Writing and Society projects

Current projects

Australian Literary Publishing and its Economies, 1965-1995

Researchers: Ivor Indyk, John Arnold, Mark Davis, David Carter and Louise Poland
Partner/Funding Body: Australian Research Council, Discovery Grant
Period: 2007-2009
» Fact sheet (PDF, 38Kb)

The effectiveness, both critical and financial, of Literature Board subsidies to Australian publishers in the ten-year period, 1995­-2005

Researchers: Ivor Indyk, Louise Poland, and Kath McLean
Partner/Funding Body: the Australia Council
Period: 2009-2010

The research project aims to assess the efficacy and significance of Literature Board subsidies to publishers of Australian literary works in the period 1995-­2005. Over the ten-year period under examination, some 1200 titles were subsidised by the Literature Board. The project examines the range of titles and publishers supported by the subsidies, and considers the extent to which those titles made a significant contribution to Australian literature, either directly, in recognition of their value, or indirectly through the contribution they made to the authors' careers and reputations, and to the reputations and lists of the publishers concerned.

Literature, Music, Voice

Researcher: Hazel Smith

This project focuses on a range of sonic/verbal intersections, and relationships between literature and music, in the growing field of musico-literary discourse. It is particularly concerned with the formal/cultural hybridities, mixes and impurities created by such intersections, and the way they are changing concepts of the literary. Focusing on the contemporary scene, it includes work on new media poetry, sound and affect; cultural eclecticism in the work of American jazz singer Kurt Elling; the blues-inflected African American performance poetry of Harryette Mullen, Wanda Coleman and Tracie Morris; the politics of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra (a youth orchestra initiated by Daniel Barenboim and Edward Said), and its implications for Palestinian-Israeli cooperation; the voice in computer music and its relationship to identity, place and community; and the representation of musical meaning, musical performance and musical communities in literary fiction, particularly Vikram Seth’s An Equal Music and Richard Powers’ A Time of Our Singing.

Past projects

Western Sydney Writing Projects

Researchers: Ivor Indyk, Mireille Astore, Anna Poletti and associate researchers
Partner/Funding Body: Arts NSW - 2006 Western Sydney Strategic Initiatives Grant
» Fact Sheet (PDF, 37Kb)

Writing in the Image Culture

Researchers: Anna Gibbs, Maria Angel, Rachel Morley
Partner/Funding Body: UWS Research Grant
Period: 2008

The Power of the Image: Affect, Audience and Disturbing Imagery

Researchers: Anna Gibbs and Virginia Nightingale
Partner/Funding Body: Australian Research Council, Discovery Grant
Period: 2006-2009
» Fact sheet (PDF, 26Kb)

The Image of Thought: Literature as a Way of Thinking

Researcher: Anthony Uhlmann
Partner/Funding Body: Australian Research Council, Discovery Grant
Period: 2005-2006
» Fact sheet (PDF, 41Kb)

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