Böcker utgivna av Monash University Publishing

In a world of fake news and populist politics, elections can seem like theatre. With growing rates of informal votes and a perceived narrowing of differences between the major parties, do Australian elections really matter? Taking ten examples, this book argues that elections do matter (even when you think they dont). It is not just elections with memorable jingles or triumphant campaigns from opposition to government that can shape the nation. Could it be that the Labor loss in 1969 formed the country more than the famous win in 1972? Or did the return of the Coalition in 1954 have more impact than securing government in 1949? Elections Matter looks at prime ministers and policies that never were and examines how the democratic process could have produced a different country. Had key elections taken a different turn, Australia might have had a different constitution, a different head of state, a different health and education system and a different foreign policy approach. This book looks at ten elections that formed Australia.--

In Creativity Crisis Robert Nelson argues that university education is systematically uncreative and suggests how this might be changed. Constructive alignment, the centrepiece of todays university pedagogy, promotes mechanistic thinking and the anxious gathering of manipulative skills. Learning happens more effectively when students take their study in new directions derived from their intimate, imagined relations with the new material they are encountering. Richly steeped in the history of ideas, from ancient Greece to the present, this book radically revises the concept of student-centredness, explores the language that encourages creativity, and helps teachers cultivate imaginative enthusiasm. Creativity Crisis is essential reading for those concerned with the nature and quality of instruction at university level. This book is one of a kind. Roberts purpose is to arrive at a creative new vision, where education is less constrained, less instrumentalist, more encouraging and open to the imagination. Professor David Boud, Director, Centre For Research In Assessment And Digital Learning, Deakin University, Melbourne.

If you've ever suffered from a throbbing guilt-gland when your kids are glued to the screen - here's your antidote. Kathy Lette Ground-breaking research into the importance of screen time, and fun, for our over-regulated children. A compelling book. Catharine Lumby Troubled by what her daughter was watching, and by how this made her feel as a parent, Emily Booker set out to learn more about children and television by listening not only to scholars and experts in the field, but to children themselves. What she found was that the problem of children's addiction to screens is actually, in part, a grown-ups' problem. Speaking to children about what they watch and why reveals a steadily consistent response: they love to seek out programs that are 'fun'. But their choices are often a source of anxiety for parents, and appear to provoke a need to censure and control the child's enjoyment. At a time when children's lives are increasingly regulated, and the pressures of parenting are felt ever more keenly, this important book teaches us much about the value of entertainment, not only for children but for adults.

In November 2011, the cognitive scientist, philosopher and political activist Noam Chomsky arrived in Australia to receive the Sydney Peace Prize. He delivered lectures and answered questions about economics, history, international relations, linguistics, philosophy, justice and much more: What is unique about human language? How is it related to core components of human nature: cognition, moral judgment and other human activity? How can peace in the Middle East be achieved? What does the rise of China mean? What ought to be done about global economic problems? Is there a difference between a terrorist and a freedom fighter?Chomsky''s intellectual stature has been compared to that of Galileo, Newton and Descartes. His influence has been felt in fields as diverse as artificial intelligence, cognitive neurology, music theory, anthropology, law and theology. His moral stature has been described as prophetic. He was the only scientist or philosopher on the White House ''Enemies List''. His Sydney Peace Prize citation reads, in part, ''For inspiring the convictions of millions about a common humanity and for unfailing moral courage''. This book is an edited reconstruction of public lectures, extemporaneous talks and interviews given during his few days in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide.

The Australian publishing industry has transformed itself from a colonial outpost of British publishing to a central node in a truly global publishing industry. Despite challenges, including reduced government support for home-grown authors and the arts, small presses thrive and Australian consumers have access to an unprecedented range of foreign and domestic titles. Social media, big data, print on demand, subscription and new compensation models are subtly reshaping an industry that now also relies on more freelance labour than ever before. Publishing Means Business examines the current state of this exciting and unpredictable industry, while also asking questions about the broader role of publishing within our culture.

Living with drought is one of the biggest issues of our times. Climate change scenarios suggest that in the next fifty years global warming will increase both the frequency and severity of these phenomena. Stories of drought are familiar to us, accompanied by images of dead sheep, dry dams, cracked earth, farmers leaving their lands, and rural economic stagnation. Drought is indeed a catastrophe, played out slowly. But as Rebecca Jones reveals in this sensitive account of families living on the Australian land, the story of drought in this driest continent is as much about resilience, adaptation, strength of community, ingenious planning for, and creative responses to, persistent absences of rainfall. The histories of eight farming families, stretching from the 1870s to the 1950s, are related, with a focus on private lives and inner thoughts, revealed by personal diaries. The story is brought up to the present with the authors discussions with contemporary farmers and pastoralists. In greatly enriching our understanding of the human dimensions of drought, Slow Catastrophes provides us with vital resources to face our ecological future.

Life is long. When youre forty-eight, theres been a lot of stuff thats happened (laughs). Its got elements of comedy and there are elements of heartache and drama and thriller and its got so many things in it. -- Rhonda King, born 1965. I really like the idea that in maybe a hundred years someone could listen and hear about my life to learn about what living in 2012 or 2013 was like. Think thats really cool. -- Adam Farrow-Palmer, born 1988. This book illuminates Australian life across the 20th and into the 21st century: how Australian people have been shaped by the forces and expectations of contemporary history and how, in turn, they have made their lives and created Australian society. From oral history interviews with Australians born between 1920 and 1989, fifty narrators reflect on their diverse experiences as children and teenagers, in midlife and in old age, about faith, migration, work and play, aspiration and activism, memory and identity, pain and happiness. In the book you can read and in the e-version of the book listen to the comedy, heartache and drama of ordinary Australians extraordinary lives. As our interviewee Kim Bear (born 1959) explains, Stories are a great way to inform people about what it is to be human. Even if you say one thing that resonates theres that connection made.

While the Great War raged, Australians were twice asked to vote on the question of military conscription for overseas service. The recourse to popular referendum on such an issue at such a time was without precedent anywhere in the world. The campaigns precipitated mass mobilisation, bitter argument, a split in the Labor Party, and the fall of a government. The defeat of the proposals was hailed by some as a victory of democracy over militarism, mourned by others as an expression of political disloyalty or a symptom of failed self-government. But while the memory of the conscription campaigns once loomed large, it has increasingly been overshadowed by a preoccupation with the sacrifice and heroism of Australian soldiers -- a preoccupation that has been reinforced during the centennial commemorations. This volume redresses the balance. Across nine chapters, distinguished scholars consider the origins, unfolding, and consequences of the conscription campaigns, comparing local events with experiences in Britain, the United States, and other countries. A corrective to the militarisation of Australian history, it is also a major new exploration of a unique and defining episode in Australias past.

At a time when the labour-market is failing as a source of security and identity for many, domestic tinkering is emerging as a legitimate occupation in a way we have not seen since pre-industrial times. In Australia, practices of repair, invention, building, improvising and crafting, that take place in sheds, back-yards, paddocks, kitchens and home-workshops, are becoming an important part of the informal economy and social cohesion, complicating distinctions between work and leisure, amateur and professional, production and consumption. Building on the work of historians, sociologists, psychologists and economists, but with a journalists impulse for the currency of her story, Katherine Wilson documents domestic tinkering as an undervalued form of material creativity, social connection, psychological sanctuary, personal identity and even political activism. This book mounts a surprising case for the profound value of domestic tinkering in contemporary Australia.

How Australians fund schooling has been a source of bitter political, social and religious division for almost two hundred years. And it remains so. The latest attempt to resolve the issue has been the Gonski Review, a 2012 report urging all jurisdictions to move towards consensus on a needs-based and socially just education system. The review almost immediately encountered forms of political obstruction that, in their class-based character, have their origins in the Menzies era. By examining the principles, the motives and the means of those who, since Menzies, have fought to develop and maintain a class-based education system at the expense of a broader view of social justice, this book explains how and why Australian education policy remains mired in political controversy.

Barry Hill is a multi-award winning writer of poetry, essays, biography, history, criticism, novels, short stories, libretti and reportage. His major works include Sitting In (1992), a landmark memoir in Labour History; Broken Song: TGH Strehlow and Aboriginal Possession (2002), a literary biography and essay in Aboriginal and frontier poetics; and Peacemongers (2014), a pilgrimage book set in India and Japan, and a meditation on 'peace thinking' by the likes of Rabindranath Tagore and Mahatma Gandhi in the years leading up to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Each book has been groundbreaking in different ways: deeply, originally researched, crossing genres, multi-disciplinary, combining the personal with the generically philosophical. As a writer Hills voice is informed by his Australian working-class and militant union background, which has been distilled by his higher education in history and philosophy at the Universities of Melbourne and London. After a decade working as a teacher, educational psychologist and a journalist in Melbourne and London, he has been writing full-time since 1976mainly based in Queenscliff, Victoria, but with stints at the Australia Council flat in Rome, where he finished poetic/dramatic works on Lucian Freud and Antonio Gramsci, and returns to Central Australia. In recent decades he has deepened his studies In Chinese and Japanese, which is in keeping with his long-term interest in Buddhism. Hills voice is unique, and his insight both profoundly important and capable of taking the reader to places not glimpsed before or imagined visible. This collection of essays, reviews and reportage amply demonstrates the quality and enduring importance of Hills contribution, in these genres, to Australian literary and intellectual life.