From innocent criminals to radical revolutionaries, feisty feminists to manly pioneers, egalitarian settlers to violent invaders, Caught on Screen shows how over successive generations the shape-shifting convict emerged on screen as a potent historical symbol.Convicts loom large in Australian history.As transported criminals and the first European settlers, they have shackled the nation to a curious and contested origin story. Historians were largely silen...

Writing Australian History On-screen: Television and Film Period Dramas "Down Under" reveals the depths of Australian history from convict times to the present day. The essays in this book are thematically driven and take a rounded historical-cultural-sociological-psychological approach in analyzing the various selected productions. In their analyses and interpretations of the topic, the contributors interrogate the intricacies in Australian history as represented in Australian filmic peri...