TEXT: Journal of Writing and Writing Courses, 2023
Doctoral research candidates navigate a unique path and sustain a rigorous program of study as th... more Doctoral research candidates navigate a unique path and sustain a rigorous program of study as they make an original contribution to knowledge. The complex and challenging nature of doctoral research is evidenced by high rates of anxiety and depression among candidates (Evans et al., 2018). Metaphors are one tool used by candidates and supervisors to facilitate communication and the candidate’s understanding of the research process. In this article, we argue that the existing range of metaphors have limitations, firstly in cases where they imply an ongoing process with no clear end, and secondly when presented in text or through oral communication without a pictorial representation. We aim to enrich current offerings of metaphors by contributing a new metaphor, which we present as The Moon Diagram. This combined pictorial and textual representation points to two areas of endeavour encountered in the research process, Fundamental Tenets and Creative Courage, and their correlation. The moon is depicted during a half-moon phase to symbolically differentiate the two regions, while overlaid text indicates the skills and experiences associated with each. The whole moon symbolises doctoral completion, and a separate celestial body represents post-doctoral employment. The Moon Diagram may be a useful mnemonic device for potential and confirmed candidates and printed as a larger-scale chart for supervisors to reference when mentoring candidates to doctoral completion.
TEXT: Journal of Writing and Writing Courses, 2022
Contemporary farming often involves more machines, access to information, and public pressure to ... more Contemporary farming often involves more machines, access to information, and public pressure to protect or regenerate non-human nature than in the past. However, this is scarcely reflected in the farm novel, which is largely bound to an historical era. Australian farm novels include Benjamin Cozens’ Princess of the Mallee (1903), John Naish’s The Cruel Field (1962), Randolph Stow’s The Merry-Go-Round in the Sea (1965), and Carrie Tiffany’s Everyman’s Rules for Scientific Living (2005). Each feature realism and pre-1960s settings. In this article, I propose a major revision of the farm novel by employing magic realism to challenge Australia’s realist representations of farming as a rational, money-making enterprise. Magic realism allows me to position Australia’s dominant profit-driven approach to agriculture as fantasy and hopefully to stimulate new notions of farming and the farmer. By casting sugarcane and machines as a colonial farming alliance and humans as their marginalized subjects, I draw attention to a gradual depopulation of rural lands, subvert a persistent anthropocentric element of the settler-colonial ideology, and challenge notions of humans controlling the farm. This article is also a case study in a performance of John Kinsella’s international regionalism (He, 2021; Kinsella, 2001), in which Australia’s Wet Tropics connects with creative writing discourse.
Georgic Literature and the Environment: Working Land, Reworking Genre, 2022
In Australian ecocriticism, farming is understood as a destructive colonial extraction of wealth ... more In Australian ecocriticism, farming is understood as a destructive colonial extraction of wealth that has obliterated the pre-colonial Aboriginal relationship with non-human nature. This view is problematic for those seeking to recognise positive changes in farming practices or to develop alternative literary conceptions of farming. This chapter recognises the transmission of Roman culture to Australia by juxtaposing Virgil’s Georgics with three Australian novels and exploring how the georgic mode is registered. A focus on farming practices in Ronald McKie’s The Crushing (1977), Jean Devanny’s Cindie: A Chronicle of the Canefields (1946), and John Naish’s The Cruel Field (1962) enables an ecocritical reading that counters findings by Shirley McDonald (2015) of British colonists in Canada as practising sustainable agriculture. How Aboriginal characters interact with farming and are excluded from or included in the georgic mode is also discussed. Together these novels depict Aboriginal dispossession and marginalisation, large-scale transformation of pre-existing landscapes, and destruction of coral reefs. This chapter makes use of readings of Virgil’s Georgics as a reflection of Roman imperialism, a scientific text, and a portrayal of chaos and human limits to contribute new understandings of the Australian sugarcane novel and to, perhaps, enable the creation of new versions.
Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature, 2021
Many critics consider the pastoral ideal as key to understanding Australia’s rural development an... more Many critics consider the pastoral ideal as key to understanding Australia’s rural development and therefore interpret regional literature as either supporting or working against that ideal. However, this approach is problematic for a farm novel centred on labour and a harsh reality. This essay introduces the georgic mode as a new interpretative framework. In a reading of John Naish’s The Cruel Field (1962), I identify georgic conventions of the harvest, seasons, labour, harsh conditions, heroism, and farming instructions. These conventions convey insights into the wet tropics bioregion of the mid-twentieth century. Regional insights arise from depictions of sugarcane, seasons, rainforest, Indigenous people, and women. I argue that sugarcane farming and Indigenous fishing align with the georgic mode. My inclusion of Indigenous fishing extends concepts of the georgic and subverts a pastoral tradition. Spatial boundaries situate the farm and sea as georgic, and rainforest as pastoral. This delineation recognises human management of country beyond the farm. This essay has repercussions for how ‘the pastoral’ is understood and positions the georgic mode as integral to interpretations of the farm novel. Along the way, I correct a lack of critical attention to the Welsh-migrant writer, John Naish, and build on Cheryl Taylor and Elizabeth Perkins’ research on North Queensland literature to revive and reshape understandings of ‘the North’.
TEXT: Journal of Writing and Writing Courses, 2023
Doctoral research candidates navigate a unique path and sustain a rigorous program of study as th... more Doctoral research candidates navigate a unique path and sustain a rigorous program of study as they make an original contribution to knowledge. The complex and challenging nature of doctoral research is evidenced by high rates of anxiety and depression among candidates (Evans et al., 2018). Metaphors are one tool used by candidates and supervisors to facilitate communication and the candidate’s understanding of the research process. In this article, we argue that the existing range of metaphors have limitations, firstly in cases where they imply an ongoing process with no clear end, and secondly when presented in text or through oral communication without a pictorial representation. We aim to enrich current offerings of metaphors by contributing a new metaphor, which we present as The Moon Diagram. This combined pictorial and textual representation points to two areas of endeavour encountered in the research process, Fundamental Tenets and Creative Courage, and their correlation. The moon is depicted during a half-moon phase to symbolically differentiate the two regions, while overlaid text indicates the skills and experiences associated with each. The whole moon symbolises doctoral completion, and a separate celestial body represents post-doctoral employment. The Moon Diagram may be a useful mnemonic device for potential and confirmed candidates and printed as a larger-scale chart for supervisors to reference when mentoring candidates to doctoral completion.
TEXT: Journal of Writing and Writing Courses, 2022
Contemporary farming often involves more machines, access to information, and public pressure to ... more Contemporary farming often involves more machines, access to information, and public pressure to protect or regenerate non-human nature than in the past. However, this is scarcely reflected in the farm novel, which is largely bound to an historical era. Australian farm novels include Benjamin Cozens’ Princess of the Mallee (1903), John Naish’s The Cruel Field (1962), Randolph Stow’s The Merry-Go-Round in the Sea (1965), and Carrie Tiffany’s Everyman’s Rules for Scientific Living (2005). Each feature realism and pre-1960s settings. In this article, I propose a major revision of the farm novel by employing magic realism to challenge Australia’s realist representations of farming as a rational, money-making enterprise. Magic realism allows me to position Australia’s dominant profit-driven approach to agriculture as fantasy and hopefully to stimulate new notions of farming and the farmer. By casting sugarcane and machines as a colonial farming alliance and humans as their marginalized subjects, I draw attention to a gradual depopulation of rural lands, subvert a persistent anthropocentric element of the settler-colonial ideology, and challenge notions of humans controlling the farm. This article is also a case study in a performance of John Kinsella’s international regionalism (He, 2021; Kinsella, 2001), in which Australia’s Wet Tropics connects with creative writing discourse.
Georgic Literature and the Environment: Working Land, Reworking Genre, 2022
In Australian ecocriticism, farming is understood as a destructive colonial extraction of wealth ... more In Australian ecocriticism, farming is understood as a destructive colonial extraction of wealth that has obliterated the pre-colonial Aboriginal relationship with non-human nature. This view is problematic for those seeking to recognise positive changes in farming practices or to develop alternative literary conceptions of farming. This chapter recognises the transmission of Roman culture to Australia by juxtaposing Virgil’s Georgics with three Australian novels and exploring how the georgic mode is registered. A focus on farming practices in Ronald McKie’s The Crushing (1977), Jean Devanny’s Cindie: A Chronicle of the Canefields (1946), and John Naish’s The Cruel Field (1962) enables an ecocritical reading that counters findings by Shirley McDonald (2015) of British colonists in Canada as practising sustainable agriculture. How Aboriginal characters interact with farming and are excluded from or included in the georgic mode is also discussed. Together these novels depict Aboriginal dispossession and marginalisation, large-scale transformation of pre-existing landscapes, and destruction of coral reefs. This chapter makes use of readings of Virgil’s Georgics as a reflection of Roman imperialism, a scientific text, and a portrayal of chaos and human limits to contribute new understandings of the Australian sugarcane novel and to, perhaps, enable the creation of new versions.
Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature, 2021
Many critics consider the pastoral ideal as key to understanding Australia’s rural development an... more Many critics consider the pastoral ideal as key to understanding Australia’s rural development and therefore interpret regional literature as either supporting or working against that ideal. However, this approach is problematic for a farm novel centred on labour and a harsh reality. This essay introduces the georgic mode as a new interpretative framework. In a reading of John Naish’s The Cruel Field (1962), I identify georgic conventions of the harvest, seasons, labour, harsh conditions, heroism, and farming instructions. These conventions convey insights into the wet tropics bioregion of the mid-twentieth century. Regional insights arise from depictions of sugarcane, seasons, rainforest, Indigenous people, and women. I argue that sugarcane farming and Indigenous fishing align with the georgic mode. My inclusion of Indigenous fishing extends concepts of the georgic and subverts a pastoral tradition. Spatial boundaries situate the farm and sea as georgic, and rainforest as pastoral. This delineation recognises human management of country beyond the farm. This essay has repercussions for how ‘the pastoral’ is understood and positions the georgic mode as integral to interpretations of the farm novel. Along the way, I correct a lack of critical attention to the Welsh-migrant writer, John Naish, and build on Cheryl Taylor and Elizabeth Perkins’ research on North Queensland literature to revive and reshape understandings of ‘the North’.
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Papers by Elizabeth Smyth