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Jay Daniel Thompson
Jay Daniel Thompson is a Senior Lecturer in Professional Communication at RMIT University.
Glen St John Barclay and Caroline Turner’s Humanities Research Centre offers the first historical overview of this prestigious Australian National University-based institution. Their book is an extremely dense yet remarkably comprehensive and well-written homage to one of the key international sites of scholarly research in the humanities.
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Narrative and Media provides a lengthy and extensively researched overview of one of the central features of contemporary popular culture. The four authors (all of whom have been scholars at Sydney University) discuss the roles that narrative has played in mediums such as television, cinema and radio. In the introductory chapter, the authors explain the importance of their topic: ‘In a world dom ... (read more)
Pornification, The Porn Report and Princesses and Pornstars are three recent entries into the burgeoning academic field known as ‘porn studies’. All three books aim to move beyond the simplistic ‘for’ and ‘against’ arguments that have traditionally surrounded pornography. Instead, each text explores the challenges and complexities of living in a world where sexually explicit material i ... (read more)
Dennis Altman’s new novel, Death in the Sauna, begins with, yes, a death in a sauna. The respected virologist Pomfrey Lister is found lifeless in a London gay venue, days before a major AIDS conference that he is chairing. His naked corpse is transported home and a death certificate pronouncing natural causes is produced. This hasty denouement is ostensibly aimed at concealing the salacious natu ... (read more)
In her editorial, Gina Mercer observes that this ‘is a decidedly poetic edition of Island’. Mercer bids farewell to poetry editor James Charlton, and announces the 2008 Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize. Also, the journal showcases the work of writers who are committed to what Mercer refers to as ‘the joyous and endangered art of poetry’.
The edition opens with a conversation between prominent Au ... (read more)
This edition of Arena Journal is essentially an extended critique of neo-liberalism. In his editorial, John Hinkson argues that neo-liberal thought ‘carries a new way of life that distances us from the past, in part through the promise of a cornucopia of commodities’. As Hinkson and the various contributors suggest, though, this phenomenon really ‘threatens cultural disaster for everyone’. ... (read more)
Selling Sex provides a comprehensive history of prostitution in Australia. In 342 pages, Raelene Frances (currently Dean of Arts at Monash University) describes the changing nature of sex work in Australian society from the colonial period to the present day. Frances’s text is brilliantly researched and provides many important insights for readers interested in Australian history and cultur ... (read more)
In A Good Death, Rodney Syme outlines his case for the legalisation of euthanasia. Drawing on his experience working with seriously ill patients over several decades, Syme (a medical practitioner) advances the controversial argument that ‘physician-assisted death’ is a humane response to ‘intolerable and otherwise unrelievable suffering’.
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In Tasmania’s Wilderness Battles, Greg Buckman provides a history of the environment movement in Tasmania. He focuses on the various battles that have taken place between environment activists and those developers that have viewed Tasmania’s wilderness as being purely a source of profit.
Buckman opens with the Lake Pedder battle in the 1960s. This battle was waged between activists and the Hy ... (read more)