In History in the Making, one of our three undergraduate capstone units, students write an essay of 4500 words on a research topic of their own devising in any field of history. Here we bring together the abstracts of papers crafted over the past semester, 2018, showcasing the breadth and depth of historical research this unit inspires. This year, the unit was coordinated and taught by Professor Penny Russell and Dr. James Findlay
Where their authors have granted permission, the essays themselves can also be read. We are excited to present this rich collection, as an inspiration to future students and a tribute to the present generation of historians in the making.
Struggle within a Struggle: The Palestinian women’s movement
Gladys Agius
The Palestinian women’s movement for equality and equal rights moved slowly in the decades after the Oslo Peace Accord failures. Israel imposed extreme restricting conditions on Palestinians’ freedom of mobility and encroached on agricultural land to establish settlements for Jewish communities. At the same time Palestinian males experienced excruciating high levels of unemployment and women faced restrictive job opportunities producing further crisis in Palestinian society and family life. Women were faced with intense pressures, to contribute to the family’s budget, seek employment in unfavourable conditions, and maintain family harmony. The progress for gender issues is hindered by patriarchy. Muslims mainly subscribe to strict shari’a laws which are opposed to liberal concepts of women’s independence and equal rights. Consequently education and training for women became extremely important to raise women’s voice in politics. Post Oslo the intervening years were marred by confusion and disagreements of leaders and factions which weakened Palestine’s government (PA) voice and power. Subsequently prominent women academics called for women to be returned to the national forum to represent all Palestinians. At this stage women’s journey to equality and human rights is a “work in progress” and is held firmly in the sights of twenty-first-century Palestinian women.
The Ngô Đình Diệm Coup d’État: Exposing the façade of the United States Nationalist Globalist mission in Vietnam?
William Bailey
Under the Presidency of John F. Kennedy, the world was told that in accordance with its Nationalist Globalist ideology the United States was escalating its involvement in the Civil War between North and South Vietnam. Nationalist Globalism is the ideal of America’s divinely ordained mission to bring freedom and liberal democracy to all nations of the world. Was the U.S. in Vietnam for this two-sided mission? This paper looks at the U.S. policy makers’ decision to support a coup against South Vietnam’s President that took place on November 1st, 1963. It argues that although some did believe in America’s mission, the fact that they supported this coup diminishes the significance of the American Nationalist Globalist ideology in association with their goals.
Author: Michael McDonnell
Teaching Commendations
The Department is very pleased to note that two more of our colleagues received Teaching Commendations for their outstanding work last semester – including one of our most senior Professors in the Department, as well as one of our most recent PhD recipients.
Professor Penny Russell received a Dean’s commendation for her work on Convicts and Capitalists.
Dr. Ben Vine received one for his outstanding teaching on the unit, HSTY 2666: American Revolutions.
It should be noted that this was the first time Ben coordinated and taught a full unit, and he started the course about three days after he submitted his PhD!
Like Sophie Loy-Wilson’s recent commendation, both Ben and Penny’s Unit of Study Survey (USS) data showed that their score on the USS item relating directly to student satisfaction of teaching effectiveness was in the top quartile of the School’s performance. In addition, Ben and Penny’s focus on student feedback and engagement was also in the top quartile.
As the Dean, Annamarie Jagose, notes:
“This very positive student perception of teaching impact places your unit in the upper tier of units of study offered by the School and indeed Faculty. Given the high standards we set for ourselves, this is an outstanding achievement.”
“Just as we celebrate excellence in scholarship and research, so should we acknowledge the commitment, expertise and outcomes of our foremost teachers. On behalf of all our colleagues, please accept my personal congratulations and thanks for your exemplary contribution to the Faculty’s educational mission. Your success in fostering a positive learning environment within and beyond the classroom is critical to our success as a Faculty and University.”
Well done, Ben and Penny. Terrific work.
History Beyond the Classroom 2018
A new year of HSTY 3902: History Beyond the Classroom is under way in semester 2. With one of the highest enrolments yet, the unit is doing well along with its capstone counterparts HSTY 3901 and HSTY 3903.
History Beyond the Classroom aims, in part, to answer the perennial question, “what can you do with a history degree?” Plenty, it seems. In this unit, students frame, research and produce an original project based on an engagement with communities and organisations outside the University. Students explore history in action in a variety of contexts and think about different ways of creating and disseminating history that will interest and inform a public audience. Lectures and field trips also help frame relevant community-based questions, adopt appropriate methodologies, and explore new ways of presenting your arguments or narratives.
In addition to making history, students will be introduced to a variety of public history professionals, and different kinds of projects that you can pursue part-time or full-time well beyond your University career.
In the first few weeks of the unit, we have spent time exploring what turned out to be difficult questions about just what is history, and why do we do it? We’ve also begun to look at questions about audience, and about how different people think historically.
Last week, in week 3 of the semester, we also had a visit from one of our favourite public historians, Mark Dunn.
PHA-NSW & ACT Chair, Dr. Mark Dunn on Public History
Currently the Chair of the Professional Historians Association of NSW (PHA-NSW; http://www.phansw.org.au/), Mark’s career as a professional historian embodies the challenges and opportunities of public history.
After studying history at UNSW, Mark did some volunteer work on an archaeological site in Sydney, which led to a paid job as a historian for a heritage and archaeology firm in Sydney, where he worked until 2010. During that time he was involved in major conservation, archaeology (including digging), oral history, significance and interpretation projects Australia wide. Some of these include doing Oral History for the Cockatoo Island Navy Dockyard, the moving of Prince of Wales Destitute Childrens Asylum Cemetery, The Big Dig in The Rocks and numerous smaller histories. Mark has been a member of the Professional Historians Association since c1997 and is currently the Chair. He has also been a committee member and President of the History Council NSW and is currently Deputy Chair of the NSW Heritage Council. Mark now works as a consultant historian in heritage and research, as well as leading city tours for an American tour company Context Travel. He is also the current CH Currey Fellow at State Library of NSW, and recently completed his PhD at UNSW.
Some of the many clocks in the collection of Sydney Trains at Central Station
Mark talked to students about the crucial role played by the PHA-NSW, and also the challenges of doing public history, which included negotiating any conflicts of interest, managing expectations, juggling tight budgets and deadlines, and the disappointments resulting from not having control over the final product, sometimes with the result that your work gets buried (sometimes literally).
An unexpected find at the Mick Simmons site at George Street 2013. After excavating and archiving this early colonial pub, the site was completely removed. Recording and archiving such sites before they are completely obliterated is just one of the many kinds of projects Mark Dunn has worked on.
Drawing from his extensive experience, Mark also reflected on why he enjoys being a professional historian, which included the opportunity to work on many and varied history projects, bringing history to a wide range of audiences who often have a real connection with the past that is being presented, and seeing your work on public display, whether it be on television, radio, the side of a building, the wall of a pub, or the web.
Mark also noted his most recent public history project for Sydney Trains Heritage NSW (http://www.sydneytrains.info/about/heritage/), the beautifully produced pamphlet called “Running on Time: Clocks and Time-Keeping in the NSW Railways” (you can download a copy at: www.sydneytrains.info/about/heritage/201602-Running-on-time-Report.pdf). There is also an accompanying short film featuring interviews with railway workers and heritage experts involved in the project (http://www.sydneytrains.info/about/heritage/oral_history). Mark revealed that he completed his report in about four weeks of full-time work, giving students something to aspire to….
Mark was an engaging speaker, and the students (and I) were clearly amazed at the breadth and depth of his work.
Mark’s talk and the readings this week about public history helped students reflect on the practice of history in the University and classroom, which often (though not always) precludes these kinds of negotiations about different kinds of understandings about the past, and present uses (though students were also quick to point out that there is a growing group of academic historians willing to engage with different public audiences, and indeed, there always has been). Our reading this week about the Enola Gay controversy in the United States in the early 1990s reinforced the dangers of not doing so, but also how difficult it might be to do so. Once again, and with the help of Anna Clark’s great interviews, in Private Lives, Public History, our discussions – and students’ reflective diary entries – invariably shifted to the History Wars in Australia and both the indifference of many to the history wars, but also the more subtle ways in which many non-professional historians understand “contest” in history. Reflections also ranged across questions about whether there is a historical middle ground between commemoration and historical analysis? Could the Enola Gay Exhibition controversy have been avoided?
Teaching Commendation
Many congratulations to Sophie Loy-Wilson who earned a Dean’s Commendation for her outstanding teaching in her Semester 1 2018 unit, HSTY2701 – Spies in the Archive, based on student evaluations.
Sophie’s Unit of Study Survey (USS) data showed that her score on the USS item relating directly to student satisfaction of teaching effectiveness was in the top quartile of the School’s performance. In addition, Sophie’s focus on student feedback and engagement was also in the top quartile.
As the Dean, Annamarie Jagose, notes:
“This very positive student perception of teaching impact places your unit in the upper tier of units of study offered by the School and indeed Faculty. Given the high standards we set for ourselves, this is an outstanding achievement.”
“Just as we celebrate excellence in scholarship and research, so should we acknowledge the commitment, expertise and outcomes of our foremost teachers. On behalf of all our colleagues, please accept my personal congratulations and thanks for your exemplary contribution to the Faculty’s educational mission. Your success in fostering a positive learning environment within and beyond the classroom is critical to our success as a Faculty and University.”
Many congratulations, Sophie!
Mike M.
History on Wednesday Department Seminar
History on Wednesday
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 more details
Coordinators:
Dr Andrés Rodriguez and Professor Kirsten McKenzie
Semester 2 2018
1 August
Deborah Cohen (Northwestern University)
The Geopolitical is Personal: American Foreign Correspondents, India and the British Empire in the 1930s and 1940s
15 August
Andrew Fitzmaurice (University of Sydney)
Hobbes, democracy and the Virginia Company
22 August
Charlotte Greenhalgh (Monash University)
Women and Social Research in Australia, 1940-1970
12 September
Hélène Sirantoine (University of Sydney)
The Saint and the Saracen: Iberian hagiographical material and Christian perceptions of Islam in the Middle Ages
3 October
Chin Jou (University of Sydney)
Food and Power in American prisons in the mass-incarceration era.
17 October
Catie Gilchrist (University of Sydney)
Call the Coroner! Investigating Sudden Death in Colonial Sydney
31 October
Laura Rademaker (Australian Catholic University)
Found in translation: language and translation in Aboriginal history
Australian Historical Association Prizes
We are delighted to announce that two Sydney University Department of History academics have featured in this year’s AHA Prizes.
The W.K. Hancock Prize recognises and encourages an Australian scholar who has published a first book in any field of history in 2014 or 2015. Miranda Johnson won this award for her book, The Land Is Our History: Indigeneity, Law, and the Settler State (Oxford University Press).
The judges citation reads: In The Land Is Our History, Miranda Johnson has produced an ambitious, original and imaginative history exploring land, indigeneity, legal rights and activism across three settler-colonial nations. Thinking transnationally, Johnson explores legal and public discourses to draw together a raft of distinctive events and personalities into a vast and coherent canvas. She weaves nation-based histories of indigenous-settler conflict over land into wider networks and power structures, making sense of seemingly disparate developments in indigenous activism. Archival documents and oral accounts highlight the strength and moral authority of indigenous leaders who worked to gain acknowledgement of traditional ownership of land, and to interrupt and influence public debates around national identity. Johnson writes with precision, flow and economy. The work has a compelling argument, convincingly showing the complex and sophisticated ways indigenous activisms functioned to change settler attitudes towards land and indigenous belonging. An exemplary history, The Land Is Our History brings important new insights to a significant topic in both the past and the present.
The Allan Martin Award is a research fellowship to assist early career historians further their research in Australian history. Peter Hobbins won this award for his project: ‘An Intimate Pandemic: Fostering Community Histories of the 1918–19 Influenza Pandemic Centenary’.
The judges citation reads: The recipient of the 2018 Allan Martin Award is Peter Hobbins from the University of Sydney for a project titled ‘An intimate pandemic: Fostering community histories of the 1918–19 influenza pandemic centenary’. The program of study proposed is impressive, both for its academic rigour and its spirit of community engagement. Dr Hobbins proposes to work closely with local historical societies to chart how the devastating pandemic affected their communities. He has already garnered significant institutional interest for the project, with Macquarie University, the University of Sydney and the Royal Australian Historical Society all offering support. Peter Hobbins already has an impressive record of publications and innovative research. The judges are delighted to make the Award to a scholar of this calibre who is pursuing a project of such significance.
The full list of winner of 2018 prizes and awards include:
The Jill Roe Prize is awarded annually for the best unpublished, article-length work of historical research in any area of historical enquiry, produced by a postgraduate student enrolled for a History degree at an Australian university. Alexandra Roginski, ‘Talking Heads on a Murray River Mission’
The Serle Award is given biennially, to the best postgraduate thesis in Australian History awarded during the previous two years. Anne Rees, ‘Travelling to Tomorrow: Australian Women in the United States, 1910–1960’. The judges also commended Steven Anderson, ‘Death of a Spectacle: The Transition from Public to Private Executions in Colonial Australia’
The Kay Daniels Award recognises outstanding original research with a bearing on Australian convict history and heritage including in its international context, published in 2016 or 2017. Joan Kavanagh and Dianne Snowden, Van Diemen’s Women: A History of Transportation to Tasmania (The History Press Ltd)
The Magarey Medal for Biography is awarded biennially to the female person who has published the work judged to be the best biographical writing on an Australian subject. It is jointly administered by the Australian Historical Association and the Association for the Study of Australian Literature (ASAL). This year’s winner was announced by the ASAL on Tuesday 3 July 2018. Alexis Wright, Tracker (Giramondo)
Many congratulations to all short-listed and award winners.
History Postgrad Conference – CFP
Announcing the 2018 History Postgrad Conference: a conference run by postgraduates, for postgraduates, across all disciplines, with an historical focus.
CONNECTED HISTORIES
Website: https://usydhistoryconference.wordpress.com/
The University of Sydney Postgraduate History Conference will be held on Thursday November 29th and Friday November 30th, 2018. We warmly invite postgraduate students to submit an abstract for this two-day interdisciplinary conference on the theme of Connected Histories.
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Ideas. Culture. Family. Environment. Media. War. Trade. Language. Food. Histories are connected in more ways than we can imagine. At the 2018 University of Sydney Postgraduate History Conference we invite you to share your research and the historical connections you’ve uncovered. We take a broad understanding of this theme and invite you to submit an abstract based on our suggestions below or one of your own choosing:
Global, international, and transnational connections
Interdisciplinary connections
Histories of empire and colonialism
Connections of past and present: how understandings of the past impact us today
Intellectual histories of connected ideas and concepts
Chance encounters: unexpected connections?
We welcome abstracts from postgraduate students across disciplines and encourage anyone with a historical aspect to their work to apply.
If you wish to present, please submit an abstract of no more than 200 words for a twenty minute presentation, as well as a short bio, here.
Please note, abstracts are due by 3rd August 2018.
To register to attend, whether presenting or not, click here.
The 2018 University of Sydney Postgraduate History Conference will be held at the University of Sydney, Camperdown campus, on 29th-30th November 2018. We have a limited number of travel bursaries available for those travelling from outside Sydney—including Honours and Masters students considering the University of Sydney as an option for PhD study. To apply, please indicate your interest and include details of your enrolment with your abstract.
Contact the conference organisers at [email protected]
What is International History Now?
International history has been around since the dawn of the discipline, defining History’s earliest aims, as the study of the primacy of foreign policy, or diplomacy. Yet there are only a few historians who name themselves international, and few departments, courses, or chairs that announce this subfield in history departments in Australia, or in the world. But what is International History today?
In the twenty-first century, in the wake of the transnational turn, International History is being recalibrated, reinvented and re-energised. This project will reflect on the state of international history, from its ‘new’ foci on international organizations and ideas, its new archives and new methodologies, to its connections to the ongoing discussions on globalizing historiography.
Conference: What Is International History Now? University of Sydney 23-27 July 2018
Conference Program
‘International Thinking’: An ECR Research Laboratory
In conjunction with the conference ‘What is International History Now?’, the Laureate Research Program in International History, University of Sydney, is convening a Research Laboratory on the past, present and future of International History on Monday 23 July 2018.
Interested students and ECRs in History, I.R., Law, or other relevant disciplines can apply for a place in this ‘laboratory’ featuring:
Matthew Connelly, Columbia University
Peter Jackson, Glasgow University
Sandrine Kott, Geneva University
Dirk Moses, University of Sydney
Patricia Owens, Sussex University
Davide Rodogno, The Graduate Institute, Geneva
Glenda Sluga, University of Sydney
The laboratory is part of the ‘What is International History Now?’ conference to be held from Monday 23 – Friday 27 July.
It includes a public panel and reception on the Monday evening, opportunity to participate in a breakfast seminar on ‘International Thinking’ with Profs Anne Orford (Melbourne); Chris Reus-Smit (UQ); Patricia Owens (Sussex University); David Armitage (Harvard) and Breakfast seminar the next morning, Tuesday 24 July.
We encourage early career scholars completing PhDs, Postdocs, ECRs to apply. Please send a bio and statement of interest (one page only) to [email protected] by end of May 31, 2018.
Graduation Ceremony May 2, 2018
The Department would like to offer a warm congratulations to all of our students who graduated recently.
These included six new PhD recipients: Sarah Bendall, Billy Griffiths, Mick Warren, Nick Irving, James Findlay, and Kim Kemmis. And two new MAs, Rainald Roesch and Anne Armistead-Higgins.
The graduating cohort also included close to forty History Honours and BA students, including University medal winner Alexander Jackman.
Many congrats to all on your achievements and good wishes for your future endeavours.
The occasional address was given by Professor Michael A. McDonnell from the Department of History. A transcript of his speech can be found here.
