Arts & Humanities

This is a study of student responses to the teaching of history in an American university context, conducted by an Australian professional on a year’s exchange. It is based on an analysis of data drawn from student response surveys conducted across the units taught. The results highlight a number of key principles for a curriculum that is centred around the revealing of Jesus, particularly in the nature and effect of the learning experiences he created as a master teacher during his earthly ministry. Students identified the following qualities as responsible for measurable changes in their attitudes and perspectives: inspirational teaching, the promotion of critical thinking and discernment and the creation of relevant Christ-centred educational encounters, utilising an inquiry-oriented, open-discussion, and deep-learning context. Students considered these approaches transformational, inspiring them to life-long learning. This study draws on the Christian educational perspectives of White (1903), Palmer (1993) and Kilgour (2019), particularly for its theoretical framework.

Current national developments in composition have identified a lack of chamber music repertoire for non-traditional combinations of instruments. This composition, The Death of Baldr by Australian composer Paul Smith, was commissioned by clarinetist, Ian Sykes, and premiered by the Sirius Chamber Ensemble. The composition was a collaborative process, being work-shopped with minor edits made to the score to adapt to the ensemble.

Objective: We aimed to explore the effect of a poetry writing program for people who had experienced a serious illness.

Method: For this study we randomly assigned 28 volunteer participants with a history of serious illness, usually cancer, to one of two poetry writing workshops. Each group met weekly for 2 hours for 8 weeks. The second group was wait-listed to enable comparison between the two groups. We used the Kessler-10, a measure of wellbeing, before and after the workshops and also interviewed the participants at these times.

Results: Participants responded enthusiastically and each group demonstrated an increase in wellbeing over the course of their workshop, moving them from medium to low risk on the K10. Participants enjoyed the challenge of writing and the companionship of other group members.

Conclusions: Psychiatrists, especially those working in liaison psychiatry, are in a position to encourage patients who have experienced a serious illness to explore writing as a way of coming to terms with their experiences.

Obviously, media convergence and the 24-hour news cycle have crossed these containment lines to produce boundless data—we deliberately employ the word data here as opposed to the mediation of meaningful information that is often sacrificed in the commodification and commercialisation of news as product.

The more traditional editorial practice used to determine whether a storyline constitutes ‘news’ involves a mapping to at least one or more standard news values. These now often run second to the pressing agenda of media entities needing to present something, or anything, continuously to the public.

If Seamus Heaney’s observation that ‘poetry is more a threshold than a path’ aligns with the lived experience of those who teach or study the art of writing poetry, then there is an ongoing pedagogical discussion to be had about the way students acquire skills and achieve competency in writing poetry in a tertiary learning context.

The published poems that form the authors ‘Slow Combusting Hymn’ portfolio reflect aspects of the scope and experience of their doctoral program and research interests, which have at their core a personal engagement with writing as a therapeutic response to witnessing another person’s illness or death. These poems might be regarded as works of mourning, and a responsive insistence on creating some kind of textual continuity.

The painting Channel - enamel and butyl rubber on plywood 36cm x 32cm in the exhibition Richard Morris Paintings 2015 exhibited at ASW Art Systems Wickham, Newcastle., was formed by deconstructing pre-painted panels, into narrow rectilinear units, which have been re-assembled into a horizontally stacked rectilinear configuration. By utilising a strictly horizontal assembly or ‘stack’ of painted ‘splinters’ of plywood, each with distinct variation in both colour and texture, the work entails a type of stratification, suggestive of a landscape ‘field.’ Such notions can be seen to stem from a similar structuring configuration in the horizontal bands of earth, water and sky which typify a conventional observation of the physical landscape.

A report on the reach, audience and effectiveness of SDA Hope television channel showed that its audience was predominantly composed of retired conservative SDAs. One of the top-rating programmes among them was It Is Written Oceania (IIWO).

IIWO’s mission statement claims that it ‘is a deeply spiritual ministry passionate about communicating the Gospel to the world.’ However, while also broadcast on commercial television, it is confined to the 3.30 and 4.30 am slots on two major commercial networks.

The purpose of this research project was to explore the form and content required to make an episode of IIWO which meets both the spiritual ministry mission of IIWO and at the same time appeals to a mainstream Australian audience during daytime screenings.

The significance of this research is demonstrated in that 7Two Prime accepted the programme and broadcast it at 12.30am on Anzac Day, before the Anzac Day AFL match. It forms one episode of a larger series titled ‘Faith of the Anzacs’ that has received prime daytime screenings on Anzac Days over successive years since 2010, achieving peak audiences of up to 250,000 in the Eastern States of Australia. By reducing verbal content, heightening the emotional content, introducing a more dynamic presentation through discussion between the presenter and a historian and by choosing a topic which has wide secular appeal, the programme has transcended its previous audience barriers.

The compositional flexibility inherent in an aesthetic compositional system such as the grid, and in the convention of assemblage, offer artist’s with a structural freedom to explore some evocative compositional possibilities. Examples of such possibilities can be seen in the assembled "trajectories" attending works which utilize a contiguous arrangement of discreet parts. A trajectory could be described as a discernable visual "logic," or visual coherence amongst distinct yet neighboring parts in a work, and in some cases, also their potential direction of interpretation. Such a trajectory may exhibit a unity of structure and fluidity of interpretation for the viewer, so that they may be able to discern a palpable synergism amongst dissimilar parts. This paper will look at a selection of works which can be seen to employ the grid and/or assemblage for the purpose of forming evocative linear trajectories. Common to each of the works explored, is the compositional juxtaposition of discreet components which have been utilized for the purpose of forming such trajectories. Each work will be discussed on the basis of the viewer’s perceptual encounter with specific trajectories identified in each work.

This book chapter covers the origins, history and significance of Romanian poetry, couched in the broader context of world literature, and explains the importance of the translation in giving access to an otherwise obscure European literature to a wider Anglophone audience.

This article explores the impact of working on an anthology of Romanian poetry on an Australian academic. Having some exposure to world literature, the scholar discovers a new realm of poetic experience in a formerly obscure literary tradition previously almost inaccessible to Anglo scholarship. The article seeks to frame Romanian poetry in its broader historical context, as situate it in world literature.

This Second Revised edition of Testament continues the creative experiment of translation which underpins Daniel Ionita’s doctoral research into the process of poetry translation. An additional 40 poets nearly doubles the scope and coverage of the first edition.

This article explores the experiences of a lecturer and students in a class on the World Wars, where wargaming is used alongside traditional lecturing as a learning experience. It outlines the processes used and then evaluates the various kinds of learning, historical and other, that occur. Drawing on literature associated with history education approaches, authentic learning, reflective practice, slow pedagogy and productive failure, the study’s methods track the students’ learning experiences across a semester in which they engage in a mixture of traditional learning experiences and authentic wargaming sessions. The paper concludes with the strengths and weaknesses of wargaming as a form of history pedagogy.

An analysis of Australian war cinema since the 1980s, exploring themes and developments. It critiques both Australian Anzac film and the cult of Anzac behind it that contributes to a narrow view of the nature of Anzac. A detailed critique of eight feature films about Australian involvement in wars from the Boer War to Vietnam offers specific examples of both mythologising and alternatives to mythologising in Australian war cinema.

The purpose of this research project was to explore the form and content required to make an episode of It Is Written Oceania which meets both the spiritual ministry mission of It Is Written Oceania and at the same time appeals to a mainstream Australian audience during daytime screenings.

How did a wowser become an Anzac legend? And how did a legend become a virtual unknown today? This is the first biography of Fighting Mac to sort the facts from the fiction and present McKenzie as the Christian champion that he was.

William McKenzie was once one of the most famous of the Anzacs, a legend for his work on Gallipoli and France. For two decades after the war he was literally mobbed by adoring soldiers and their families. For the Anzacs, he became the man who best represented the Anzac ideal.

What makes Fighting Mac’s legendary reputation incredible is that he embodied almost everything that the typical digger of the Anzac legend loved to hate. McKenzie was a Salvation Army Chaplain, a species of non-combatant officer usually held in low esteem. He railed against booze, brothels, betting and bad language, and he ran frequent evangelistic campaigns for the Anzacs where he forcefully appealed to them to become Christians. Despite these apparent disadvantages he was worshipped and revered by the soldiers.

Yet today, McKenzie’s name is almost completely unknown outside certain religious circles. However, legends continue to be invented about him, adding to the inaccuracies told about him almost from the beginning. But his story needs no embroidering, and the exaggerations diminish the truth of his astonishing real-life achievements.

This book captures McKenzie in all of his charismatic and energetic complexity with particular focus on his war years: a devout man of God who became enshrined in the hearts of thousands of men who showed little other commitment to things religious. If the original Anzacs revered him, then we who revere them should pay attention to his story.