It is a great pleasure to announce that Gabrielle Kemmis has successfully completed her PhD. Her thesis, on the Psychology Strategy Board and America’s campaign to win the Cold War offered a history of a little-studied and short-lived government entity that Gabrielle argued had an outsized influence on government thinking and policy-making at a crucial moment in the history of the Cold War. Examiners praised the work for its originality, as well as its engagement with a broader conversation about the “incredible allure” that psychology and the social sciences held for policymakers in the mid-twentieth century. Based on a rich array of archival sources, examiners noted that the thesis showed a “truly impressive grasp of the wide range of secondary literature” and “adds significantly to our knowledge” of the role of the PSB in fostering new approaches to the Cold War.
As Gabrielle’s supervisor in the closing stages of the thesis, I might also add that this important and impressive achievement was accomplished in the face of and despite a number of very difficult professional and personal setbacks that could have easily derailed the progress and outcome of the thesis were it not for Gabrielle’s determination to see it through. The successful completion of the thesis, then, is a testament to Gabrielle’s commitment, drive, and resilience and her ability and desire to learn and to teach others even in the face of a great deal of adversity (also reflected in her much-lauded tutoring work in two separate units of study this semester!). It is a remarkable achievement.
Her thesis can be accessed at the Sydney eScholarship Repository, where it has been assigned the following identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/2123/16781
Again, while it is technically not official until graduation, I’m sure I am not the only one keen to offer a warm congratulations to Dr. Kemmis!
Mike M.
Author: Michael McDonnell
New PhD Students in the Department of History
Just a brief note to introduce you to two new-ish postgrad students who joined us a little later in the year than our initial cohort. Matthew and Anne have been participating in the first year seminar with Chris Hilliard and I am sure everyone will join me in welcoming them to the department.
Matthew Sullivan: PhD, part time. Supervisors: Shane White and Thomas Adams. I’m undertaking an examination of the conflict between the Black Liberation Army (BLA) and the New York Police Department (NYPD) during the 1970s. The project will explore the origin, progress and recollection of the conflict in its political and cultural context. msul6032@uni.sydney.edu.au
Anne Thoeming: PhD, full-time. Supervisors: Julia Horne and Sophie Loy-Wilson. My thesis is a biographical study of Dr Herbert Moran – Australian medical intellectual, footballer, cancer specialist, prolific author and Mussolini supporter. atho6577@uni.sydney.edu.au
For a list of the other students who joined us in late 2016 or early 2017, please see http://blogs.usyd.edu.au/historymatters/2017/03/new_research_students_in_the_d_1.html
Thanks,
Mike M.
History on Monday – Seminar Series Semester 2, 2017
The Department of History at the University of Sydney presents:
History on Monday
Seminar Series for Postgraduates and Faculty
Held at 12.10-1.30
in Woolley Common Room, Woolley Building A22
(Enter Woolley through the entrance on Science Road and climb the stairs in front of you. Turn left down the corridor, and the WCR is the door at the end of the hall)
Click here for map
2016 Coordinator:
Professor Dirk Moses
The semester at a glance:
Semester 2 2017
7 August
Ayhan Aktar (Bilgi University, Istanbul)
Remembering and Forgetting: Official Histories and Silenced Memories in Turkey
14 August
Leigh Ann Wheeler (SUNY Binghamton)
Sexual Civil Liberties and the Rise of Gay Rights: An Untold History of Stealth and Wealth
21 August
Phillippa Hetherington (School of Slavonic and East European Studies, London)
Imperial Governmentalities and the Campaign to End the Traffic in Women in the Russian Empire
28 August
Alison Bashford (University of Cambridge)
Gendering Modern World History
4 September
Anna Ross (University of Warwick)
Tetouan: Spanish Imperialism after the Americas, 1913-56
11 September
Frances Steel (University of Wollongong)
Anglo Worlds in Motion and Transpacific Encounters
18 September
Saliha Belmessous (UNSW)
Emancipation within Empire, Algeria, 1945-1962
25 AVCC Common Week
2 October
Labour Day
9 October
Katie McDonough (Western Sydney University)
Public Works Laboratory: Experiments in Provincial Governance in Eighteenth-Century France
16 October
Stephen Macekura (Indiana University Bloomington)
The Rhodesian Quandary: Accounting for International Development in the 1940s and 1950s
23 October
Andreas Stucki (University of Bern)
Engendering the Iberian Empires: Domesticity, Female Cooperation, Violence and Resistance, c. 1955-1975
30 October
Richard Steigmann-Gall (Kent State University)
Star-Spangled Fascism: American Interwar Political Extremism in Comparative Perspective
Three first books by History Department staff launched
Dr Anne Rees (right, centre) talks of the impact that Australians in Shanghai should make
On 21 March, the Department of History celebrated a launch of three books by its lecturers before an audience of over 40 colleagues and friends.
* Chin Jou, Supersizing Urban America: How Inner Cities Got Fast Food with Government Help (University of Chicago Press, 2017):
Launcher: Warwick Anderson
* Sophie Loy-Wilson, Australians in Shanghai: Race, Rights and Nation in Treaty Port China (Routledge, 2017):
Launcher: Ann Rees with introduction by Kirsten McKenzie.
* Marco Duranti, The Conservative Human Rights Revolution: European Identity, Transnational Politics, and the Origins of the European Convention (Oxford University Press, 2017):
Launcher: Danielle Celermajer
The Department thanks the launchers and congratulates Chin, Sophie, and Marco on their tremendous achievement.
The Department also thanks Dirk Moses and Natasha Wheatley for generously offering to host the triple book launch.
Professor Warwick Anderson lauds Dr. Chin Jou’s provocative Supersizing Urban America, while Dr. Jou (middle, left) looks on.
New Reviews for our Latest Published Books
Books by some of our newest members of staff at the History Department are making waves around the world.
The prestigious Times Higher Education Supplement recently reviewed Chin Jou’s book, Supersizing Urban America at https://www.timeshighereducation.com/books/review-supersizing-urban-america-chin-jou-university-of-chicago-press
The influential Australian Book Review took on Miranda Johnson’s The Land is our History: https://www.australianbookreview.com.au/abr-online/current-issue/may/4058-kevin-bell-reviews-the-land-is-our-history-indigeneity-law-and-the-settler-state-by-miranda-johnson
Dissent magazine looked at Marco Duranti’s The Conservative Human Rights Revolution at https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/conservative-internationalism-review-marco-duranti-samuel-moyn-christian-human-rights
And the Times Literary Supplement reviewed David Brophy’s book, Uyghur Nation at http://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/private/david-brophy-politics-china-uyghur/?akamai-teaser=true
It is a privilege to work with such a talented group of people.
Congrats to Chin, Miranda, Marco and David!
New Book in the Department of History
A belated congratulations to Dr. Sophie Loy-Wilson on the publication of her book, Australians in Shanghai: Race, Rights and Nation in Treaty Port China (Routledge, 2017).
This work focuses on a diverse community of Australians who settled in Shanghai in the first half of the twentieth century and forged a ‘China trade’, circulating goods, people and ideas across the South China Sea, from Shanghai and Hong Kong to Sydney and Melbourne. In following the life trajectories of these Australians, the book addresses one of the pervading tensions of race, empire and nation in the twentieth century: the relationship between working-class aspirations for social mobility and the exclusionary and discriminatory practices of white settler societies.
The book has already featured in an ABC news story, which you can read here, and/or listen to the Earshot program produced by Sophie and Tamson Pietsch.
More information about the book can be found here.
We look forward to launching the book at the University of Sydney when Sophie returns from maternity leave. Many congratulations.
History on Monday – Seminar Series Semester 1, 2017
The Department of History at the University of Sydney presents:
History on Monday
Seminar Series for Postgraduates and Faculty
Held at 12.10-1.30
in Woolley Common Room, Woolley Building A22
(Enter Woolley through the entrance on Science Road and climb the stairs in front of you. Turn left down the corridor, and the WCR is the door at the end of the hall)
Click here for map
2016 Coordinator:
Professor Dirk Moses
The semester at a glance
Semester 1 2017
13 March
Max Paul Friedman (American University, Washington, DC)
The Containment of the United States: Latin America and the Limits of Principle
20 March
Adrian Vickers (Asian Studies/University of Sydney)
Art and Politics in 1950s Indonesia
27 March
Daniela Helbig (History and Philosophy of Science/University of Sydney)
Life without Toothache: Hans Blumenberg on History of Science as Theoretical Attitude
3 April
Andres Rodriguez (History/University of Sydney)
Listening to Minorities: Citizenship and Ethnic Representation in Early Post-War China (1945-49)
10 April
Nicholas Baker (Macquarie University)
Trust, Risk, Credit: Taking Chances on the Future in the Renaissance Marketplace
17 April AVCC Common Week
24 April
Anna Clark (University of Minnesota)
Rethinking Individualism in New Zealand and the British Empire
1 May
Alanna O’Malley (Leiden University)
Internationalism and the Challenge to the Liberal World Order: The United Nations and the Rise of the Global South, 1955-1981
8 May
Jamie Martin (Laureate Research Program in International History/University of Sydney)
Governing Global Capitalism in the Era of Total War
15 May
Hans-Lukas Kieser (University of Newcastle)
Holy Scripture and Apocalypticism in Today’s Levant
22 May
Mélanie Lamotte (University of Cambridge)
Before Race Mattered: Ethnic Prejudice in the French Empire, c. 1635-1767
29 May
Tim Allender (Education/University of Sydney)
Racial Cure and Pious Learning: Gender, Feminism and Empire
5 June
Maartje Abbenhuis (University of Auckland)
Fence Sitting? Asking Questions of Neutrals and Neutrality in International History
For updated details, please see our website.
Book Launch – Miranda Johnson
Miranda Johnson: The Land is our History (Oxford University Press, 2016) The postgraduate reps and community have now launched a new postgraduate seminar series called History on Thursday. These seminars are designed to give postgraduate students a chance to practice presenting their work and engage in giving and receiving feedback. The next seminar will be on Monday 6 April, see below for details. They are also looking for expressions of interests for presenters for the May sessions. If you are interested please send an email with an abstract of your proposed talk. The Department of History at the University of Sydney is pleased to introduce our new PG students who have joined us in the latter part of last year or in the past few weeks.
The Land Is Our History tells the story of indigenous legal activism at a critical political and cultural juncture in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. In the late 1960s, indigenous activists protested assimilation policies and the usurpation of their lands as a new mining boom took off, radically threatening their collective identities. Often excluded from legal recourse in the past, indigenous leaders took their claims to court with remarkable results. For the first time, their distinctive histories were admitted as evidence of their rights.
Miranda Johnson examines how indigenous peoples advocated for themselves in courts and commissions of inquiry between the early 1970s to the mid-1990s, chronicling an extraordinary and overlooked history in which virtually disenfranchised peoples forced powerful settler democracies to reckon with their demands. Based on extensive archival research and interviews with leading participants, The Land Is Our History brings to the fore complex and rich discussions among activists, lawyers, anthropologists, judges, and others in the context of legal cases in far-flung communities dealing with rights, history, and identity. The effects of these debates were unexpectedly wide-ranging. By asserting that they were the first peoples of the land, indigenous leaders compelled the powerful settler states that surrounded them to negotiate their rights and status. Fracturing national myths and making new stories of origin necessary, indigenous peoples’ claims challenged settler societies to rethink their sense of belonging.
Miranda Johnson is a historian of indigenous peoples and settler colonialism in the Anglophone post/colonial world, most specifically in North America and the Pacific. At the University of Sydney, She holds an appointment as a lecturer in the Department of History. She was previously Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences and in the Centre for Values, Ethics and the Law in Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, as part of Professor Warwick Anderson’s ARC Laureate Fellowship project, “Race and Ethnicity in the Global South”. She has taught at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Michigan.
Tues. 28 March, 5pm-6.30pm, REGS Western Tower Balcony, Quadrangle
Please see the link below for an invitation to a book launch for Miranda Johnson’s The Land is Our History: Indigeneity, Law, and the Settler State published by Oxford late last year.
Download file
All are warmly invited to join us at REGS on Tuesday 28 March, at 5pm. Duncan Ivison will launch the book.
Please RSVP to
New Postgraduate Seminar Series: ‘History on Thursday’
Thurs. 6 April, 1-2pm, The Refectory (downstairs in the Quad, directions/map here)
Presenter: Darren Smith – The early Middle Ages between the World Wars: Pirenne’s Mahomet et Charlemagne and the vision for a new Europe.
Please bring your lunch and join us in the Refectory to hear this week’s presenter. This is also a chance for you to hone your question-asking skills and get to know other post-grads in our mingling time after the talk.New Research Students in the Department of History
Below you’ll find a list of new students, their topics, and their email addresses in case you wanted to reach out to them.
I’m delighted we have such a strong cohort of new students who I am sure will enrich the department with their work in the coming months and years.
There will likely be one or two more students joining us in the coming months. We’ll keep you posted.
Many thanks,
Mike M.
Madeleine Dowd (joined us in October): Master of Arts (Research). Supervisors: James Curran and Mark McKenna. I’m undertaking an examination of Paul Keating and Radical Nationalism – so this is looking at a radical display of the Australian self. At this relatively early stage, this involves an understanding of radical nationalist Australian history, and where it came from in Keating’s context. I’ll also focus on how this manifested in terms of policy and an overarching worldview. Contact email: madeleine.e.dowd@gmail.com.
Amy Jelacic: PhD, full-time. Supervisors: Andrew Fitzmaurice and Chris Hilliard. I’m studying the intellectual history of free trade and liberalism in the British Empire, concentrating on the mid-19th century. I’m particularly interested in investigating the history of economic ideas outside of canonical texts of political economy. ajel0816@uni.sydney.edu.au
Emma Wallhead: PhD, PT. Supervisor: Chris Hilliard. Working title of topic: If ‘I am woman’, what is man? Western masculinities 1963-1989.” The period from the early 1960s has been popularly associated with a number of transnational movements that challenged a wide range of social and cultural norms including beliefs about the proper roles of men and women. It was also during this era that masculinity was identified by scholars as a category of historical analysis. Despite the significance of this period to the concept of masculinity, there are relatively few works examining dominant norms of masculinity during the period from a historical perspective. The project will research dominant expectations of masculinity, together with the lived experience of masculinity, through the perspective of the women who cared for, lived with, worked with, loved, hated, and sought or avoided men during the three decades. ewal4299@uni.sydney.edu.au
Jacob Mark: Master of Arts (Research), full time; Supervisor: Chris Hilliard. My thesis looks to explore the reception of Australian and New Zealand democracy in Britain in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, Jmar4873@uni.sydney.edu.au
Orla McGovern: Master of Arts (Research). Supervisors: Nicholas Eckstein John Gagne. I’m looking at material cultures of beauty during the Italian Renaissance and their relationship between socially ascribed ideals of beauty and womanhood. omcg2987@uni.sydney.edu.au
Luke Tucker: PhD, full-time. Supervisors: Julie Smith and Nick Eckstein. I am researching the educational practices and philosophy of the devotio moderna, a 14th and 15th century lay piety movement located mainly in the Netherlands. ltuc6374@uni.sydney.edu.au
Samuel Murdoch Webster: PhD, FT. Supervisors: James Curran and Mark McKenna. My thesis will seek to map the changes in Australian security doctrines during the post-British and post-Vietnam period, where the ‘great powers’ featured in Australian geo-strategic imagination, and how these squared with Australian economic interests up to the year 2001. sweb3562@uni.sydney.edu.au
Ryan Cropp: PhD, full-time, supervisor: Mark McKenna. I am working on a biographical study of the Australian journalist, social critic and public intellectual Donald Horne. rcro5900@uni.sydney.edu.au
Darren Smith: PhD, full-time. Supervisors: John Gagné (Nick Eckstein acting), Hélène Sirantoine. In the 1530s, François I of France established formal relations with Ottoman sultan Süleiman as well as a permanent embassy in Constantinople/Istanbul. My project looks at France’s evolving engagement with the Islamic/Ottoman East throughout the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, and how concepts of ‘the Turk’ and Islam figured in the French imagination (print media, political discourse, material culture, even theatre). I’m interested in the period ‘book-ended’ by the late crusades, on the one hand, and the Bibliothèque Orientale project of Barthélemy d’Herbelot, on the other. darren.smith@sydney.edu.au