Dissent , by Dr Sally Percival Wood , to be launched in coming months by Scribe , Melbourne, will present stirring days on campus and pass comment on tamer times in modern universities.
In a trade review of the book by Kelsey Oldham , a bookseller at Readings and deputy editor of the music magazine , Swampland , it has been highly rated , four stars , and reads :
Sally Percival Wood’s Dissent is a lively and accessible slice of Australian
cultural history. Percival Wood revisits the tumultuous 1960s and reveals the
extent to which an unlikely and often-forgotten institution, the university
student press, sparked Australia’s progressive leap forward.
Exploring the role
of radical student magazines in the abolition of censorship and the advancement
of Indigenous, queer and women’s rights, Dissent is also full of remarkable
stories from the time: how university students helped to smuggle copies of
Ulysses and Lady Chatterley’s Lover into the country, and ASIO agents
infiltrated university campuses to monitor anti-Vietnam War sentiment in the
student press.
Percival Wood’s conversational tone lets her research speak for
itself, generously quoting scandalised politicians and the brazen student
editors who mocked them. At the same time, her personal admiration for the
student dissidents and her disdain for the mentality of Menzies’ Australia gives
the book polemical force.
Dissent ends with a frank meditation on the current state of student politics and the place of student publications today, whose influence wanes in the wake of the commercialisation of higher education. This is an entertaining, relevant and well-researched book that will appeal to anyone interested in how social change is made.
This blog is delighted that Dissent will soon hit the road as we played a minor part in Sally's research , making available for her items from our shambolic files when she came to Magnetic Island from Melbourne with journalist and former MHR Pete Steedman , who figures in Dissent . Steedman , above , left, is shown working during those heady days of university press action in Melbourne .The federal government even considered bringing in special legislation to charge him with subversion
Sally has been going through the final stages of pre -publication dealing with a serious health condition . Highly recommended you buy Dissent , endorsed by Phillip Adams of the ABC's Late Night Live .
Dissent ends with a frank meditation on the current state of student politics and the place of student publications today, whose influence wanes in the wake of the commercialisation of higher education. This is an entertaining, relevant and well-researched book that will appeal to anyone interested in how social change is made.
This blog is delighted that Dissent will soon hit the road as we played a minor part in Sally's research , making available for her items from our shambolic files when she came to Magnetic Island from Melbourne with journalist and former MHR Pete Steedman , who figures in Dissent . Steedman , above , left, is shown working during those heady days of university press action in Melbourne .The federal government even considered bringing in special legislation to charge him with subversion
Sally has been going through the final stages of pre -publication dealing with a serious health condition . Highly recommended you buy Dissent , endorsed by Phillip Adams of the ABC's Late Night Live .
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Prominent ALP figure Dr Jim Cairns addressing anti war rally including many university students in Melbourne .
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