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Prentice Creative Searching Rivers12.48 MB
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Threads of the search for W.H.R. Rivers1.65 MB
Thesis Embargoed Access, Embargo ends: 20-Aug-2025
Dissertation
Searching for Rivers
University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland
Doctor of Creative Arts, University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland
2024
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25907/00866
Abstract
This exegesis and creative work contributes to knowledge by creatively enacting the naïve and ultimately impossible pursuit of freeing a biographical subject, in this case British polymath William Halse Rivers Rivers (1864–1922), from creative conjecture and illusion. The exegesis is, principally, a prospective account of a research journey. It establishes what is known about W.H.R. Rivers, and through a variety of methods, seeks insights to further that knowledge. Primary records and contemporaneous sources from within the archives are interrogated for generational and other vital links. The genealogical method proved essential for determining family connections and origins, and prosopography indispensable in several investigations for establishing common characteristics. A finding from this research is that, for practitioners, immersion in the archives may produce results that influence the intended direction of a creative work. Supplementary, or ghostly, voices from the past, transformed the anticipated pragmatic biography into a narrative in which the original subject, Rivers, was decentred. A creative composition appropriated by ghosts demanded an accommodating space. In tracing such, various potential frameworks of the biographical genre were examined, and both irony and paradox consistent with that of the creative artefact were employed in experimentation with form. Practice-led, the creative artefact develops the outcome of this process. It demonstrates the results of the ‘small world’ model of research (six degrees of separation), and the meta-narrative complexities of adapting archival voices to the historical account of a life.
Details
- Title
- Searching for Rivers
- Authors
- Tully Prentice - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, School of Business and Creative Industries
- Contributors
- Clare Archer-Lean (Principal Supervisor) - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Sustainability Research CentreShelley Davidow (Co-Supervisor) - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Indigenous and Transcultural Research CentreGinna Brock (Co-Supervisor) - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, School of Business and Creative Industries
- Awarding institution
- University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland
- Degree awarded
- Doctor of Creative Arts
- Publisher
- University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland
- DOI
- 10.25907/00866
- Organisation Unit
- School of Business and Creative Industries; University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland
- Language
- English
- Record Identifier
- 991054598202621
- Output Type
- Dissertation
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