Ralph Crane | University of Tasmania (original) (raw)

Papers by Ralph Crane

Empire calling: administering colonial Australasia and India. Edited by Ralph J. Crane, Anna Johnston and C. Vijayasree. Cambridge UP-Foundation, 2011

Writing, Travel, and Empire: In the Margins of Anthropology. Ed Peter Hulme and Russell McDougall. London: I.B. Tauris, 2007

Teaching Space, Place and Literature, ed. Robert T. Tally Jr., Nov 2017

Popular Fiction and Spatiality: Reading Genre Settings

Subterranean environments are stock settings in popular fiction, and they are especially prevalen... more Subterranean environments are stock settings in popular fiction, and they are especially prevalent in thrillers. As “extreme” environments—profoundly non-human and deeply symbolic—the corridors and chambers of deep caves magnify the tensions between space and place as they are typically defined. This chapter argues that consideration of cave settings in popular fiction requires a more nuanced theoretical vocabulary than is currently available. It analyzes three thrillers set partly in deep caves—Clive Cussler’s Inca Gold (1994), David Poyer’s Down to a Sunless Sea (1996), Nevada Barr’s Blind Descent (1998)—and to propose adding a third term to the glossary of spatial literary studies, “anti-place.”

Race, Sexuality, and History in Anglo-India, 2013

Essays and Interviews, 2000

Race, Sexuality, and History in Anglo-India, 2013

Administering Colonial Australasia and India, 2009

Feminist Studies in English Literature, 2008

Irish Studies Review, 2014

This article provides a comparative study of commercial cave tourism in Australia and China, focu... more This article provides a comparative study of commercial cave tourism in Australia and China, focussing on the methods of site interpretation and presentation used by selected show caves. The key point of contrast between the commercial speleotourist experiences offered in Australia and China is in the relative priority given to site conservation and framing the cave as a spectacle for the enjoyment of visitors. The discussion draws on the authors’ eld research, visiting show caves as tourists to consider the significance of developments in ecotourism and geotourism for show cave management in Australia and China.

The Making of English Popular Culture, 2016

The making of British popular literary culture in the nineteenth century was a visual as well as ... more The making of British popular literary culture in the nineteenth century was a visual as well as a textual enterprise. This chapter examines the illustrations of three juvenile adventure novels—G. A. Henty’s With Clive in India, illustrated by Gordon Browne (1884); George Manville Fenn’s Gil the Gunner, illustrated by W. H. Overend (1892); and Frederick P. Gibbon’s The Disputed V.C., illustrated by Stanley L. Wood (1904)— to show the multiple, frequently subtle, and sometimes surprising contributions artists made to a popular genre that reached its apotheosis in the period of British high imperialism.

Inspiration and Spectacle: The Case of Fingal's Cave in Nineteenth-Century Art and Literature, Aug 3, 2015

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture (14.3), 2014

In Robert Penn Warren's poem "Speleology," a young boy turns off his flashlight deep in a cave an... more In Robert Penn Warren's poem "Speleology," a young boy turns off his flashlight deep in a cave and knows "darkness and depth and no Time." This poem's powerful imagery of the spatial otherness of caves is the starting point for this article, which argues that analyzing the literary representation of natural subterranean voids requires a careful re-theorisation of the dynamic relations of space and place. The difficult question of how meaning comes to be attached to a particular space, thus transforming it into place, is central to Robert Penn Warren's The Cave and Cormac McCarthy's Child of God, both of which depict male protagonists who retreat underground, albeit for quite different purposes. As Eric Prieto explains, place is a "human relation. There is no set of immanent ontological features adhering to a given site that would allow us to define it as a place." According to the standard definition, a cave is a natural cavity beneath the land large enough to admit a human body, but-as the novels selected for this essay show-caves fascinate and terrify us because they confound human assumptions about our role in assigning meaning to the earth's spaces.

Empire calling: administering colonial Australasia and India. Edited by Ralph J. Crane, Anna Johnston and C. Vijayasree. Cambridge UP-Foundation, 2011

Writing, Travel, and Empire: In the Margins of Anthropology. Ed Peter Hulme and Russell McDougall. London: I.B. Tauris, 2007

Teaching Space, Place and Literature, ed. Robert T. Tally Jr., Nov 2017

Popular Fiction and Spatiality: Reading Genre Settings

Race, Sexuality, and History in Anglo-India, 2013

Essays and Interviews, 2000

Race, Sexuality, and History in Anglo-India, 2013

Administering Colonial Australasia and India, 2009

Feminist Studies in English Literature, 2008

Irish Studies Review, 2014

The Making of English Popular Culture, 2016

Inspiration and Spectacle: The Case of Fingal's Cave in Nineteenth-Century Art and Literature, Aug 3, 2015

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture (14.3), 2014

Oxford University Press, 2010

'Island Genres, Genre Islands' moves the debate about literature and place onto new ground by exp... more 'Island Genres, Genre Islands' moves the debate about literature and place onto new ground by exploring the island settings of bestsellers. Through a focus on four key genres—crime fiction, the spy thriller, popular romance fiction, and fantasy fiction—Crane and Fletcher show that genre is fundamental to both the textual representation of real and imagined islands and to actual knowledges and experiences of the ‘geospace’ of islands. The book offers broad, comparative readings of the significance of islandness in each of the four genres as well as detailed case studies of major authors and texts. These include chapters on Agatha’s Christie’s islands, the role of the island in ‘Bondspace,’ the romantic islophilia of Nora Roberts’ Three Sisters Island series, and the archipelagic geography of Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea. Crane and Fletcher’s book will appeal to specialists in literary studies and cultural geography, as well as in island studies.

REVIEWS
The key is that the island, its geography, and the island geography are integral to the fiction, being used as settings yet much more: as metaphors, to generate moods, to convey visions, and often (argued by Crane and Fletcher) to create a story that could not have happened without an/the island. This argument is forcefully persuasive by being seamlessly interwoven with key theories, concepts, and literature from island studies.
Ilan Kelman, Social and Cultural Geography

Published in the innovative Rethinking the Island Series (edited by Elaine Stratford, Godfrey Baldacchino and Elizabeth McMahon), a key argument of this book is that island studies cannot be separated from a concern with the textual life of islands. As such, there is a need to further expand our understanding of this textual life beyond the confines of high culture (studying Agatha Christie as well as Shakespeare, James Bond as well as Édouard Glissant).The central argument is that ‘thinking about islands can help us better understand popular genres and reading genre novels can help us rethink islands’ (p. xvi).
Jonathan Pugh, Cultural Geographies

'[E]ven as a diverse range of critical tools are emerging, the relationship between islands and popular fiction has so far not been subjected to any detailed or systematic analysis. This was a notable gap in the field and something in need of being addressed. I am pleased to say that the authors of Island genres, genre islands are more than up to the task."
- Jonathan Pugh, Island Studies Journal
http://www.islandstudies.ca/sites/default/files/ISJReviewCraneFletcherIslandGenres.pdf

Like a cruise liner, Crane and Fletcher’s Island Genres, Genre Islands takes its readers on a journey around various genre islands, making brief stops at selected ports. While the cruise experience would be enriched by disembarking from the ship and spending more time onshore at crime atoll, thriller island, the isle of popular romance, and the archipelago of fantasy, or by having visited them previously, the on-board lecture programme ensures that all travellers will return home feeling more knowledgeable about the differences between them and convinced that “[p]opular fiction offers […] a potent site for identifying and unpacking habits of thinking about distinctive natural environments” (xi).
-Laura Vivanco, Journal of Popular Romance Studies
http://jprstudies.org/2018/07/review-island-genres-genre-islands-conceptualisation-and-representation-in-popular-fiction-by-ralph-crane-and-lisa-fletcher/

"This is a highly original and hugely readable book, offering detailed readings of texts by all our favourite genre writers, from Agatha Christie to Ursula K. Le Guin. It is the Island focus, however, that really secures its significance. The range of islands is genuinely global, the intellectual ‘reach’ both serious and innovative, and the research-base impressive. I loved it."
- Lucie Armitt, Professor of Contemporary English Literature, University of Lincoln, UK.

"Atlantis, Avalon, Utopia, Lilliput, Treasure Island, and so on: fictional islands have always captivated the literary imagination. Unsurprisingly, then, the study of the insula in popular fiction presents a unique perspective upon the literary geography of this evocative space. In Island Genres, Genre Islands, Ralph Crane and Lisa Fletcher explore the fascinating relations between the representative site of the island and popular genre fiction. Focusing on four distinctive genres—crime fiction, thrillers, romance, and fantasy—Crane and Fletcher disclose the effects of the insular locale on a number of bestsellers, and thus offer a major contribution to studies of popular culture, spatiality, and comparative literature."
- Robert T. Tally Jr., Texas State University

The Oxford History of the Novel in English is a 12-volume series presenting a comprehensive, glob... more The Oxford History of the Novel in English is a 12-volume series presenting a comprehensive, global, and up-to-date history of English-language prose fiction and written by a large, international team of scholars. The series is concerned with novels as a whole, not just the 'literary' novel, and each volume includes chapters on the processes of production, distribution, and reception, and on popular fiction and the fictional sub-genres, as well as outlining the work of major novelists, movements, traditions, and tendencies.

Volume Nine traces the development of the 'world novel', that is, English-language novels written throughout the world except for in Britain, Ireland, and the United States. Focusing on the period up to 1950, the volume contains survey essays and essays on major writers, as well as essays on book history, publishing, and the critical contexts of the work discussed. The World Novel to 1950 covers periods from renaissance literary imaginings of exotic parts of the world like Oceania, through fiction embodying the ideology and conventions of empire, to the emergence of settler nationalist and Indigenous movements and, finally, the assimilations of modernism at the beginnings of the post-imperial world order. The book, then, contains essays on the development of the non-metropolitan novel throughout the British world from the eighteenth to the mid twentieth centuries. This is the period of empire and resistance to empire, of settler confidence giving way to doubt, and of the rise of indigenous and post-colonial nationalisms that would shape the world after World War II.

Three teenage boys, the sole survivors of a shipwreck, find themselves marooned on a deserted isl... more Three teenage boys, the sole survivors of a shipwreck, find themselves marooned on a deserted island in the South Pacific. With little more than a telescope and a broken knife, the youths must find food and shelter and learn to survive. But though the coral island is a tropical paradise, full of natural beauty and exotic fruits and wildlife, dangers and adventures abound: sharks, pirates, and even bloodthirsty cannibals!

Scottish-born R.M. Ballantyne (1825-1894) wrote more than ninety books for young people during the Victorian era, the most famous of which is The Coral Island (1857), a tale whose popularity has proved so enduring that it has never been out of print. A thrilling story in the tradition of Robinson Crusoe and a key influence on later classics such as Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island and William Golding's Lord of the Flies, The Coral Island is presented here in a new scholarly edition that includes the unabridged text of the first British edition, a new introduction and notes by Ralph Crane and Lisa Fletcher, and the original illustrations by the author.

To enter caves is to venture beyond the realm of the everyday. From huge vaulted caverns to impas... more To enter caves is to venture beyond the realm of the everyday. From huge vaulted caverns to impassable water-filled passages, the karst topography of Guilin in China and the lava tubes of Hawaii, from tiny remote pilgrimage sites to massive tourism enterprises, caves are places of mystery. Dark spaces that remain largely unexplored, caves are astonishing wonders of nature and habitats for exotic flora and fauna. This book investigates the natural and cultural history of caves and considers the roles they have played in the human imagination and experience of the natural world. It explores the long history of the human fascination with caves, across countries and continents, examining their dual role as spaces of both wonder and fear. In Cave we encounter the adventurers and 'cave hunters' who pioneered the science of caves, and the explorers and cave divers still searching for new, unnavigated routes deep into the earth. This book explores the lure of the subterranean world by examining caving and cave tourism and by looking to the mythology, literature and art of caves.This lavishly illustrated book will appeal to general readers and experts alike interested in the ecology and use of caves, or the extraordinary artistic responses earth's dark recesses have evoked over the centuries.

Shortlisted for the Tratman Award 2015: "Cave is unusual in that it succeeds in crossing divides, merging legend and fact, science and art – any caver willing to be challenged with new ideas will enjoy this book."

"The poetic language of the book conjures this dark and mysterious subterranean world for the reader’s consideration; a bizarre world like no other, for ‘every map or model we have of a cave is a pictorial reconstruction of a place that one can only actually see and experience in fragments’. And presumably, only then if you are intrepid enough to risk it. [...] The book presents much food for thought, and left me pondering the subject for several days. Surely, the mark of a ‘Good Read’." Catherine Kenny, Geoscientist Online (https://www.geolsoc.org.uk/Geoscientist/Books-Arts/Geoscientist-book-reviews-online/2016-Book-Reviews-Online/Cave-Nature-and-Culture)

"Cave Nature and Culture is an insightful and historical look at caves from various points of our history that includes a variety of genres from science to mythology and even tourism. If you are fascinated by the history of caves then this tome is definitely a must read!" James Wright, Impulse Gamer (http://www.impulsegamer.com/cave-nature-and-culture-book-review/)

"Ralph Crane and Lisa Fletcher [...] offer not so much an exploration of caves themselves, but rather an exploration of the ways in which we experience caves. This is, quite literally, an anthropomorphic venture. As the authors point out, we define caves largely through the human experience of them. [...] This book provides an intriguing opening into that poorly understood underground world and the mysteries and secrets (both imagined and real) that lie deep within it." Danielle Clode, Australian Book Review

"This book does not fit into one of the usual moulds for cave literature, being neither a treatise on the science of caves and karst, a historical account nor a cavers’ manual. Rather, it examines the position of caves in our culture in the broadest of senses and with some considerable success. [...] It is beautifully produced and illustrated, interesting to read and deserves a place on the bookshelf of most cavers and speleologists." Stephen K. Donovan, Cave and Karst Science, The Transactions of the British Cave Research Association

Within postcolonial studies, Britain’s long contact with India has been read generally only withi... more Within postcolonial studies, Britain’s long contact with India has been read generally only within the context of imperialism to inform our understanding of race, gender, identity, and power within colonialism. Such postcolonial interpretations that focus on single dimensions of identity risk disregarding the sense of displacement, discontinuities, and discomforts that compromised everyday life for the British in India—the Anglo-Indians—during the Raj. Imperialism as Diaspora reconsiders the urgencies, governing principles, and modes of being of the Anglo-Indians by approaching Britain’s imperial relationship with India from new, interdisciplinary directions. Moving freely between the disciplines of literature, history, and art this new work offers readers a more nuanced and comprehensive understanding of the lives of Anglo-Indians. Focussing on the years between the Indian Mutiny of 1857 and Independence in 1947—the period of the British Raj in India—Imperialism as Diaspora at once sets in motion the multidisciplinary fields of cultural and social history, art and iconography, and literary productions while carefully maintaining the tension between imperialism and diaspora in a ground-breaking reassessment of Anglo-India. Crane and Mohanram examine the seamless continuum between cultural history, the semiotics of art, and Anglo-Indian literary works. Specifically, they focus on the influence of the Sepoy Mutiny on Anglo-Indian identity; the trope of duty and the white man’s burden on the racialization of Anglo-India; the role of the missionary and the status of Christianity in India; and gender, love and contamination within mixed marriages.

Collectively and severally, the essays gathered together in this book explore the roles of the me... more Collectively and severally, the essays gathered together in this book explore the roles of the men and women who administered the British Empire in Australasia and India. The essays had their genesis in an interdisciplinary conference held at Osmania University, Hyderabad, in 2007, which was jointly convened by the University of Tasmania's Centre for Colonialism and Its Aftermath and School of English, Journalism, and European Languages, and the Department of English at Osmania University.
“Administering,” as the essays in this volume amply reveal, involves many forms of activity – managing and organising; financing and accounting; monitoring and measuring; ordering and supplying; writing and implementing policy – across diverse domains of practice (the Civil Service, schools and universities, missions, domestic realms, justice systems, and so on). Administrative arrangements, as the various essays show, involve complex cross-cultural relationships in colonial spaces, often through radically unequal and racially based power relations. In the two parts of this book the authors, from India, Australia, New Zealand, and Britain, look at the way colonial administrations in Australia, New Zealand, Pitcairn Island, and India – and with inevitable reference back to Britain and other parts of the British Empire – call into being the spaces under their control, and how they do so through the accumulation and management of information and knowledge.

A wonderful collection of twenty-four short stories that celebrate the history, culture and creat... more A wonderful collection of twenty-four short stories that celebrate the history, culture and creativity of Tasmania.

Tasmania is another country—a lush, sometimes foreboding island with a people fiercely protective of its history, culture and creativity.

This handsome collection, the first to bring together the finest stories about Tasmania, includes works by notable early Australian writers, such as Marcus Clarke and Tasma; internationally renowned practitioners, like Hal Porter, Carmel Bird and Nicholas Shakespeare; and a range of newer voices, from Danielle Wood and Rohan Wilson to Rachael Treasure. These twenty-four superb stories showcase the island’s colonial past, its darkness and humour, the unique beauty and savagery of its landscape.

Brings together essays from international scholars in a range of Humanities disciplines, to offer... more Brings together essays from international scholars in a range of Humanities disciplines, to offer fresh cultural perspectives on the way we perceive and represent the southern continent. The book draws on papers presented at the Imagining Antarctica conference in Christchurch, NZ in 2008 and the Antarctic Visions conference in Hobart, Australia in 2010.

InThe Complete Indian Housekeeper and Cook (1888) Flora Annie Steel and her co-author Grace Gardi... more InThe Complete Indian Housekeeper and Cook (1888) Flora Annie Steel and her co-author Grace Gardiner provide practical, and often highly opinionated, advice to young memsahibs in India. They explain how to 'make a hold' over servants, how to establish and stock a storeroom, how to plan a menu, manage young children, treat bites from 'mad, or even doubtful dogs', and teach an Indian cook how to make fish quenelles. The Complete Indian Housekeeper and Cook promised its reader a comprehensive guide to domesticitiy in India, even if she found herself living in camps or in the jungle, on the hills or in the plains, whether she was the wife of an influential Indian Civil Servant or a missionary.

This new edition, complete with its stimulating introduction and substantial notes, makes available a classic domestic work that in detailing the memsahib's role in the household sheds light on the entire imperial experience.

A.E.W. Mason's The Broken Road is the fourth novel in the 'Lesser-known Raj Fiction' series edite... more A.E.W. Mason's The Broken Road is the fourth novel in the 'Lesser-known Raj Fiction' series edited by Ralph Crane. A gripping adventure romance of the Frontier first published in 1907, The Broken Road tells of the building of the Road, and, through the relationship between the two main characters, Dick Linforth, scion of a family of Empire-builders, and Shere Ali, the Prince of Chiltistan, compellingly explores the sense of duty that drove successive generations of British men to sacrifice their lives to the goals of Empire, and the contentious issue of educating Indian princes in England. While undoubtedly reinscribing the image of a confident and secure empire characteristic of much Raj fiction of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the novel also offers unusual insights into the human cost-on both sides of the racial divide-of producing that image, making it of significant interest to readers interested in colonial and postcolonial literatures, as well as general readers. This new, critical edition of The Broken Road, which includes a detailed introduction, a chronology of A.E.W.Mason's life, maps, and extensive explanatory notes, makes available a fascinating work of Raj fiction.

Margaret Wilson's two novels and eight short stories set in India draw on her own experiences as ... more Margaret Wilson's two novels and eight short stories set in India draw on her own experiences as a missionary in Punjab between 1904 and 1910. Daughters in India, first published in 1928, explores the relationship between the two main American characters, Davida Baillie, a missionary teachers (and thinly-veiled portrait of Wilson herself), and John Ramsey, her superior in the mission in Aiyanianwala, their work with the Christian and Moslem communities from the Flower Basti, and the breaking up of a kidnapping ring in the nearby village of Pir Khanwala. The novel is of particular interest to the postcolonial reader because it offers a broader perspective on the sociology of India in the early twentieth century than can be found in most Anglo-Indian (Raj) missionary novels of the time. Moreover, as an American and a missionary, Wilson was located on the margins of the Anglo-Indian society, a position which is reflected in the fresh perspective she offers on the imperial experience. This new edition of Wilson's Daughters of India, includes a detailed introduction, a chronology of Margaret Wilson, a map, an extensive explanatory notes which provide the reader with a useful critical commentary to the novel.

Proceedings of the third ASAA (Association for the Study of Australasia in Asia) conference held ... more Proceedings of the third ASAA (Association for the Study of Australasia in Asia) conference held at the University of Kerela, Thiruvananthapuram, in July 2004.

Maud Diver's Lilamani (1911) offers the reader what is perhaps the most detailed consideration of... more Maud Diver's Lilamani (1911) offers the reader what is perhaps the most detailed consideration of the issue of mixed marriage in Anglo-Indian (Raj) fiction. Lilamani recounts the marriage of Sir Nevil Sinclair and Lilamani, the daughter of the noble Rajput and Anglophile, Sir Lakshman Singh. In this marriage between two people "of good birth and lineage," who are carefully established as equals in all but race, Diver carefully brings together what she sees as the best of the two cultures.

Charles Pearce's novel, first published in 1909, is a classic example of the Anglo-Indian Mutiny ... more Charles Pearce's novel, first published in 1909, is a classic example of the Anglo-Indian Mutiny genre.

In the wake of the steady expansion and more recent explosion of Anglo-Indian and Indo-Anglian wr... more In the wake of the steady expansion and more recent explosion of Anglo-Indian and Indo-Anglian writing, and following the success of Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, the literature of the Indian diaspora has become the object of close attention. As a body of literature, it simultaneously represents an important multicultural perspective within individual ‘national' literatures (such as those of Canada or Australia) as well as a more global perspective taking in the phenomena of transculturalism and diaspora. However, while readers may share an interest in the writing of the Indian diaspora, they do not always interpret the notion of ‘Indian diaspora' in the same way. Indeed, there has been much debate in recent years about the appropriateness of terms such as diaspora and exile. Should these terms be reserved for the specifically historical nature of problems encountered in the process of acquiring new nationality and citizenship, or can they be extended to the writing of literature itself or used to describe ‘economic' migration arising out of privilege?
As a response to these debates, Shifting Continents/Colliding Cultures explores the aftermath of British colonialism on the Indian subcontinent and Sri Lanka, including the resulting diaspora. The essays also examine zones of intersection between theories of postcolonial writing and models of diaspora and the nation. Particular lines of investigation include: how South-Asian identity is negotiated in Western spaces, and its reverse, how Western identity is negotiated in South-Asian space; reading identity by privileging history; the role of diasporic women in the (Western) nation; how diaspora affects the literary canon; and how diaspora is used in the production of alternative identities in films such as Gurinder Chadha's Bhaji on the Beach.

This collection of original essays provides a comprehensive and at times provocative analysis of ... more This collection of original essays provides a comprehensive and at times provocative analysis of Farrell's fiction. Also included is an extensive bibliography of primary and secondary sources.

This article tells the story of two projects initiated by the University of Tasmania’s English pr... more This article tells the story of two projects initiated by the University of Tasmania’s English programme, which were designed to investigate and improve the pathway from pre-tertiary to tertiary English studies in the state: the First Year English Survey (2012-2014) and the Teaching of English in Tasmania Community of Practice (TETCoP). The authors draw on the findings from the survey to show that students in Tasmania who enrol in tertiary English believe that they are progressing their studies in a discipline with which they are already familiar; it seems reasonable to assume that is also the case nationally. The article, then, presents TETCoP as an example of one approach to developing and maintaining productive links between English educators in the senior secondary and tertiary sectors—as a means to encourage others to build on or learn from the work we have done in Tasmania.