Kay Schaffer

Sidonie Smith

Exploring the cultural politics of the Olympic Games, these essays investigate such topics as the emergence of women athletes as cultural commodities, the orchestrated spectacles of the opening and closing ceremonies, and the Gay Games. Unforgettable events and decisions are also discussed.

Power, Politics, and the Games

The Olympics at the Millennium

Xianlin Song

What does it mean to read from elsewhere? Women Writers in Postsocialist China introduces readers to a range and variety of contemporary Chinese women’s writing, which has seen phenomenal growth in recent years. The book addresses the different ways women’s issues are understood in China and the West, attending to the processes of translation, adaptation, and the grafting of new ideas with existing Chinese understandings of gender, feminism, subjectivity, consumerism and (post) modernism. By focusing on women’s autobiographical, biographical, fictional and historical writing, the book engages in a transcultural flow of ideas between western and indigenous Chinese feminisms. Taking account of the accretions of social, cultural, geographic, literary, economic, and political movements and trends, cultural formations and ways of thinking, it asks how the texts and the concepts they negotiate might be understood in the social and cultural spaces within China and how they might be interpreted differently elsewhere in the global locations in which they circulate. The book argues that women-centred writing in China has a direct bearing on global feminist theory and practice. This critical study of selected genres and writers highlights the shifts in feminist perspectives within contemporary local and global cultural landscapes.

Women Writers in Postsocialist China

Beate Neumeier

How does one read across cultural boundaries? The multitude of creative texts, performance practices, and artworks produced by Indigenous writers and artists in contemporary Australia calls upon Anglo-European academic readers, viewers, and critics to respond to this critical question. Contributors address a plethora of creative works by Indigenous writers, poets, playwrights, filmmakers, and painters, including Richard Frankland, Lionel Fogarty, Lin Onus, Kim Scott, Sam Watson, and Alexis Wright, as well as Durrudiya song cycles and works by Western Desert artists. The complexity of these creative works transcends categorical boundaries of Western art, aesthetics, and literature, demanding new processes of reading and response. Other contributors address works by non-Indigenous writers and filmmakers such as Stephen Muecke, Katrina Schlunke, Margaret Somerville, and Jeni Thornley, all of whom actively engage in questioning their complicity with the past in order to challenge Western modes of knowledge and understanding and to enter into a more self-critical and authentically ethical dialogue with the Other. In probing the limitations of Anglo-European knowledge-systems, essays in this volume lay the groundwork for enter¬ing into a more authentic dialogue with Indigenous writers and critics. Beate Neumeier is Professor and Chair of English at the University of Cologne. Her research is in gender, performance, and postcolonial studies. Editor of the e-journal Gender Forum and the database GenderInn, she has published books on English Re¬naissance and contemporary anglophone drama, contemporary American and British-Jewish literature, and women’s writing. Kay Schaffer, an Adjunct Professor in Gender Studies and Social Analysis at the University of Adelaide. is the author of ten books and numerous articles at the intersections of gender, culture, and literary studies. Her recent publications address the Stolen Generations in Australia, life narratives in human-rights campaigns, and readings of contemporary Chinese women writers.

Indigenous Cultures in Australia

Decolonizing the Landscape

In this book, colonialism, race, and gender are explored through the cultural representations of an episode of Australian history.

Kay Schaffer

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