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We are thrilled that Lockdown by Chip Le Grand has been longlisted for the 2023 Australian Political Book of the Year Award.

The longlist has been decided by the Award’s distinguished judging panel Laura Tingle, and John Warhurst AO, and new judge, Barrie Cassidy. The longlist are those books published during the 2022–23 financial year that the judges believe provide the most compelling contribution to understanding Australian political events and debates.

The following books have made the 2023 longlist:

• Bulldozed by Nikki Savva, published by Scribe Publications
• Crossing the Line by Nick McKenzie, published by Hachette Australia
• Dreamers and Schemers by Frank Bongiorno, published by La Trobe University Press
• Black Lives, White Laws by Russell Marks, published by La Trobe University Press
• Australia’s China Odyssey by James Curran, published by NewSouth Publishing
• Political Lives by Chris Wallace, published by NewSouth Publishing
• The Queen is Dead by Stan Grant, published by Harper Collins
• The Passion of Private White by Don Watson, published by Simon and Schuster
• Trump’s Australia by Bruce Wolpe, published by Allen & Unwin
• Lockdown by Chip Le Grand, published by Monash University Publishing

The Australian Political Book of the Year Award judges said the longlist is extraordinary for the breadth and variety it brings to political discourse.

‘Not only does it include in depth historical context, but it covers the recent federal election, the politics of the pandemic, war crimes and issues like foreign policy, indigenous affairs and the monarchy,’ said the judges.

The shortlist will be announced in Melbourne on Thursday 12 October, where each author to have their book shortlisted will receive $1000.

The winner will be announced by the Treasurer of Australia, the Hon Dr Jim Chalmers MP, on Wednesday 25 October at the National Press Club of Australia in Canberra.

It is with great sadness that we farewell Tim McNamara (1949–2023), who passed away on Friday 15 September at the Bethlehem Hospital in Melbourne.

Tim had a highly successful international career in applied linguistics and was a Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of Melbourne, where he established the Melbourne Graduate Program in Applied Linguistics in 1987 and the Language Testing Research Centre in 1990, the latter emerging over the course of thirty years as the world’s leading independent research centre in this field. From 2017 to 2018 Tim served as president of the American Association for Applied Linguistics, before retiring in 2018. In 2021 he was made a Member of the Order of Australia for his significant service. His work on language and identity over the course of his esteemed career culminated in his landmark book Language and Subjectivity (2019).

In addition to his academic achievements, Tim engaged with many colleagues and friends in a very personal way and opened possibilities for a fuller understanding of people’s different cultures and individuality. Sadly, he did not live to hold a copy of his last achievement, his upcoming book, Paul and Paula, which we are honoured to be publishing in December 2023, but he has left us all with this legacy.

Image courtesy of Patricia A. Haim

Monash University Publishing is delighted to announce that Kartini: The Complete Writings 1898–1904, edited and translated by Joost Coté, is now available through open access via Bridges, Monash University’s institutional research repository. With the open access release timed to coincide with the Indonesian national holiday Kartini Day on 21 April, Coté’s book is an essential resource for scholars and students around the world of Raden Ajeng Kartini (1879–1904) and her place in Indonesian history. Kartini is the latest Monash University Publishing scholarly title to be made available through open access soon after print publication, ensuring that the reach and readership of these works is maximised.

 

A note from Joost Coté

I am very pleased to learn that Monash University Publishing has decided to make this extensive collection of the writings of Raden Ajeng Kartini available free to a global readership. Kartini: The Complete Writings 1898–1904 demonstrates how Kartini strategically employed correspondence at the beginning of the 20th century to generate a wide circle of influential contacts in her campaign to gain political attention and support for her campaign for Javanese emancipation. The volume also reveals the many literary modes through which Kartini gave voice to her aims and ideals, as a writer of ethnographic papers and political tracts, and author of a number of published short stories. Not least, it reveals a Javanese intellectual widely read in contemporary Dutch literary and political genres. Reading Kartini will make clear why the world should remember her.

 

About the book

In Indonesia, the legacy of Raden Ajeng Kartini (1879–1904) is celebrated on Kartini Day, 21 April, every year. Around the world Kartini is recognised as a major figure in the history of the advancement of women: a tireless and effective advocate of women’s education and emancipation. However, this is the first complete and unexpurgated collection of Kartini’s published articles, memoranda and correspondence ever published in any language.

This collection reveals Kartin’s importance as a pioneer of the Indonesian nationalist movement. Claiming in her letters and petitions her people’s right to national autonomy well before her male compatriots did so publicly, Kartini used her writing in an attempt to educate the Netherlands and Dutch colonialists about Java and the aspirations of its people. Had she lived, she would have been one of Indonesia’s leading pre-independence writers as well as an educationist. In 1964 she was elevated to the status of national hero by Indonesia’s first president, Sukarno. She has become one of the most well known Asian figures in the international women’s movement.

The product of several decades’ study and based on archival sources, Kartini is extensively annotated and provided with an authoritative historical introduction by one of the world’s leading Kartini authorities. This work will be the essential resource for scholars and students of Kartini and her place in Indonesian history, around the world, for many years to come.

 

About the editor and translator

Dr Joost Coté is Senior Research Fellow in the Department of History at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. He has researched and published widely on early 20th century colonial modernity in the Netherlands East Indies and has written about Kartini over several decades. He has previously published three translated and annotated collections of correspondence by Kartini and her sisters.

 

Access the open access edition of Kartini here.

 

The paperback edition of Kartini is available for purchase from our online store: