History Matters

Dear History Community,

I know it is a busy week and apologies if you are bombarded with emails and canvas notifications.

I just wanted to draw your attention to two BIG events coming up next week, including one involving some fabulous History Lecturers here at USyd, including Dr. Niro Kandasamy and Challis Professor Chris Hilliard.

Booking is essential. Why not come along after the seminar, listen to some fascinating discussion, and have some free drinks and hors d’oeuvres. If you come to the History lecture, please do say hello to myself or any other staff you recognise. Many of us will be there.

For complete information, please see here, https://soh-events.sydney.edu.au/calendar/challis-10-08-2023/

But here’s the gist:

Four researchers from the School of Humanities at the University of Sydney will be joined by the ABC’s Big Ideas over 2 nights.*

 Challis Lecture in Philosophy  | 9 August, 5pm, Chau Chak Wing Museum

• The new sciences of sex and reproduction
  Paul E. Griffiths, Challis Professor of Philosophy; Luara Ferracioli, Associate Professor of Philosophy

• Challis Lecture in History| 10 August, 5pm, Chau Chak Wing Museum

Rethinking Assimilation and Multiculturalism in Contemporary History 
Chris Hilliard, Challis Professor of History; Niro Kandasamy, Lecturer in History

It’s a pretty big deal with the ABC’s ‘Big Ideas’ radio programme coming on board and the whole thing being chaired by it’s host and presenter – Natasha Mitchell.

You can go to one of them or both of them. Please do feel encouraged to come -and again, please say hello and tell us who you are….!

Mike M.

Chair, History

Dear History Students,

Have you got the mid-winter blues? Maybe not given all the sunshine. But, if you are feeling a bit adrift and wondering whether all your hard work in your units of study is worth it, have a quick look over these couple of slides prepared by colleagues in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, one of which shows what percentage of you will be employed etc and your average earnings, compared to Science graduates. See attached powerpoint for full datails, but the real take-aways here are:

95.1% of Humanities grads at ages 25-34yo had a job. (Census 2016).

The average earnings of a Humanities grad 3 yrs after finishing is $70,300, compared to $68,900 for a Science grad (Graduate Outcomes Survey ’19)

67% of chief executives of ASX200 companies, 62% of government senior executives and 66% of federal parliamentarians have degrees in humanities (Academy of Social Services in Australia)

The Bachelor of Arts makes the most company directors. (Deloitte Report on the Value of Humanities 2018, Apollo Australia’s TOP 100 public companies Report)

And, most important of all (IMHO):  Humanities graduates have the highest levels of job satisfaction ~ 86%

So, next time your irritating Science friends ask why are you bothering to study History, tell them it is because you want to have more interesting conversations AND be more employable then them, make more money than them, be their boss – and, be happier than them to boot. And maybe as well, tell them it is because you’d love to have hair like Clover Moore in the 1970s. I sure would.

Powerpoint Presentation (with many thanks to Bruce Isaac and the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences for sharing their data and presentation).

In case anyone is interested, I’m also attaching a link to a “careers” talk we did during the lockdown (so a year or two ago) that focused on some History graduates and what they do now. Many of you might find it interesting, as the speakers also talk about the not-always-straight road they took, and offer some tips as to what to do to land your first job.

We will be producing some more shorter videos about what you can do with a History degree over the coming year and will let you know when they are done. Spoiler alert – the easy answer to this question is ‘just about anything’!

Mike

Chair, History

The campus is empty for the mid-semester break and students and colleagues have scattered. Many congratulations to all for finishing the semester and especially to those who might have finished their degree this past semester!

If you are wondering what your Lecturers and Tutors do over the break, they are not usually on ‘holiday’ as often assumed! As soon as the last exams are marked most of us try to get back to the other part of our job – research and writing.

Often this involves heading overseas to the archives, or for conferences, as myself, James Findlay, Kirsten McKenzie and Niro Kandasamy have all done recently (to South Carolina, Paris, and London – you can judge who got the better deal!).

Closer to home, many of us attended the 50th anniversary conference of the Australian Historical Association next week in Melbourne, either to present our own research papers, or listen to others in our fields (you can read a little more about it here: https://theaha.org.au/aha-conference-2023-milestones/). Others are busy writing articles, essays, books, and book reviews.

And of course the teaching part of our job never quite stops as we will also be starting to prepare Canvas sites and outlines and readings for semester two units.

We also get busy writing references for students, and helping them with their future plans. In that regard, we’d like to congratulate recent Honours students Patrick Flood (2022), Harry Waugh (2021) and Celeste van Gent (2020) who are all heading to Oxford University in a couple of months to start or resume their postgraduate studies. Celeste and Harry have also both won prestigious Ramsay Centre Postgraduate Scholars Awards (see: https://www.ramsaycentre.org/news-and-media/2023-ramsay-postgraduate-scholars-announced/)

I originally wrote this from a steamy Columbia, South Carolina in late-June. I had just attended and given a paper at a Conference on the American Revolution, and then did some some work in the archives in South Carolina – while trying to keep an eye on what’s happening in Sydney…..

For many of your lecturers, the mid-semester break means a constant juggle between teaching and getting some research done, so the winter break is as busy as ever for most of us – and I suspect many of you are turning more to part-time work or care in the break too. Still, I hope everyone manages some kind of ‘holiday’ in the midst of it all.

Mike M.

Chair, History

If you are looking for a good read this weekend, try former Chair and current coordinator of HSTY3903 Professor Kirsten McKenzie’s freshly minted English Historical Review essay entitled: “A Dance of Crown and Parliament: Empire and Reform in the Age of Liverpool.” It is currently on open-access at the following link. Congrats to Kirsten and her co-author, Lisa Ford. It is definitely not everyday that you can get published in the very prestigious English Historical Review – it is one of the top historical journals in the world.

Check out Associate Professor Frances Clarke’s latest blog about her recently published book on Child Soldiers in the American Civil War Era. Frances’ recent book, called Of Age: Boy Soldiers and Military Power in the Civil War Era published by Oxford University Press this year is making waves in the United States. Frances will be back in Australia in second semester and teaching our blockbuster first year unit called HSTY1023: Emerging Giant: The Making of America, which takes you from the origins of the United States through to the Civil War.

You might also be interested in an article written by one of our current Honours students, Marika Mehigan. She recently published a version of her research on Korean comfort women that she did in one of her History Honours seminars on “Writing War.” Marika pitched her idea to the editors of Honi Soit, and they gave her the green light. It is a great example of what we might call an “op-ed” essay – in which we use our historical research to help think through contemporary historical problems. Congrats, Marika – and you can read the article here:  https://honisoit.com/2023/05/is-there-a-future-without-sexual-violence-first-we-must-confront-the-past/If any other students are putting your work to interesting uses, please get in touch and let us know about it.

Dr. Sophie Loy-Wilson, senior lecturer in History and a scholar of Chinese Australian history, recently attended a new production from the Sydney Theatre Company called “The Poison of Polygamy” – a play based on what was probably the first Chinese Australian novel, originally written in 1909-1910.

Sophie was commissioned to review it for the Conversation. You can read Sophie’s terrific – and glowing – review here: https://theconversation.com/a-gothic-brilliant-success-the-poison-of-polygamy-brings-the-first-chinese-australian-novel-to-the-stage-after-113-years-206929.

You can also listen to Sophie Loy-Wilson’s recorded talk at Fisher Library Rare Books and Special Collections on the material they hold and “Sydney’s Chinese Ghosts”

If you’re looking for some interesting television watching between World Cup Football games this weekend, have a look at the SBS show, “Who the Bloody Hell are We?” In particular, Series 1, Episode 3 hosted by Adam Liaw, features our own Dr. Sophie Loy-Wilson commenting on some interesting Chinese Australian migrants who have enriched Australian history.

You can also read about Sophie’s involvement in the Multilingual Archive Project, and hear from her PhD student, Samuel He, about the amazing work he is doing with the Archive.

If you are interested in US Affairs, you can also read an article co-written by one of our History HDR students, Ben Ormerod, supervised by Dr. Hélène Sirantoine. The article was published in last week in the journal Cogent Social Sciences and examines the way U.S. Presidents use the optics of the White House to implement public policy. The article is available to read for free on open access here.

Finally, have a listen to Dr. Marco Duranti on Sky news about Albanese’s recent defence deal with the Germans – Marco is becoming a ‘regular’ on Sky news – and always manages to remind his audience of the historical context to decisions made today. You can also hear his historical take on the situation in Russia on Sky News,

If you speak German you can hear Cindy McCreery’s thoughts on the new King on German tv or if you prefer English, why not browse James Curran’s latest columns in the Australian Financial Review.

Finally, if anyone has some spare time while waiting for a bus this weekend, why not have a listen to me and a colleague, Professor Fitzhugh Brundage at the University of North Carolina talk about a new publication of ours – a collaboratively authored text called A New History of the American South.

We discuss contemporary ideas about southerners in the US, historians’ new ways of looking at the region, the value of looking at history as an ‘outsider,’ and I even manage to make a controversial comment about the election of Donald Trump. I’ll leave it at that. You need to listen to get more: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBi3lQ5989I

Mike M

Chair, History