp.
Full text linkAt first glance, a review of Iris Ralph’s Packing Death in Australian Literature (2020) does not fit neatly into an issue themed ‘Strange/Letters’, for, as Ralph’s acknowledgements page indicates, this book grew out of the inaugural 2005 conference of ASLEC-ANZ (then known as ASLE-ANZ). However, Ralph’s analysis, which ‘addresses plants and animals in Australia and its literature’ (1), is very much about strangeness if we consider that, until fairly recently, the contemplation of the nonhuman was an unfamiliar approach to Australian literary criticism
To find Ukrainians and their stories: E-archives and e-databases as a source for the history of Nazi prisoners at Auschwitz
Full text linkThis text is dedicated to the topic, not yet widely researched, of Ukrainians in Auschwitz. It presents newly discovered and previously invisible facts concerning Ukrainian prisoners in Auschwitz and reflects on three questions concerning the history of select Ukrainian regions during the Nazi occupation of 1941-44: the deportation of peasants from the so-called Zakerzonnia region; the possible fate of forced labourers from the Vinnytsia region who worked on the construction of Hitler’s “Werwolf” headquarters; and the problem of correlating the places of capture of Soviet POWs who were imprisoned in Auschwitz in October 1941 with the locations of key battles of the Kyiv offensive of July-September 1941. In all three cases, discoveries were made as a result of work with large e-databases in which data concerning former Auschwitz prisoners are collected. I show how the relevant correlations were observed and report on the documentary basis of the study
Historical memory and national perspective in contemporary Ukrainian literature for children and youth
Full text linkThis article investigates the artistic verbalisation of historical memory and of a national perspective in contemporary Ukrainian literature of children and youth. Specifically, it examines Ukrainian young adults’ literature as representing a “past-present-future” paradigm. Four types of literary works give young readers an idea of events, figures and places that are spiritual and socio-cultural components of national memory: 1) historical prose, 2) autobiographical texts, 3) realistic prose, the plot of which is set in a historical period with its characteristic features of public life, ideological principles and attitude to the national, and 4) anti-utopian fantasy. Links between forms of fictional retrospection, the experience of contemporary generations and visions of Ukraine’s future as represented in the discussed narratives are analysed. These links can be found in thematic Ukrainian-centric emphases and in representations of Ukrainian patriots as national heroes, of the problem of “national harassment” and of strategies for overcoming post-totalitarian traumas
Value incongruence between natives and forced migrants in Europe and Australia
Full text linkMultiple conservative parties in Europe and Australia have enjoyed a considerable level of electoral success in recent times on the back of their restrictionist asylum agendas. These agendas are often justified by the symbolic threat argument, which asserts that forced migrants hold values that represent a threat to host societies. However, despite the immense consequences of this belief, its empirical validity has rarely been investigated in previous literature. We addressed this problem by comparing the responses of forced migrants (N = 163) and both Australian and European (French, British, Polish and Spanish) natives (N = 816) to the same 10-item value questionnaire using latent profile analysis. Our findings revealed that forced migrant values appear to be at odds with established liberties in France, Spain, the UK and Australia, and to a much lesser extent, Poland. We encourage future researchers to use these discoveries as a basis for developing further knowledge on intergroup value discrepancies to ultimately facilitate peaceful integration of forced migrants in their host countries
Growth Mindset In Physics: Students’ Beliefs About Learning Physics in Middle School And How To Foster A Subject Specific Growth Mindset
Full text linkStudents hold different beliefs about the nature of intelligence. While some believe in intelligence as a fixed trait (fixed mindset), others believe in a more malleable nature of intelligence that can be actively developed (growth mindset). These often unconsciously held beliefs can influence students’ engagement in learning and (therefore) their academic performance. Especially when facing difficulties and/or overcoming setbacks, a growth mindset is more supportive for students’ engagement. Students with a growth mindset focus on the learning process, while students holding fixed beliefs feel like they won’t ever be able to master the difficult tasks and tend to give up more often. While most of the mindset research targets students’ general academic mindset, we focus on their physics specific beliefs. Physics is described as ‘challenging’ and ‘difficult’ and in Germany, most students choose to drop physics as soon as possible. We designed and evaluated a physics specific mindset questionnaire, asking students not only about their beliefs about intelligence, but also about their beliefs about learning physics and a (potential) giftedness in physics. The results of this survey show: students’ physics specific mindsets change over time, without targeted interventions. While in the beginning of physics classes in middle school a majority of students hold a growth mindset in physics, this percentage decreases drastically during the years of learning physics. Aiming to support a growth mindset in physics, we designed a subject-specific intervention based on the domain-general growth mindset interventions, that we tested in a pilot study with 26 students