Upon entering university, what should the average tertiary student hope to learn? Ross McKenzie investigates.

(Ross McKenzie is a Professorial Research Fellow in the Department of Physics at the University of Queensland.)

An address given at the Annual Academic Awards Dinner, Cromwell College, University of Queensland, August 22, 2006.

Thank you for this opportunity to reflect a little on academic life. It is good to acknowledge achievement, not

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A re-make of the classic horror film highlights the problematic apologetic opportunities afforded by the genre.

There’s a Quit Smoking ad on Sydney buses doing the rounds at the moment: a cigarette that metamorphoses into a foot, some toes of which have rotted off due to gangrene, a side-effect of a smoking-related disease. The intent is threateningly didactic: this is what can happen if you smoke, so stop it.

The same purpose could be attributed

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Ivan Head wonders why we linger on a fly in the film of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and discovers a possible link to 19th Century American poet, Emily Dickinson.

Now that a cinema has come to Narnia, at least to its outskirts, it is not surprising that visitors to Narnia pass through a curtain of advertising for franchised meals and drinks before the titles appear. Even a magical kingdom needs an economy. But I would like to comment on

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Deep down we all desire a return from the dead.

The resurrection of Gandalf was one of the great moments in my reading childhood, and perhaps one of the most relieving scenes in modern fiction, and now cinema.The hobbits are not alone; the Balrog did not triumph; the great hope and security of Middle Earth is not lost, but is stronger than before. And more powerful, and more impressive, and more comforting than ever. Gandalf the Grey became Gandalf

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A reading list to get you started thinking about this topic

The following books provide a range of material on the relationship between the Bible and literature written in English. CASE welcomes reviews and comments on these books. They are presented for reflection, education and critical analysis—not as a canon of must-reads. Please read with your eyes open and brain engaged!

Files:rl-bible-in-literature.pdf

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In 1993, a novel called The Hand That Signed the Paper won the Australian/Vogel Literary Award and then the prestigious Miles Franklin Award in 1995. The novel reveals the atrocious acts of two brothers, Vitaly and Evheny Kovalenko, in the Ukraine during World War II. The brothers joined the SS and went about humiliating, torturing and exterminating Jews, convinced they were administering vengeance for years of hardship caused under the Jewish

Nick Cave directs a violent Australian Western movie that asks the age-old question whether blood is thicker than justice.

Top of the ‘family values’ film recommendations ought to be Nick Cave’s strikingly violent Australian desert Western, The Proposition. It’s all about putting your family first. The story of the film revolves around Captain Stanley’s (played by Ray Winstone) proposition to Charlie Burns (Guy Pearce) of the notorious Burns

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Can we learn a few lessons in evangelism from a rock star? Greg Clarke thinks we can.

We Christians are not to worship idols, and that means rock stars, too. But it doesn’t mean we can’t listen to them, enjoy them, and sometimes even admire them—especially when they deserve it. U2’s Bono is that rare celebrity who seems to have become more, rather than less, admirable over time. Sure, there are probably hushed up incidents, a few sins and

In the inaugural Isaac Armitage lecture, Andrew Cameron considers what Christian education might look like in a pluralistic society.

The title of my talk, ‘Anglican Schooling in a Pluralistic Society’, could of course mean anything. But I want to talk about what Anglican schools are for, in a world where many people believe many different things. Let me assume at the outset that a church school has some sort of intention to ‘bless the world’

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Compare and contrast the hero of the Christian faith with the actions of Harry Potter, Gandalf, Angel and other film and book heroes.

“A wizard should know better!” is the tree shepherd’s outraged exclamation when he surveys the carnage wreaked by Saruman, the White Wizard of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. Saruman had devastated Treebeard’s home by uprooting and destroying all the trees in his realm of Isengard. Worse, he had dispatched the