New Member Welcome

CHRG welcomes its newest member, Dr. Christopher Mayes.

Dr Mayes is an Australian Research Council DECRA Fellow based in the Alfred Deakin Institute at Deakin University. Chris’s research interests include the history and philosophy of medicine, sociology of food, and political theory.  

Chris’s DECRA project is on the history of bioethics in Australia. This project aims to provide the first comprehensive account of the emergence of bioethics in Australia from the late-1970s. Using archival sources, oral histories, and theoretical analysis, this project examines the distinctive local and global contributions of Australian bioethics to regulatory frameworks, legal reform, and public discourse surrounding reproductive technologies, manipulation of embryonic life, and reconfiguration of the human subject.  

Chris’s first book, The Biopolitics of Lifestyle: Foucault, Ethics, and Health Choices  (Routledge, 2016), traced the transformation of the ways bodies, fat and health have been understood in Western societies leading to the emergence of obesity as a social, political and ethical problem.  

In addition to the history and philosophy of medicine, Chris has published on the history of agriculture in Australia, its role in dispossession of Indigenous peoples and its contemporary legacies in food politics and ethics. He is the author of Unsettling Food Politics: agriculture, dispossession and sovereignty in Australia (Rowman & Littlefield, 2018).  

Chris has contributed to The Conversation, ABC Religion & Ethics, and has been guest on a number of ABC RN programs and interviewed for Marie Claire. 

Publication News 

Christopher Mayes had an article published in the Journal of Intercultural Studies –Governmentality of Fencing in Australia. The article examines how the importation of wire fencing in the 1860s transformed pastoral practices and introduced new modes of governing biological life considered “pests”> https://www.tandfonline.com/…/abs/10.…/07256868.2020.1704228

ABSTRACT: The importation of wire-fencing to Australia from the 1840s transformed the management of sheep. Rather than shepherds watching over flocks, wire-fences allowed sheep to roam relatively unsupervised in paddocks. It is commonly argued that the popularity of wire-fenced paddocks arose because they reduced labor costs and improved wool production. This is partly true. The declining use of shepherds to protect flocks coincided with the ending of brutal frontier wars and localised eradication of dingoes. That is, the conditions for adopting wire fences and practice of paddocking were made possible through violence. Fences came to denote property, order, and civilization. Drawing on and expanding Michel Foucault’s work on pastoral power and governmentality, this paper argues that the initial period of colonial “pastoral violence” dovetailed into a “fencing governmentality” that mobilised literal and figurative “paddocks” to manage, sort, and reproduce life that is desirable while excluding life that is not. Importantly, violence does not vacate the paddock, but is recoded and manifest differently depending on one’s relation to the fences. This paper traces the development of a fencing governmentality and its use in the protection, exclusion and restriction of biological life, namely the lives of Aboriginals, animals, and non-British immigrants.

Congratulations!

To CHRG member and PhD candidate, Anna Kent. Anna was recently awarded the 2020 John Higley prize at the #ANZSANA2020 conference for her paper, ‘Scholarships as signposts- Australian government scholarship to the Pacific 2000-2010.

The Australian and New Zealand Studies Association of North America has established an annual Prize for the best paper presented by a graduate student at its Annual Conference. The Award is named in honor of John Higley, Emeritus Professor at the University of Texas at Austin, for his many contributions to Australian and New Zealand Studies. The winner will receive $500. Professor Higley taught in the Department of Sociology at UT-Austin from 1969 through 1974 before joining the Research School for Social Science at the Australian National University as a Fellow in Sociology. During that time, he led a major research project on Elites in Australia, a book that resulted. In 1984, Professor Higley returned to Austin, where he worked with Dr. Desley Deacon to establish the Edward A. Clark Center for Australian and New Zealand Studies. The Center was launched in 1988. Professor Higley served as its Director for 24 years, and held the Jack S. Blanton Chair in Australian Studies until his retirement in 2012. He advanced Australian and New Zealand Studies through his research on subjects that included immigration and trade policies as well as funding research by UT faculty and graduate students across a wide range of disciplines. A founding member of ANZSANA, as its president Professor Higley hosted two of the Association’s annual meetings at UT-Austin.

‘Urgent Histories’: AHA Annual Conference News

Abstracts for the 2020 AHA conference are due on the 29 February 2020.

We are pleased to confirm that 7 affiliated associations will convene streams during the conference: the Australian and New Zealand Environmental History Network, the Institute for the Study of French-Australian Relations, the Religious History Association, the Economic History Society of Australia and New Zealand, the Australian Society for Sports History, the Society for the History of Children and Youth and the Australian Society for the Study of Labour History. Most of their calls for papers are now available and can be found below in the Calls for Papers and Reminders sections.

Details> https://www.deakin.edu.au/aha2020

BURSARY OPPORTUNITY

The Patrick Wolfe Early Career Researcher AHA Conference Bursary Applications Are Now Open

The 39th Australian Historical Association (AHA) Conference will be hosted by Deakin University Contemporary Histories Research Group on the theme ‘urgent histories’.

The Australian Historical Association is delighted to announce a new early career researcher bursary for attendance of the annual AHA Conference. The Patrick Wolfe Bursary will be awarded annually until 2028 to assist an early career researcher to participate in the AHA annual conference and attend the conference dinner. The prize honours the career of Dr Patrick Wolfe (1949-2016), an eminent historian and forerunner in the field of settler colonial studies. In 2016 when Patrick Wolfe died, we sadly lost one of the most original, committed, and generous historians of colonialism. Patrick’s intellectual influence was immense; he was read by historians, anthropologists, archaeologists, cultural theorists and Indigenous scholars the world over. He was a generous supervisor and mentor, never failing to celebrate his students’ achievements. Patrick was also a bon vivant and brilliant conversationalist, his friendship circle was immense. This award is designed to extend Patrick’s legacy and support an early career researcher to participate in the AHA Conference. The bursary will cover conference registration and attendance at the conference dinner.

Applications due 13 March 2020

Further information http://www.theaha.org.au/awards-and-prizes/patrick-wolfe-early-career-researcher-conference-bursary/