Showing papers in "Australian Historical Studies in 2012"
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that the repetitive nature of trauma can undermine the best intentions of the oral historian requiring the interviewer to be alert to both conscious and unconscious dynamics of the interview.
Abstract: Practitioners of oral history and life-history interviewing often claim therapeutic benefits for their practice. This article questions these claims especially when interviews involve a traumatic dimension. The repetitive nature of trauma can undermine the best intentions of the oral historian requiring the interviewer to be alert to both conscious and unconscious dynamics of the interview.
15 citations
TL;DR: The authors compare the work of the protectorates during the 1840s in Port Phillip and South Australia with that of Western Australia, where a more systematic and forebodingly modern policy of Aboriginal governance existed.
Abstract: Scholarship on Australia's colonial protectorates has examined the ways in which protectors largely failed in their humanitarian mission, as well as the ambivalent roles they played as agents of ‘civilisation’. Yet as well as representing ‘friends and benefactors’ of Aboriginal people, colonial protectors worked to bring them within the legal reach of police, courts and prisons. This article will compare the work of the protectorates during the 1840s in Port Phillip and South Australia with that of Western Australia, where a more systematic and forebodingly modern policy of Aboriginal governance existed. It argues that in Western Australia a logic of Aboriginal protection emerged through a principle of discipline and punishment facilitated by the distinctive policy regime of Governor Hutt.
13 citations
TL;DR: The Australian Legend remains the classic account of our national culture, and it was shaped by a long debate, in Europe and Australia, about the cultural basis of national selfhood, as well as by the events of Ward's own time: the 1930s depression, the popular front against Nazism and the early years of the Cold War as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Fifty years after its publication Russel Ward's The Australian Legend remains the classic account of our national culture. It was shaped by a long debate, in Europe and Australia, about the cultural basis of national selfhood, as well as by the events of Ward's own time: the 1930s depression, the popular front against Nazism and the early years of the Cold War. Russel Ward was a true believer in the bush legend as well as a critical interpreter of its origins, an ambiguity of purpose that reflected his shift from radical activist to academic, and from folklorist to cultural historian. In its preoccupation with ideas of national belonging it stands in a tradition that begins with the German Romantics and continues in contemporary interests in the Dreamtime.
13 citations
TL;DR: This article analysed Australian efforts on behalf of victims of the 1876-8 Indian famine as complex articulations of colonial identity and loyalty in the British imperial world, and found that the language of filial duty most commonly associated with later military commitments had a humanitarian pedigree.
Abstract: This article analyses Australian efforts on behalf of victims of the 1876–8 Indian famine as complex articulations of colonial identity and loyalty in the British imperial world. Focused on the Victorian Famine Relief Fund, which made extensive use of vivid photographic images of sufferers, the article also examines the public campaigns on behalf of Indian famine victims in other colonial cities and towns. It suggests that the language of filial duty most commonly associated with later military commitments had a humanitarian pedigree, and that the settler colonial ability to express empathy for non-white British subjects was enhanced by the capacity to see photographic images of them. Despite their promise of drawing the viewer closer to witnessing suffering, photographs of famine victims served rather to emphasise the distance between the viewer and the viewed, in ways that were productive for the fund-raising effort.
9 citations
TL;DR: This article explored the making of segregated space in Bundaberg as revealed by an 1891 trial for the killing of Charlie Eureka, an Aboriginal man of the area, revealing the ways settler anxieties regarding race, possession and settlement manifested in the built environment of colonial space.
Abstract: This article explores the making of segregated space in Bundaberg as revealed by an 1891 trial for the killing of Charlie Eureka, an Aboriginal man of the area. The article reveals the ways settler anxieties regarding race, possession and settlement manifested in the built environment of colonial space. While historians haved looked at the policing of Queensland's settler towns with racial curfews and surveillance, less have considered the lived experiences of the marginalised communities themselves. I argue that these communities exerted their own spatial presence and that available records provide glimpses of their economic and cultural agency.
9 citations
TL;DR: Faces in the Street: Biography and Life-Writing as discussed by the authors is a special issue developed from papers presented by invited speakers at a symposium, ‘Faces In The Street: biography and life-writing, organised by Tanya Evans for History Week at the State Library of New York.
Abstract: This special issue developed from papers presented by invited speakers at a symposium, ‘Faces in the Street: Biography and Life-Writing’, organised by Tanya Evans for History Week at the State Libr...
7 citations
Journal Article•
6 citations
TL;DR: The Coal River Heritage Precinct in the heart of Newcastle (NSW) as discussed by the authors is one of the sites excluded from the Australian Government's successful nomination of eleven "convict sites" for World Heritage listing.
Abstract: The Australian Government's successful nomination of eleven ‘convict sites’ for World Heritage listing has again highlighted complex relationships between history and heritage. This article considers one convict site excluded from the nomination—the Coal River Heritage Precinct in the heart of Newcastle (NSW). While the site falls short of fulfilling conventional heritage criteria, the material remains having been so seriously eroded, its historical significance is nonetheless considerable. In fact, its significance lies in what has been destroyed, as much as in what has survived, because the site evidences a process of adaptation and transformation over time. This theme of adaptation, we argue, is an instructive reflection of the legacies of Australia's convict past, but is not so well embodied by the successfully-nominated convict sites. Drawing on the lessons from this particular case study, we suggest that more progressive and adventurous approaches may be needed to adequately reflect the his...
6 citations
TL;DR: This paper explored the implications of sentimental songs for Australian masculinities between 1900 and the 1930s, paying particular attention to rough and/or working-class males in the First World War era.
Abstract: Songs in which male protagonists expressed tender sentiments about mothers or sweethearts were everywhere in early twentieth-century Australia. They could be heard in vaudeville shows, home sing-songs, neighbourhood parties and amateur concerts—even those held for or by servicemen during the First World War. In this article I explore the implications of this for Australian masculinities between 1900 and the 1930s, paying particular attention to ‘rough’ and/or working-class masculinities in the First World War era. Drawing on oral histories and a case-study of the vaudevillian, Harry Clay, I challenge the idea that Australians had ‘lost their taste for the sentimental’ in the early 1900s. While men were coming under increasing pressure to be stoic or tough I argue that this made sentimental songs more important rather than less, as a forum in which men could voice feelings considered unacceptable at other times in their lives.
6 citations
TL;DR: The Nakanai massacre as mentioned in this paper was the bloodiest attack on whites in New Guinea for twenty years, and it had consequences extending to retention of this territory and Australia's national prestige in the highly charged international setting.
Abstract: On 1 November 1926 an Australian-led force left Rabaul bent on ‘justice’. This punitive expedition was in response to the recent killing of four Australian men in the Nakanai district of New Britain seventy miles from Rabaul. Called the ‘Nakanai massacre’, it was the bloodiest attack on whites in New Guinea for twenty years. This article explores the ‘Nakanai massacre’ and examines the revealing responses to it. It argues that the Nakanai massacre generated different levels of concern and anxiety about violence on Australian frontiers than contemporary mainland massacres because it occurred within New Guinea and under the intense international scrutiny of the League of Nations. This incident not only brings to the fore public debate about what Australia's rule in New Guinea was or should be. It argues it had consequences extending to retention of this territory and Australia's national prestige in the highly charged international setting in of 1926.
6 citations
TL;DR: The authors examines the context in which Australia Unlimited was written and considers its impact on Australian environmental history and argues that for a book with such alleged influence, it in fact had little at the time, reflecting rather than shaping the world around it, and struggling to be a contemporary success.
Abstract: Edwin James Brady (1869–1952) is best known as a minor figure from the political and literary world of the 1890s and the author of Australia Unlimited, a book associated with government policies of agricultural expansion into marginal lands during the inter-war years. He occupies a paradoxical place in Australian environmental history being characterised as a figure that both celebrated Australian nature and contributed to its destruction. This article examines Brady's often contradictory views, explores the context in which he wrote Australia Unlimited, and considers its impact. It argues that for a book with such alleged influence, it in fact had little at the time, reflecting rather than shaping the world around it, and struggling to be a contemporary success.
TL;DR: The National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne 16 April-7 August 2011 as discussed by the authors, travelled to the Queensland Art Gallery 17 December 2011-4 March 2012, and to the National Museum of Australia 27 April-15 July 2011.
Abstract: National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne 16 April–7 August 2011. Travelling to the Queensland Art Gallery 17 December 2011–4 March 2012, and to the National Gallery of Australia 27 April–15 July 201...
TL;DR: The authors argued that Australia's increasing acceptance of the aridity of their continent over this period was substantially driven by a need to project abroad an image of a nation acting responsibly in a world of escalating population pressures.
Abstract: Between the world wars Australia was commonly characterised as a dog in the manger for failing to utilise vast tracts of its territory while refusing to relax its stringent restrictions on immigration This article examines interwar responses to the dog-in-the-manger accusation, particularly their implications for the environmental representation of the supposedly empty spaces I argue that Australians’ increasing acceptance of the aridity of their continent over this period was substantially driven by a need to project abroad an image of a nation acting responsibly in a world of escalating population pressures
TL;DR: The authors argues that we should be wary about the origins of these sentimental stories, and about their capacity to be reworked into acts of historical recovery, and argues that these stories need to be questioned.
Abstract: This article seeks to do the impossible: to unsettle the fixity of fictions that have been so long in circulation that they have taken on the appearance and solidity of fact. Mathinna, the Aboriginal girl who lived at Government House under the care of Lady Franklin in the early 1840s but was abandoned at the Orphan School when the Franklins returned to England a few years later, is an elusive historical subject. Stories and images of Mathinna have circulated for a century and a half, drawing sustenance from each other to entrench powerful sentimental tropes about her life. The article argues that we should be wary about the origins of these sentimental stories, and about their capacity to be reworked into acts of historical recovery.
TL;DR: The authors explored the pre-war class backgrounds of soldiers, the traces of class in their writings and their experiences, the class-based selection processes of soldiers' writing by post-war archives, and how key historians of the AIF have paid insufficient attention to class.
Abstract: The issue of class remains strikingly absent from much of the historical literature on the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) during the First World War. This article briefly explores the pre-war class backgrounds of soldiers, the traces of class in their writings and their experiences, the class-based selection processes of soldiers’ writing by post-war archives, and how key historians of the AIF have paid insufficient attention to class. It argues that as a result of middle-class hegemony, before, during and after the war, the memory of the First World War in Australian popular culture and much historical writing is largely a memory based upon skewed sources and a lack of recognition of class in the AIF.
TL;DR: However, not all of these themes were central to the early organic gardening and farming movement, and organic advocates did not adopt a far-right agenda en masse as discussed by the authors, arguing that organics encompassed a range of political standpoints.
Abstract: The 1940s saw the emergence in Australia of an organic gardening and farming movement with links to the far right involving both personal connections and ideological convergences Themes of natural law, unity of soil and people, and anti-urbanism—all attractive to far-right ideologues—can be found within the discourse of the early organic movement However, not all of these themes were central to the movement, and organic advocates did not adopt a far-right agenda en masse Though attractive to some as a romantic reaction to modernity, this article argues that organics encompassed a range of political standpoints
TL;DR: The role of photography in the recognition of the oppression of Indigenous Australians in the interwar years was explored in this article, where the authors argue that recognition of Indigenous suffering was also heavily conditional upon its representation within conventional interpretive frameworks, as popular moral sensibilities allowed certain images, scandalous but familiar, to become the visual battleground of injustice.
Abstract: This article explores the role of photography in the recognition of the oppression of Indigenous Australians in the interwar years. Today, photographs of conflict and suffering are crucial evidence that make these phenomena real to us, but the interpretive frameworks that determine photographic meaning offer profound challenges to historians attempting to understand past visual cultures. During the 1920s and 1930s, images of Indigenous ill-treatment were framed by narratives of injustice, facilitated by photographic images that allowed events in remote places to be witnessed by mass audiences across the British Empire. I argue that while such imagery popularised reform and mobilised international support, recognition of Indigenous suffering was also heavily conditional upon its representation within conventional interpretive frameworks, as popular moral sensibilities allowed certain images, scandalous but familiar, to become the visual battleground of injustice.
TL;DR: In this paper, a review article draws on interviews with visitors to the Stockman's Hall of Fame, Longreach, and identifies and discusses the gendered cultural work that is undertaken by visitors during their visit.
Abstract: This review article draws on interviews with visitors to the Stockman's Hall of Fame, Longreach, and identifies and discusses the gendered cultural work that is undertaken by visitors during their visit.
TL;DR: This article argued that the collapse of "grand narratives" in the 1970s has created new opportunities for biography and highlighted the widening scope and inclusiveness of the genre, and noted its increasingly porous boundaries.
Abstract: Are we living in a ‘golden age’ of biography? This extended commentary on biography today concludes that we probably are. Based on a selection of recent significant biographies, mostly Australian, a long association with the Australian Dictionary of Biography, and personal experience, it offers a perspective on the enhanced status of biography, highlights the widening scope and inclusiveness of the genre, and notes its increasingly porous boundaries. Problems of innovation are considered as well as achievements. Some current issues and expectations are also addressed. An awareness that the collapse of ‘grand narratives’ in the 1970s has created new opportunities for biography underpins the argument.
TL;DR: In the case of the eminent Australian art historian Bernard Smith, the image has always had the potential to reflect the traditions and "spirits of the past" as well as the realities and interdisciplinary contours of the present as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: The potency between text and image is an integral part of visual and cultural disciplines. In this article the value of the image or leitmotifs is explored as a methodological tool in the genre of biography. In the case of the eminent Australian art historian Bernard Smith, the image has always had the potential to reflect the traditions and ‘spirits of the past’ as well as the realities and interdisciplinary contours of the present, but it is argued that leitmotifs and the image, be it the black swan, Minerva's owl or that of Antipodean distance can also tap into the sui generis of the individual, signalling the intricate shadows and larger ideas central to this major Australian intellectual.
TL;DR: The authors argue that one possible source of Deakin's complex psychology is his mother's depression in the early years of her migration when Deakin was a young child, and that his parents' active participation in mid-Victorian literary culture was also formative for Deakin.
Abstract: Alfred Deakin experienced himself as divided between an inner and outer self. He remembered himself as an unhappy child who sought solace in books and fantasy, creating an inner chamber of day-dreaming and escape. Historians have puzzled over this fruitlessly but on the basis of psychoanalytic theory and new evidence about his mother Sarah I argue that one possible source of Deakin's complex psychology is his mother's depression in the early years of her migration when Deakin was a young child. Also formative for Deakin was his parents' active participation in mid-Victorian literary culture and their unusually strong commitment to their children's education.
TL;DR: This paper explored who are the subjects and authors of cliographies and what are their nature, and argued that cliography, while not always innovative given where they sit in the profession, are nonetheless significant histories in themselves.
Abstract: There is a recent named sub-set of biographies—cliographies—dealing with historians. This article will explore who are the subjects and authors of cliographies and what are their nature. My quest is both normative and explanatory in seeking to analyse the practices and issues of these works, not least the way cliographies are changing, and what cliographies might tell us about the historical discipline. I will argue that cliographies, while not always innovative given where they sit in the profession, are nonetheless significant histories in themselves.
TL;DR: For instance, this paper used Anderson's case to examine the biographer's problem in dealing accurately and meaningfully with their subject's sexuality, especially that of celebrities, especially celebrities.
Abstract: Australian-born actress Judith Anderson's portrayal of the housekeeper Mrs Danvers in Hitchcock's 1940 film Rebecca has made her the poster girl for scholarly analyses of lesbian sexuality on film; and the plethora of books in the last few years about gays in Hollywood—scholarly and sensational—assume that Anderson was a lesbian. Yet evidence about her sexuality is highly ambiguous. This article uses Anderson's case to examine the biographer's problem in dealing accurately and meaningfully with their subject's sexuality, especially that of celebrities.
TL;DR: The authors argue that late colonial "racism" emerged as a discursive resolution to a much wider set of questions about the legitimacy of labour in public life, and use biographical techniques to investigate the subjectivity of labour activist William Murphy.
Abstract: The work of Patrick Joyce and Joan Scott asks scholars to rigorously historicise experience, identity and, as a consequence, subjectivity. This article suggests the combination of their insights with biographical techniques has the potential to offer new explanations for intransigent historiographic problems such as the explosion of racism in late nineteenth-century Australian labour politics. The practice of biography, moreover, provides an opportunity for Australian scholars to re-engage with the challenge of post-structuralism and resist the temptation to isolate its influence to analyses of culture and representation. Using these methodologies to investigate the subjectivity of labour activist William Murphy, this article then argues that late colonial ‘racism’ emerged as a discursive resolution to a much wider set of questions about the legitimacy of labour in public life.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that the appeal of the portrait gallery relies upon the presentation of an accessible and relatively simple view of biography, which is at odds with academic perspectives and revisionist scholarship which increasingly examines portraits as complex, dense and historically difficult images.
Abstract: In December 2008 the doors of the new Australian National Portrait Gallery were opened to the public. Visitor numbers quickly exceeded expectations and currently stand at over 1.5 million. In this paper it will be argued that the appeal of the portrait gallery relies upon the presentation of an accessible and relatively simple view of biography. This simple view is at odds with academic perspectives and revisionist scholarship which increasingly examines portraits as complex, dense and historically difficult images. Given the differences between popular and scholarly ideas of portraiture, this review considers viable and productive paths for collaboration between the National Portrait Gallery and academia.
Journal Article•
TL;DR: In this paper, Damousi presents a Cultural History of English in Australia 1840-1940, with a focus on colonial voices and their role in the development of the English language.
Abstract: Colonial Voices: A Cultural History of English in
Australia 1840-1940. By Joy Damousi. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press. 2010. Pp. 315. A$130.00 cloth.
TL;DR: The authors investigated the meaning and significance of a single event in Sydney in 1806 when a group of Asiatic seamen' (lascars) led a religious procession through the streets of the town and argued the procession can be understood in two ways; as an assertion by the lascars of religious and cultural identity, and as a case study where the colonists' dominant response suggested acknowledgement and acceptance, if not approval, of difference.
Abstract: This article investigates the meaning and significance of a single event in Sydney in 1806 when a group of Asiatic seamen’ (lascars) led a religious procession through the streets of the town. Lascars were an essential pillar of British imperial maritime dominance yet were a repressed and exploited group. The article argues the procession can be understood in two ways; as an assertion by the lascars of religious and cultural identity, and as a case study where the colonists’ dominant response suggested acknowledgement and acceptance, if not approval, of difference.