The Letter. The good thing about this blog is that the Australian Indigenous Studies Program, and by extension, myself as an Indigenous Australian, do have a chance to represent what we are doing. Today I've pasted in a letter I wrote in response to two recent articles in The Age. I kept it as succinct and factual as possible and steered cleared of the various agenda of those driving the issues but to no avail. The Age wouldn't publish it- hence today's post.
'Recent articles in The Age (“Speaking up for the Humanities” 16/8) and Sunday Age (“Uni brought to book for snub to local literature” 21/8) have given the erroneous impression that Australian literature is not represented in the University of Melbourne’s Faculty of Arts curricula. The University’s Australian Indigenous Studies program teaches undergraduate and honours subjects that emphasise Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australian writers. These include Kim Scott, Alexis Wright, Xavier Herbert, B. Wongar, Bruce Pascoe and Katherine Susannah Pritchard. Last year two of our students received high distinctions for honours theses written on Tara June Winch’s Swallow the Air and Alexis Wright’s Plains of Promise.
(Nice to report that since posting this I've had a call from The Sunday Age with respect to publishing the letter.)
No comments:
Post a Comment