Extract: Nation, Memory, Myth by Steve Vizard
Posted on 11 Jun 2025
How does myth generate meaning for a nation and its citizens? How does a national myth transform into symbolic performances of cultural memory and kinship?
Cassandra Pybus is ARC Senior Fellow in History and Classics at the University of Tasmania. Her previous books include Community of Thieves; Gross Moral Turpitude; White Rajah: A Dynastic Intrigue; Till Apples Grow on an Orange Tree; The Devil and James McAuley (which won the 2000 Adelaide Festival Award for non-fiction), and Raven Road. During 2002 Pybus will be a Fulbright Senior Scholar at Georgetown University in Washington DC.
Hamish Maxwell-Stewart is a lecturer in the School of History and Classics at the University of Tasmania. He has published many influential articles on convict history and is a contributor to Written on the Body, Convict Love Tokens and Representing Convicts. With Lucy Frost he edited Chain Letters: Narrating Convict Lives (MUP 2001).
Posted on 11 Jun 2025
How does myth generate meaning for a nation and its citizens? How does a national myth transform into symbolic performances of cultural memory and kinship?
Posted on 11 Jun 2025
Why has Antarctica long loomed large in Australian psyche? How did Australia come to see Antarctica as a natural extension of our territory and why…
Posted on 11 Jun 2025
Culture, society and human behaviour have forever been linked to nature. In her thought-provoking book, Lesley Head, geographer and Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor Emeritus at…
Posted on
We started the year by moving tens of thousands of physical books across state lines, swam through oceans of metadata and updated our back-end systems…
Fri 27 June at 12:00PM
Four Seasons Hotel, 199 George Street, Sydney NSW 2000
Join Chris Hammer in conversation with ABC's Fran Kelly to discuss the updated edition of The River.
Thu 26 June at 6:00PM
Readings Carlton, 309 Lygon St, Carlton VIC 3053
Join us to hear Steve Vizard in conversation about Nation, Memory, Myth.
Tue 08 July at 6:00PM
Readings Hawthorn, 687 Glenferrie Rd, Hawthorn VIC 3122
Join us to hear Chris Hammer in conversation about his bestselling classic book, The River.
Thu 10 July at 6:30PM
Burnside Library, 401 Greenhill Road Tusmore, SA 5065
Learn more about author Chris Hammer's prize-winning non-fiction book about the Murray Darling Basin.