Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Australia's Constitution Works Because It Doesn't Define National Identity, Gregory C. Melleuish

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

When Australia’s Founding Fathers came together in the 1890s to draw up a constitution to enable the colonies to federate, what did they think they were doing? Looking at the debates and the Constitution itself, one thing is certain. They were not drawing up a document that defined what it means to be an Australian.

They were engaged in creating a document that would be acceptable to all parties and enshrined the political and legal principles which they had inherited from Great Britain. They looked to their British inheritance because they believed, quite correctly, that the (unwritten) British Constitution worked. …

Marine Protected Areas - Developing Regulatory Frameworks For Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction, Robin M. Warner

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

The increasing intensity and impacts of human activities in the global oceans pose significant threats to the extensive repository of marine species, habitats and ecosystems in the vast marine areas beyond national jurisdiction (ABNJ). This article examines the scope of these threats and the role of areas based management mechanisms such as marine protected areas (MPAs) in addressing those threats. It discusses the law and policy rationale for establishing MPAs in ABNJ and some regional examples of MPA designation in the North East Atlantic, the Mediterranean, Antarctica and the Sargasso Sea. Finally it reviews global initiatives in the United Nations …

A National (Diasporic?) Living Treasure: Thomas Keneally, Paul Sharrad

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

Although Thomas Keneally is firmly located as a national figure, his international literary career and his novels’ inspection of colonial exile, Aboriginal alienation, and movements of people throughout history reflect aspects of diasporic experience, while pushing the term itself into wider meaning of the transnational.

Towards A Multilingual National Literature: The Tung Wah Times And The Origins Of Chinese Australian Writing, Huang Zhong, Wenche Ommundsen

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

Australian literature has over the last 50 years witnessed the gradual inclusion of writers and texts formerly considered marginal: from a predominantly white, Anglo canon it has come to incorporate more women writers, writers of popular genres, Indigenous writers, and migrant, multicultural or diasporic writers. However, one large and important body of Australian writing has remained excluded from histories and anthologies: literature in languages other than English. Is this the last literary margin? How might it be incorporated into the national canon, and how might it enhance our understanding of the cross-cultural traffic that feeds into the literature of a …