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This paper explores how Australian literature mandated for study in the Victorian senior English curriculum creates opportunities for problematizing central myths about Australia. We engage with Homi Bhabha's notion of ambivalence to demonstrate how representations of colonization, rurality and migration reflect discursive formations of Australia. We consider how each discourse serves a pedagogic function, essentializing a set of myths about Australia: as having redeemed the violence done to Indigenous Australians in the colonial period, as embodying a white, rural masculine ideal, and as a welcoming nation open to migrants. Here, we show the points of orientation these texts provide, in their rearticulations of "the scraps … of daily life", and further consider how the texts can problematize nationalist narratives.

This paper reports findings from a research project investigating text lists in the Senior Victorian English curriculum between 2010 and 2019. Policy documents emphasise the need for the English curriculum to foster values of inclusivity and diversity of culture and for texts that reflect these values in constructive and affirmative senses. In order to test the extent to which text lists associated with subject English address these ambitions, a content analysis of three hundred and sixty texts was conducted, guided by the question: to what extent do the VCE English text lists between 2010 and 2019 meet policy objectives? Focusing on findings related to text type, story setting, sex/sexuality and Indigenous themes, we found that while some goals of policy documents were met, the lists show significant shortfalls in meeting objectives for Asia-literacy, literature by Indigenous Australians and diversity in text type, especially in the marked lack of digital and non-traditional texts.

This paper reports findings from a study investigating trends in character, historical setting, authorship and themes across Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE) text selection lists between 2010 and 2019. We address the fictionalisation and imagining of Australian history through narratives about Indigeneity and settler-colonisation. While we will describe positive trends that have emerged over time, by and large this study agrees with Leane's (2016) and Langton's (1993) assertions regarding the transmission of knowledge and representation of Indigeneity and Australian history in the classroom; namely, there is an under-representation of Indigenous authors, poets, playwrights, film directors, and complex, non-stereotypical character-types and an over-representation of non-Indigenous authors representing themes and stories of Indigeneity, reconciliation and colonisation.

This paper unearths the archeology of reaction media across cinema, television and the Internet. We show how reaction content exists in high and low modes, tracing their reoccurrence and remediation from art-house and horror in cinema, to television soap opera, to animated GIFS, and YouTube compilations. Because reactions can be readily repackaged and resourced, we argue that they are a form of inter-media; operating in-between media text and media reception; in-between narrative and sensation; in-between authenticity and performativity; and in-between entertainment and resource. Reaction media are a form of sensory media with material properties. The textual and aesthetic richness of reaction content informs their persistent function, allowing for generative repurposing by internet users as a form of cultural expression and also operating as a rich resource of content able to be repackaged by professional content creators for producing economic value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Criticisms are presented of several avant-garde films, including "Window Water Baby Moving," directed by Stan Brakhage and starring Jane Brakhage, "Four Months, Three Weeks and Two Days," directed by Cristian Mungiu and starring Anamaria Marinca, Vlad Ivanov and Laura Vasiliu and "Ten," directed by Abbas Kiarostami and starring Mania Akbari. Particular focus is given to the portrayal of pregnancy in film, including of the women's pregnant body.