You can read all about our news here, but don’t forget we regularly put out information by our social media channels – Twitter and Facebook.
Don’t forget to send Anna your publications, seminars, conferences, calls for papers and other news and celebrations for publication in the newsletter (now published fortnightly on a Monday).
News from Members
Congratulations to David Hundt and David Lowe who have been awarded $32,321 from the Department of Veterans’ Affairs (Saluting Their Service grants scheme) for their project, Witnesses to war and peace: Australian recollections of Korea and Koreans, 1953–2023. The project focuses on how Australian veterans of the Korean War (1950–53), as well as those servicemen and women who have been part of Australian missions to the Military Armistice Commission in ensuing decades, understand the significance of their collective efforts. Its goal is to explore veterans’ perceptions of how their service during and after the war has contributed to the social, political, and economic development of South Korea during the past seven decades, as well as to the development of bilateral relations between Australia and South Korea. In addition to scholarly publications, it will produce a digitised oral history of Australians in Korea.
Angela Woollacott, Heather Goodall, David Lowe, and Jon Piccini have been awarded funding from the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia for a workshop at the ANU on 26-27 September 2024 on the subject of Decolonisation in Australia and our region in the 20th century and today.
Publications, Research and Media
Roy Hay’s article, based on a talk he gave to an Order of Australia Association has been published in the Investigator – ‘Aboriginal football in and around Geelong in the 19th Century’, Investigator, Vol. 57, No. 3, 2023, pp. 90–99.
Upcoming Events
‘Gold Standard?’ The Hawke Government Forty Years On
Friday 2 November 9am – 5:30pm
Museum of Australian Democracy, Old Parliament House Canberra
This year is the fortieth anniversary of the election of the Hawke Government (5 March 1983), one of the longest-serving and most transformative in Australian political history.
While much has been said about that government over the years since, little discussion has occurred in the wake of the more recent challenges to democratic government around the world, or the particular challenges that our own democracy grapples with.
This one-day conference brings together a former leading minister in that government, Hon Professor Gareth Evans AC KC, with some of the era’s political advisers, public servants, activists and journalists, as well as academics in the fields of history and politics. Was the Hawke Government the ‘gold standard’ for modern governments? What can we learn from both its successes and its failures? Registration and more information here.
HCV Annual Lecture
Wednesday 25 October 5:30
Former faculty member and now affiliate of Contemporary Histories, Professor Susie Protschky, will deliver the History Council of Victoria’s annual lecture from her new base at VU Amsterdam, on the topic, Colonial Pasts and ‘Image Wars’ on Wednesday 25 October at 5.30 pm. Details of registration are here.
An Evening of Mystery in the Eastern Arcade: Phrenologists & Spiritualists
31 Oct 2023 6:30pm – 7:30pm
PROV (Victorian Archives Centre)
Travel through time with Dr Alexandra Roginski and Professor Andrew Singleton to the arcades and byways of inner Melbourne in the early twentieth century. Visit the small businesses and networks of healing, divination and faith that offered an alternative way of life in the new nation. Meet glamorous figures who combined the discredited science of phrenology (head reading) with astrology, palmistry and fortune-telling, attracting scandal and police stings. Slip into a medium’s parlour to receive messages from the spirits and witness women gaining authority in this new religion. And learn about the fights of women who earned their livings in these occupations while facing police harassment, prosecution and muck-raking journalism. Sensation, spirit hands and scandal are all in a night’s work. This talk will be held live at the Victorian Archives Centre, and streamed through Zoom. Register here.
HDR Statistics Workshop | Foundations of Social Statistics: A Beginner’s Workshop
Monday 4 December
Deakin Downtown
Join us for a half-day workshop tailored to graduate students in the humanities, education and social sciences who are new to the world of social statistics. In an increasingly data-driven academic landscape, grasping the basics of statistical analysis is invaluable. No prior statistical knowledge is required.
If you are interested in attending this workshop, please email mia.martinhobbs@deakin.edu.au so we get a sense of numbers.
CCH Work in Progress Day for HDR/ECRs – 11 December, Deakin Downtown
Virginie Rey is organising a Work In Progress day for CCH HDR/ECRs at Deakin Downtown on the 11th December. Around 12 participants will submit work in advance and each receive two reviews on their work. The WIP day will run 10am to 14.30 and include morning tea and lunch. If you are interested in participating, please email virginie.rey@deakin.edu.au
Call for Papers
Insiders and Outsiders, Winners and Losers: Close-ups of the Struggle for Power and Status in Australia
Themed issue of Journal of Australian Studies
Scholarly and popular discourses in Australia often connect the agency of elites with the marginalisation of less privileged and powerful members of the community. This special issue of the Journal of Australian Studies focuses on conflicts and collaborations that determine social and political power and its effects. It seeks to open up closer discussion of the role of elites in Australian society through case studies since colonisation, and by the exploration of new research methods for investigating elite activity.
The trope of winners and losers is very familiar: military against convict, pastoralist and miner against Aboriginal landowner, squatter against small landholder, capital against labour, Protestant against Catholic, rentier against renter, established immigrant against newer arrival, elite male against female and non-elite male. Such definite oppositions have been formative in interpreting and understanding our national experience.
But on closer investigation the binaries often prove friable. Moving from generalisation to case study, the boundaries between elite and non-elite individuals are often less rigid and more porous than the national discourse suggests.
The co-editors of this themed issue invite case studies, current or historical, that illuminate collaborations and/or conflicts between elites and non-elites. Abstracts are due 30 October 2023. To find out more you can visit here or contact sybil.nolan@unimelb.edu.au or chris.wallace@canberra.edu.au for more information.
Opportunities
2023–24 Mike Smith Student Prize
The National Committee for the History and Philosophy of Science has a prize for unpublished postgrad work which has just opened and closes in Jan 2024. The essay should range from 4000–8000 words in length (exclusive of endnotes). Essays must be written in English and fully documented following the style specified for the Australian Academy of Science’s journal, Historical Records of Australian Science.
Essays may explore any aspect of the history of Australian science, including medicine and technology or Australian environmental history. The term ‘Australia’ may encompass essays focusing on the Australian region, broadly defined, which includes Oceania. We also welcome essays that compare issues and subjects associated with Australia to those of other places. You can find more information about the prize here, or get in touch with Timothy Neale.
DFAT – Australia-Indonesia Institute Grants Program 2023-24
Funding is available to supports continuity in people-to-people and institutional engagement between Australia and Indonesia across sectors for broad access and impact opportunities. The deadline is 26 October 2023. More information is available here.
CCH Hub Site
We are very excited that our digital evolution at CCH continues. We now have a Sharepoint site (for Deakin staff and students only). This is where you can find CCH templates and logos, and importantly – new grant application forms. CCH members should have access, but you will need to use your Deakin login. We will have a new externally facing website soon – stay tuned!
CCH Grants
Don’t forget that CCH has a number of grants available for staff and HDR students. These include Grant Application Support, ECR (including HDR) Development and Seed Funding Activities. For more information on which grant might be right for your circumstances check out this flowchart or check out this page (Deakin login required).
Reminders
New Archive Trial – Boston Herald
Deakin Library has arranged for a trial of the Boston Herald Archive 1848-1992. The trial gives us access to historical issues (May 1848-April 30 1992), text archive (July 26 1991 – current) and the Image Edition (2018 to current) of the Boston Herald.
AHA Early Career Researcher Fellowship
The AHA Early Career Researcher Fellowship is an award expected to be offered annually designed to support career-building publication activities, and attendance at the AHA annual conference in the year of the award. The $11,000 Fellowship is funded by donations to the AHA’s Public Fund, which supports the creation, publication, dissemination and discussion of historical literature in Australia. Applications are due 27 October 2023 – see here for more details.
New Housing History Network
Revisiting Classics in Australian Housing History
February 2024
This project, tentatively titled Revisiting Classics in Housing History, seeks to revisit canonical texts in the historiography of Australian housing. It comes out of a research agenda under the aegis of the New Housing History Network (NHHN), established in 2023, which has identified the current moment as a transformational one in understanding the cultural and social meaning of housing in Australia. The task of uncovering forgotten histories and historical imaginaries looms as an urgent task in our present moment, widely perceived to be one of exceptional historical crisis. Revisiting Classics in Housing History recognises the rich tradition of scholarship on housing across the twentieth century – much of which has slipped out of public consciousness – and asks what these texts might offer for readers today. While certain landmark texts in Australian urban and housing history have in recent years been “revisited” – notably Robin Boyd’s The Australian Ugliness and Janet McCalman’s Struggletown – a host of other histories remain under-read, and under-appreciated.
We invite proposals by authors to revisit key texts in the historiography of Australian housing. Proposals should nominate up to three landmark texts in the history of housing and briefly outline the reasoning to conduct a reflection on the enduring significance of the book in question. You can find more information about this call for papers, closing 10 December, here.
Cover Photo
Aboriginal Tent Embassy outside Parliament House, Canberra, 1974. National Archives of Australia (A6135, K14/3/74/11).