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  • Dr Sally Breen is a senior lecturer in Writing and Publishing at Griffith University Australia. She is the author of ... moreedit
While out on the trail of several pioneering Queensland women, Sally Breen (Gold Coast) comes across people and attitudes that wouldn’t entirely be out of place in the nineteenth century.
A creative collaboration featuring the creative writing of Dr Sally Breen and the photography of Gold Coast artist Aaron Chapman - the creative work is inspired by the city of the Gold Coast and speaks to other 'sea cities' where the... more
A creative collaboration featuring the creative writing of Dr Sally Breen and the photography of Gold Coast artist Aaron Chapman - the creative work is inspired by the city of the Gold Coast and speaks to other 'sea cities' where the urban and coastal environment is in such close association on a number of socio-cultural levels specifically the way in which the urban design encourages engagement with and contemplation of the ocean.
Utilising a fusion of memoir, ficto-criticism, literary analysis and creative non-fiction this experimental essay examines the complex and often problematic nature of the travel writing form and its contributions to cultural... more
Utilising a fusion of memoir, ficto-criticism, literary analysis and creative non-fiction this experimental essay examines the complex and often problematic nature of the travel writing form and its contributions to cultural representation and analysis. The essay criticises the Euro-centric view of the literary history of travel writing and questions established and revered authors both commercial and scholarly. The paper highlights alternate positions drawing on the rich history of travel writing from Asia, Africa and the Middle East. In addition, the paper examines current trends particularly in relation to globalisation and post-colonial, feminist contexts. In this way the paper critiques the movement toward travel writing driven by identity politics – erupting in part to critique dominant paradigms but ultimately reducing the capacity of the genre to illuminate beyond naval gazing. The author posits that an additional layer of privilege is enacted here often in the tone of the “coloniser” or “oppressor” in this case the conservative masculine. The paper suggests that travel writing which opens out beyond the self does more to advance the form and address its implicit problematics. Textual analysis is enacted here as an impressionistic move appropriate to the creative non-fiction form. Authors surveyed include Martha Gellhorn, Nick Cave, Matsuo Basho, Marguerite Duras, Teju Cole, Emily Said-Ruete, Andreas Nueman, George Orwell, Ernest Hemmingway, Lady Nijo, Paul Theroux and Alain de Botton.
If you live through this with me, I swear that I would die for you— Hole, “Asking for It” (1994)The 1990s was a curious decade – post-1980s excess and the Black Monday correction, we limped into the last decade of the 20th century with a... more
If you live through this with me, I swear that I would die for you— Hole, “Asking for It” (1994)The 1990s was a curious decade – post-1980s excess and the Black Monday correction, we limped into the last decade of the 20th century with a whimper, not a bang. The baby boomers were in ascendency, shaking off the detritus of a century of extremes behind closed doors.It’s easy now to think that the disaffection manifesting in Generation X and in particular in the grunge music scene was a put on, an act. But in most big game cultures the emerging generation was caught between old school regimes that refused to recognise very obvious failures and what appeared to be distant, no access futures. This point has been compellingly made by Mark Davis, the author of one of the essays in this 'nineties' issue of M/C Journal.The editors of this issue came of age in 1990s Australia. Or, to paraphrase grunge act Hole, we lived through this. And what a time to be alive! How appropriate to rev...
Original creative work of feminist fiction
Short fiction featured in the special issue of e-Tropic Bold Women Write Back
This paper, positioned as creative practice as research, examines a selection of popular culture responses to the Vietnam War from a range of art forms - film, literature, music and visual art in order to highlight the enduring power and... more
This paper, positioned as creative practice as research, examines a selection of popular culture responses to the Vietnam War from a range of art forms - film, literature, music and visual art in order to highlight the enduring power and subsequent erasure of multiple points of view by Hollywood driven celluloid images regarding this conflict. The cross cultural gap begins literally in a war of words. In Vietnam the conflict is referred to as the American War - a fact largely unknown in the West where references to ‘Nam’ are wrapped up in a confusing and often contradictory nexus of cultural iconography - the counter cultural revolution, American and allied patriotism, mateship, masculinity and violence and death. The gap reflected by that act of naming extends into nearly all aspects of representational and fictionalised history regarding this war where saturation of celluloid images particularly those made famous by the rush of American films released in the 1980s has tainted perspectives and created a potent mythology which undoubtedly favours America and her allies - popularised vision of violence which sought to explain a war to a generation and didn’t – what what those audiences got instead was a meaty, nostalgic, muscly man game where soldiers raped women and erased the Vietnamese view and any kind of examination of reason. And all of it was seductive. This paper filters such cultural responses through an examination of contrasting literature in order to suggest how creative writing might have the power to reduce and neutralise the potency of toxic visual DNA.
Work of feminist fiction published in the Women and Power edition of the Griffith Review
This contribution to the book 'Semi-detached writing, representation and criticism in Architecture' was developed from a paper first presented at the conference 'Writing architecture: a symposium on innovations in the textual and visual... more
This contribution to the book 'Semi-detached writing, representation and criticism in Architecture' was developed from a paper first presented at the conference 'Writing architecture: a symposium on innovations in the textual and visual critique of buildings', held on Thursday 22 and Friday 23 July 2010 at the Queensland Art Gallery's Gallery of Modern Art, and the State Library of Queensland. The paper examines the relationship between literature and architecture historically and highlights the difference between how many writers lived in and became associated with particular cities and how they re-constructed them in fiction.
A commissioned essay for the Cities on the Edge edition of Griffith REVIEW Desert Field of Dreams positions Dubai as the epitome of the 21st century new frontier city. The paper examines the human, social and environmental cost of... more
A commissioned essay for the Cities on the Edge edition of Griffith REVIEW Desert Field of Dreams positions Dubai as the epitome of the 21st century new frontier city. The paper examines the human, social and environmental cost of unmitigated development with particular focus on controversial labour conditions in the UAE.
The Hanging Garden is a creative non-fiction paper featured in the Griffith Review edition Trouble with Paradise which critiques the enduring power of grand narratives and the male dominated literary canon with specific focus given to... more
The Hanging Garden is a creative non-fiction paper featured in the Griffith Review edition Trouble with Paradise which critiques the enduring power of grand narratives and the male dominated literary canon with specific focus given to reconfiguring dominant interpretative power given to historical texts particulalry the Bible and Paradise Lost. This analysis is paralleled by a creative representation of a 21st century woman's self propelled liberation and the historical echoes it highlights
Hollywood Made Me and the accompanying Vertical Vegas are both drawn from a larger study, Future Frontier, which explores ideas about the production of culture in postmodern cities and the exchange of external and internal processes that... more
Hollywood Made Me and the accompanying Vertical Vegas are both drawn from a larger study, Future Frontier, which explores ideas about the production of culture in postmodern cities and the exchange of external and internal processes that occurs between people and places. The project articulates what I see as particular cultural processes of the “new frontier,” cities which have developed in ways that depart from conventional understandings of what constitutes urban environments and urbanism. There are co-relations between cities developed in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the increasing global influence of American popular culture, and new millennium developments redefined by technological insurgence; via this convergence we have seen the emergence of a new kind of city, one that offers accelerated, ahistorical, and dispersed spaces and experiences. My theorising of the “new frontier city” is explicated and represented by Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Australia’s Gold Coast. All of these cities can be understood as sites which do not meet the usual expectations of urban formations and cultural practices and as sites marked more by impermanence than continuities.
The Gold Coast can be understood as a 'new frontier dty', a site which does not meet usual expectations ofurban formations and cultural practices, This article explores novel potentials for creative industries and cultural development in... more
The Gold Coast can be understood as a 'new frontier dty', a site which does not meet usual expectations ofurban formations and cultural practices, This article explores novel potentials for creative industries and cultural development in the city by focusing on emergent intersections between large-scale real estate development and the creative sector, Drawing on ways of thinking developed by Deleuze and Guauari. we utilise notions of rhizomes and assemblages as a methodological strategy. The article aims to demonstrate that, for the Gold Coast's urban and cultural trajectories, which are marked more by impermanence than continuities, such thinking is likely to prove very useful alongside, supplementary to, or instead ofa range of established approaches to urban analysis and policy development.
This thesis, consisting of a novel and a dissertation, examines the intersections of place, identity and fiction. During earlier studies I encountered nomadology as represented in Stephen Muecke's work on Australian Indigeneity, and... more
This thesis, consisting of a novel and a dissertation, examines the intersections of place, identity and fiction. During earlier studies I encountered nomadology as represented in Stephen Muecke's work on Australian Indigeneity, and also the developments on theories and practices of nomadology undertaken by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. I began to explore the production of culture in cities read through these ideas. In the present work, my thinking and approaches have been extended significantly by Edward W. Soja's insights into lived experience, cities and spaces, and by the rhizomatics of Deleuze and Guattari. What is presented here is a hybrid text - novel and dissertation. Both explore ideas about the production of culture in cities and the exchange of external and internal processes that occurs between people and places. I wanted to articulate what I see as particular cultural processes of postmodern cities, which have developed in ways that depart from conventiona...
Feature essay on the relationship between art and sport
Feature essay on the cultural impact and legacy of 1990s grunge culture and philosophy
An article examining whether it's still possible for an album to define the times we live in.
Review: of two Australian novels Hydra – Adriane Howell (Transit Lounge) and Faithless – Alice Nelson (Vintage)
A review essay about Eve Babitz's novel Sex and Rage for The Conversations Books that Changed Me series
An extended review of Japanese author Sayaka Murat's latest novel Earthlings. The review examines her work in the context of a Japanese literary sensibilities particularly the operation of light and dark, beauty and violence, poetry and... more
An extended review of Japanese author Sayaka Murat's latest novel Earthlings. The review examines her work in the context of a Japanese literary sensibilities particularly the operation of light and dark, beauty and violence, poetry and rage in fiction.
Review essay of Susanna Moore's novel In The Cut for The Conversation's My Favourite Detective series
Review of Studying Creative Writing Successfully edited by Stephanie Vanderslice