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.
Seminar Series
Our seminar series for 2023 has now concluded. Thank you to all those who have presented over the year, those who have chaired seminars and to all of you who have come along, asked great questions and engaged with the seminars. We are already getting the 2024 Seminar Series organised – so if you have some research you’d love to share with us in 2024 please get in touch with Anna.
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 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.
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.
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
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.
Creative Australia – First Nations Emerging Career Development Award
Two awards of $10,000 are given to First Nations artists or arts workers between 18 and 30 years old to fund their professional development. This multi-artform opportunity is available to artists practicing in community arts and cultural development, dance, experimental arts, literature, multi-arts, music, theatre and/or visual arts. The deadline is 10 October 2023. More information is available here.
Upcoming 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.
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.
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 here.
Cover Photo
A Magpie Cigarette Card from the 1920s.