Kate Cantrell

University of Southern Queensland ·  School of Creative Arts

Travel has always been an important trope of settler literature, central not only to colonial displacement and dispossession but to postcolonial reimaginings of identity, gender, and place. However, it was not until the early twentieth century, after the rise of literary nationalism, that a more nativist form of travel writing emerged in Australia....

The experience of the COVID-19 pandemic can be recognised as traumatic for the way in which its sudden and unexpected onset disrupted a sense of ordinary life for so many around the world. Adults, and far less so children, were unable to prepare for the danger of the rapidly spreading disease. As such, both were left vulnerable to the experience of...

In the academic context, trigger warnings can be defined as explicit statements that alert a group of learners that certain content explored or discussed in a learning environment may contain potentially distressing material. Extant research highlights a relationship between traumatization and trigger warnings; however, the extent to which trigger...

Bandit Heeler is a hero. The cartoon father of Bluey and her younger sister Bingo, Bandit is the much-loved dad dog at the heart of Australia’s favourite four-legged family. He balances the drudgery of housework with the creative escapades of his daughters, repurposing everyday objects and actions for imaginative play and engagement. Awarded a Fath...

Education research and policy has paid significant attention to parent–school relationships; however, this work almost completely lacks any consideration of diverse family structures. This research confronts an important gap in the educational literature: the extent to which diverse families, in particular separated parents, are both acknowledged a...

In 1971, an extraordinary book appeared. Published by an “anonymous” author, Go Ask Alice documented the story of an ordinary American girl and her descent into a world of drug addiction, prostitution, and madness. But Go Ask Alice was also a work of marketing genius. Presented as a true story, the book contained a foreword by “the editors”: 'Go As...

This article explores supportive learning practices and related complexities in a first-year Australian literature course anecdotally reported to be challenging in content because it requires the study of several traumatic narratives as well as texts that directly contradict accepted discourses of Australian history and culture. The article analyse...

At first glance, Netflix's Woman of the Hour is yet another true crime fictionalisation that plays to our preoccupation with American serial killers of decades past. Directed by Anna Kendrick, who also plays the female protagonist Sheryl Bradshaw, the film reconstructs the crimes of serial rapist and murderer Rodney Alcala, aka the "dating game kil...

It is increasingly common for Australian children to live in a different house from one of their parents. About 28% of children under 14 have separated parents. While most children are born into a two-parent family, the proportion of children living in a one-parent or step-family increases each year with a child's age. This means information about...

It is ten years since Rosie Batty's 11-year-old son Luke was murdered by his father during cricket practice. Last week, amid a national crisis of violence against women, Batty reiterated her plea for family violence to be called what it is: intimate terrorism. 'There is,' argues Batty, 'an unconscious minimisation of violence when we put domestic...

The COVID-19 pandemic, and the emergency pivot to online learning that this health crisis prompted, has inevitably impacted teaching and learning across all study conducted by tertiary visual arts educators who shifted their social constructivist teaching methods from the face-to-face classroom to the online setting during the first wave of the pan...

Aunty Ruth Hegarty, or Ruthie, was four-and-a-half years old when she was forcibly removed from her mother, Ruby, under the auspices of Queensland’s Aboriginals Protection Act (1897). The Act, as it was known, dispossessed thousands of Indigenous Australians of their heartlines and their homes by segregating them to government reserves that have b...

Since 1988, World AIDS Day has been held each year on December 1. This World AIDS Day, we’re reflecting on one of the most important HIV/AIDS documentaries ever produced: A Kid Called Troy, released in Australia 30 years ago. The film tells the story of Troy Lovegrove, a seven-year-old Australian boy who became HIV-infected during birth, and the s...

The Covid-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on universities and the delivery of educational content more broadly. In many instances, this has necessitated a pivot to online learning, which presents unique challenges for practice-based visual art courses that are traditionally undertaken in an on-campus studio setting. This article investigat...

In 1855, the American mathematician Thomas Hill wrote in his most famous treatise, First Lessons in Geometry, that the first lessons we learn as children are lessons in form. Before we learn to talk, we point at objects to explain what we mean. Before we learn to read, we learn the names of colours and shapes. And before we see ourselves—before we...

Trigger warnings are widely used in many universities – and increasingly, the wider world. In the US, the widest survey to date found an estimated half of all college professors used trigger warnings before introducing difficult content. In the UK, a survey earlier this year found 86% of undergraduate students support the use of trigger warnings. I...

For decades, the role of parental engagement in children's schooling has been central to the promotion of learning and wellbeing outcomes for children. However, the recognition of diverse family structures, including where a child's parents are separated, is largely absent from these models of engagement. Instead, prior research has focussed on the...

The process of adaptation is a complex project of reconfiguration: one that is not only governed by ethical issues and aesthetic tensions but by the social, cultural, and political issues that arise in the calibration of old stories for new times, new audiences, and new medias. Since the past itself can either be contested or conserved, rewritten o...

Recent international and cross-disciplinary studies have reported that 66-85% of undergraduate students have already experienced at least one traumatic event prior to entering university. This finding suggests that any reasonably sized class of students today will likely contain individuals who have experienced personal trauma. The COVID-19 pandemi...

The persistent popularity of the detective narrative, new obsessions with psychological and supernatural disturbances, as well as the resurgence of older narratives of mystery or the Gothic all constitute a vast proportion of contemporary film and television productions. New ways of watching film and television have also seen a reinvigoration of th...

The persistent popularity of the detective narrative, new obsessions with psychological and supernatural disturbances, as well as the resurgence of older narratives of mystery or the Gothic all constitute a vast proportion of contemporary film and television productions. New ways of watching film and television have also seen a reinvigoration of th...

How do Antipodean films and television programmes represent their own sense of the Gothic? What does the contemporary Gothic look like on the large and small screen in productions from Australia and New Zealand? New ways of watching film and television via popular streaming services have seen a reinvigoration of this ‘most domestic of media’. What...

Creativity in the form of musical improvisation has received growing attention from researchers informed by the literature on embodiment. To date, this research has focused on the embodied experiences of improvising instrumentalists rather than those of improvising singers. This article investigates the experience of embodiment during improvisation...

At present, the most important challenges in the humanities and arts are amplified by the fact that we are caught in an epistemological gulf between research rigour on one hand, and research relevance on the other. Closing this gap – whether it be through cross-disciplinary collaboration and engagement or a stronger focus on end user experience – i...

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, like all of Roald Dahl’s novels for children, celebrates courage, resilience, and the creative power of childhood. Charlie Bucket is literally starving to death by the time he arrives at Willy Wonka’s factory. Yet his steely determination to find the last golden ticket, combined with his strong moral compass, sees...

The 2019 film adaptation of the musical, Cats, was a box-office flop, unpopular with critics and audiences, and failing to recoup its production cost. The two major criticisms levelled at the film – its perceived lack of plot and unsuccessful animation – contributed to Cats’ inability to make an impact. While plot problems also beset the musical, t...

Eric Carle, author and illustrator of beloved children’s book, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, died on Sunday — the same day his famous caterpillar is born. One Sunday morning, the warm sun came up — and pop! — out of the egg came a very tiny and hungry caterpillar. Described by author Mo Willems as a “gentleman with a mischievous charm”, Carle might...

Before Covid, I took my creative writing class to the zoo to practise writing about animals. When a colleague of mine – a lecturer in economics – found out about the trip, she emailed to say she was envious. “I wish I could do that in my class!” she said. “You know, muck around every day, go on excursions. You don’t know how lucky you are! I’m teac...

A new media campaign, written by Kate Cantrell and produced by Boomtown Pictures. Commissioned by Surf Life Saving Foundation (SLSF) for their 2021 bequest campaign.

Let’s start by putting aside the bugbear that it is even possible to “cancel” children’s author Dr Seuss. As Philip Bump wrote yesterday in The Washington Post, "No one is ‘cancelling’ Dr Seuss. The author, himself, is dead for one thing, which is about as cancelled as a person can get". Laying aside a multimillion-dollar publishing business, tatte...

Described as “the world’s greatest storyteller”, Roald Dahl is frequently ranked as the best children’s author of all time by teachers, authors and librarians. However, the new film adaptation of Dahl’s controversial book, The Witches, warrants a fresh look at a recurrent contrast in Dahl’s work: child protection and care on one hand and a preoccup...

Like several classics penned during the golden age of children’s literature, The Wind in the Willows was written with a particular child in mind. Alastair Grahame was four years old when his father Kenneth — then a secretary at the Bank of England — began inventing bedtime stories about the reckless ruffian, Mr Toad, and his long-suffering friends:...

When my little sister Jem was born, Mum had a breakdown. Not the kind when your car won’t start but the kind when there’s a zap in your brain and you start to see things that aren’t there, like a secret code or a man in the shadows; although I didn’t know this at the time. I was six when Jem was born, and whenever I asked Dad what was wrong with Mu...

As universities around Australia sever entire schools and faculties, others face collapse entirely. An over-dependence on international revenue and an unhappy marriage with the federal government had many universities already feeling some discomfort before COVID-19 exacerbated the pain. Whether universities rapidly decline, or languish and recover,...

https://nitro.edu.au/articles/2020/12/4/triggering-kindness-teaching-narratives-of-trauma-during-covid-19

In a recent interview, George Singleton uses a spatial analogy to describe the process of writing long- and short-form fiction: ‘writing a novel is a walk across a bridge, while a short story is a walk across a tightrope’. Singleton’s analogy captures the experiential differences of writing long and short prose, and alludes to the characteristics t...

This panel offers perspectives from three creative writing academics on the personal and professional challenges of teaching creative writing during the COVID-19 pandemic. As lockdown began and social distancing became the norm, mainstream media looked to writers for advice on how to work from home, while teachers used to delivering face-to-face in...

To learn to work as editors, students must develop a diverse set of practical and metacognitive skills that far exceed proofreading strategies; however, teaching these is challenging because, as Tuffield (2015) and Johanson (2006) note, editing is a largely invisible practice. This challenge is amplified in an online context, where students work re...

Over a fifty-year period, from 1944 to 1994, Thea Astley published a number of critical writings, including essays, newspaper articles and reviews, and short reflections and meditations on her craft. Despite a renewed interest in Astley’s work, however, most critical interrogations of her oeuvre focus on her novels, and more recently her poetry. As...

In August last year, the NTEU reported that two in three people employed by Australian universities do not have secure employment. In April this year, The Conversation published an article about the ‘benefits and challenges’ of employing casual academics. The authors of the article advocate for university administration to manage their casual staff...

Despite the continued popularity of travel blogs, there is a lack of contemporary criticism concerning the literal and figurative meanings of ‘wandering’ in the genre of online travel writing. One only has to trawl through the blogosphere to notice the number of female travellers who refer to themselves as ‘wandering’ women. However, female wanderi...

Wandering is an embodied movement through a landscape, cityscape, or soundscape; it is a venture that one may undertake voluntarily or reluctantly. It is similar to wayfaring and roaming, and different to walking. As a metaphor and as a figuration of subjectivity, wandering allows for a number of non-linear engagements: loitering, overhearing, wild...

In 1993, Mary Morris, in her compilation of women’s travel writing, Maiden voyages, observed that women, while travelling, are always vulnerable to sexual violence: ‘the fear of rape, for example, whether crossing the Sahara, or just crossing a city street at night’ (Morris 1993: xvii). Twenty-five years later, the reality remains. In June 2018, th...

In August last year, the NTEU reported that two in three people employed by Australian universities do not have secure employment. In other words, over half the work conducted in universities is undertaken by employees who do not have an ongoing contract. Of these workers, 43% are employed on a casual basis, while 22% are engaged on a fixed-term co...

Just as geometers must choose the proper setting for a mathematical problem, writers must choose the most suitable shape for a story. However, this task is difficult for writers whose work does not conform to a linear form. This is because linear narrative, which is typically structured around a beginning, middle, and end, does not serve a story th...

Aviva Tuffield (2015) recently described editing as ‘the art of invisible mending’. However, teaching professional editing skills involves a complex process of making visible these largely hidden practices. For online students from diverse social, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds, training in ‘an invisible profession’ presents particular challe...

Queensland loves a slogan – whether to attract visitors, encourage business or boost local spirits. But the story of the Sunshine State is one of deep contradictions – and its relentless self-promotion has long been in conflict with Queenslanders’ self-perception in literature and culture.

A trick is an action or scheme that is designed to deceive, but a trick of the light is something more benevolent, closer as it is to an optical illusion or an architectural charm. A trick can take the form of a prank or a hoax, but a trick of the light isn’t planned. If you trick someone, you deliberately outwit them. But if you encounter a trick...

The Australian Women’s History Network’s (AWHN) recent report on sexual harassment and discrimination in Australian academia reveals the need for more research into the continued misuses and abuses of power in the academy. The findings of the report, released last week, expose a disturbing collection of inappropriate and widely underreported behavi...

International large-scale assessments are on the rise, with the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) seen by many as having strategic prominence in education policy debates. The present article reviews PISA-related English-language peer-reviewed articles from the programme's first cycle in 2000 to its most current in 2015. Five lit...

Today national and regional tourism organizations look to sophisticated cultural tourism programmes to enhance the visitor experience for tourists of their particular city. Yet research indicates that a challenge exists in designing and implementing programmes that take full advantage of a city’s historical and emergent literary cultures. In this p...

This paper explores the requisite of truth-telling in confessional memoir, looking specifically at the female confessant's ability to simultaneously capture and evade the 'truth'. Framed through a case study of Lauren Slater's controversial memoir, Lying (2000), the article explores how Slater's narrator, Lauren, uses the metaphor of epilepsy to de...

On my last day in the old city, my mother calls to say that my grandma, the one with a lump of cancer in her breast, has passed away. Except she doesn't use the euphemism, which is strange since my mother is Catholic.

My sister was born on a Wednesday morning in a room with lemon curtains. The Doctor on delivery rolled his sleeves and washed his hands, then polished his silver cutlery. At half past ten, he glanced at the nurse and said, 'It's time.' My sister, as if aware of what would follow, decided she would stay. For forty-five minutes, in fact. When she fin...

The summer I turned seven, my little sister drowned in our pool. At first I thought her body was part of the fishing world. Every Christmas my father stood at the deep end and threw plastic fish, and if you missed you had to dive down with the net and collect the colourful ones before they floated to the bottom. So I didn’t pay much attention when...

I have a friend who is afraid of birds. We'll call her Carol. In summer, when We take her. Kombi to the beach, she won't open the windows in case a seagull flies in. Once, when the boiler overheated and the vents started to smoke, we pulled over on the side of the highway, just short of a petrol station.

In Victorian times, when female travel narratives were read as excursions rather than expeditions, it was common for women authors to preface their travels with an apology. “What this book wants,” begins Mary Kingsley’s Travels in West Africa, “is not a simple preface but an apology, and a very brilliant and convincing one at that” (4). This tenden...

Summary Between Flagged Spaces, Across Gendered Lands explores the Australian beach space as a voiceless site of female representation. International and national representations of the beach perpetuate normative female concepts by maintaining dominant masculine myths, such as that of the heroic lifesaver and tanned sunbaker. Female experiences on...

Between Flagged Spaces, Across Gendered Lands explores the Australian beach space as a voiceless site of female representation. International and national representations of the beach perpetuate normative female concepts by maintaining dominant masculine myths, such as that of the heroic lifesaver and tanned sunbaker. Female experiences on the beac...

Mrs Jefferies and her sons unpacked the boxes during summer, while the street kids ran naked through the sprinklers and in the night time, stole their neighbours’ papers. Mrs Jefferies was a large woman with pouchy cheeks and heavy-lidded eyes that looked like eggs bobbing up and down in water. On bingo days, she wore loose clothes with yellow su...