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).
Voice to Parliament
The CCH Executive has released a statement in support of the Yes vote in the upcoming referendum on the Voice to Parliament:
The Centre for Contemporary Histories Executive supports the Uluru Statement from the Heart and the proposed change to the Australian Constitution enabling a First Nations Voice to Parliament. We endorse the Deakin University Executive’s statement of support for the Voice in the context of the university’s responsibility to be active in key, nation-shaping debates. You can read the Deakin Executive’s statement here and the Uluru Statement here.
Please note that if you need to update your AEC enrolment prior to the referendum on the 14th October, today (18th September) is the cut off day.
Seminar Series
We are heading towards the end of our seminar series, with four seminars to come. This week we have a CCH Update, where we will be updating you on how things are progressing with our new Centre. On the 27th September we have Affiliate Member Nate Moir joining us from the US to tell us about his book – Number One Realist.
And don’t forget that you can catch up with some our previous seminars in podcast form – now on Spotify!
New 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!
News from Members
Congratulations to Ana Rosa Marginson who has been accepted as a Visiting Research Associate at the Institute of Philippine Culture at Ateneo de Manila University in the Philippines. Ana Rosa will be affiliated with the institute while she is on her second fieldwork trip there in October-December this year.
You can watch Carolyn Holbrook’s HTAV Annual Conference keynote from a few weeks ago if you’d like to hear her presentation History Education for the Citizens of the Future.
Dr Donna-Lee Frieze has been recruited as a Senior Research Fellow (SRF), working within the Centre for Contemporary Histories, on the four-year ARC Linkage, “Learning from the Past? Educational Efficacy in Memorial Museums”. The Linkage’s academic team includes Project Leader, Associate Professor Avril Alba (University of Sydney) and Chief Investigators, Dr Helena Robinson (University Technology of Sydney) and CCH’s Associate Professor Steven Cook. Donna has been recruited to the SRF position due to her extensive research on Holocaust history and its aftermath, philosophy and genocide studies. She will assess and evaluate the key relationship between the historical and ethical foci of the study. Donna will work intensively with Steven to develop, refine, implement and evaluate the Visual Research Methodologies and with Helena on the ethnography. The project will investigate the educational efficacy of commemorative learning programs at institutions that communicate difficult and traumatic pasts. Developed in partnership with Australia’s three Holocaust museums (Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide), the project’s innovative methodology will enable a comprehensive understanding of these programs’ educative potential and impact. The results generated will enable an increasing number of such sites to develop more targeted and effective programs that engage high school students on both cognitive and affective levels.
Publications, Research and Media
Nate Moir has a couple of new publications – the first is a review of Christopher Goscha’s book, The Road to Dien Bien Phu: A History of the First War for Vietnam (Princeton University Press: Princeton, NJ and Oxford, 2022), published in War in History, Vol. 30, Issue 3, August 2023. The second is an article recently published in the Journal of American-East Asian Relations (Brill). It is titled “To Each His Turn…Today Yours, Tomorrow Min: Francois Sully’s Turn in History”, Vol. 30, Issue 3, 2023.
Events
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.
Australasian Urban History / Planning History Group Postgraduate Symposium
22 September 2023
The symposium includes a lunchtime keynote from public historian Dr Lisa Murray, who will make the case for the centrality of historians in shaping cities through research, policy, decision-making, urban design, placemaking, heritage significance, art and interpretation. We invite you to attend the symposium and hear from postgraduate students in urban / planning history. You’re also welcome to drop in for the keynote at 12PM with Dr Lisa Murray. At this lunchtime session, we will also be launching the next biannual symposium urban history / planning history conference, which will be held at the University of Sydney in mid-2024. You can register using this link.
Historicizing National Security in the 21st Century
4 October 2023
The National Security team is hosting a workshop on 4th October at Deakin Downtown, with leading Australian scholars of security and visiting professors Sylvester A. Johnson (Virginia Tech) and Eckart Conze (University of Marburg). There are a limited number of audience spaces available– please RSVP by 25th September to mia.martinhobbs@deakin.edu.au
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 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.
Ken Inglis Postgraduate Prize 2023
Australian Historical Studies is currently welcoming applications for the Ken Inglis Postgraduate Prize 2023. This prize is awarded for the best paper presented by a postgraduate student at the 2023 AHA Conference. The prize consists of a two-year subscription to Australian Historical Studies and a $250 Routledge book voucher. Applications close 30th September 2023. You can find further information here.
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.
AHA Prizes
There are a number of AHA prizes and awards now open for expressions of interest – check out the opportunities here and get your EOIs in!
2023 S. J. Butlin Prize
The Economic History Society of Australia and New Zealand is inviting nominations for the 2023 S. J. Butlin Prize for best Masters or PhD thesis in Australian or New Zealand economic history, awarded in calendar years 2020, 2021 or 2022. The applied definition of ‘economic’ is broad, encompassing business history and labour history, as well as more cross-disciplinary work in fields such as environmental history, urban history, agricultural history, political history. Nominations close 1 October 2023. More information can be found here.
Call for Papers Reminders
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 here.
European Association for Urban History (EAUH) Conference 2024: “Cities at the Boundaries”
University of Ostrava
4-7 September 2024
Main Session 3: Interrogating Historical Value: A Place for People and the Past in Urban Heritage Conservation
Deadline for proposals: 30 September 2023
How might urban historians push the boundaries of heritage conservation in cities across the world? Our purpose is to interweave history and heritage, both conceptually and practically, to address the enduring failure of conservation to centre historical, social and community perspectives.
All paper proposals (max. 300 words) must be submitted by 30 September 2023. Please follow the guidelines for paper submission published on the EAUH website. Submissions should include a short bio. Please mark the paper for Session M3. For further details, please contact the session organisers: James Lesh, Deakin University (james.lesh@deakin.edu.au), Rebecca Madgin, University of Glasgow (Rebecca.Madgin@glasgow.ac.uk), Tanja Vahtikari, Tampere University (tanja.vahtikari@tuni.fi).
Cover Photo
Lobbyists from the Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders meet with Prime Minister Harold Holt in February 1967 – from left to right: Gordon Bryant MP, Faith Bandler, Harold Holt, Pastor Doug Nicholls, Burnum Burnum (Harry Penrith), Win Branson and WC Wentworth MP, Australian News and Information Bureau (NAA: A1200, L62232)