History Matters

I recently reported on student feedback for the unit HSTY 3902: History Beyond the Classroom (see: http://bit.ly/220TqsV). The feedback we have collected from the community and local organisations that students have worked with over the semester have been overwhelmingly positive, too. While survey results are still coming in, we have heard from fourteen of our thirty-three partner organisations, or just over 40%.
Over 90% said they were satisfied with the way in which our history students engaged with the organization, with one neutral on the subject, and one unsatisfied. Over 70% were happy with the amount of information they received about the course, and why students were engaging with the organization. One was neutral, and two others said they would have liked to have known more about the course. Gratifyingly, all of the organisations who have responded so far said they would be interested in working with history students from the University of Sydney again next year.
For most students, the community engagement was the best part of the course. See their comments here: http://bit.ly/220TqsV
Some of the qualitative comments from partner-organisations are listed below, but highlights included a note from Gay Hendrickson, from the Parramatta Female Factory Friends, who said that student Michael Rees was making a “real difference” to the organisation and “his approach was exceptional in the way he related to the individuals involved.” “I would also like to commend you and the University of Sydney for providing a subject with practical experience of history in action as well as making a real difference to communities such as the Parramatta Female Factory Friends.”
Mary Oakenfull of the Marrickville Heritage Society wrote that they appreciated the “deep interest and assistance” and “genuine enthusiasm” of student Margaret Bester, and “hope to have an ongoing relationship” with the History Department and the University of Sydney. And the North Parramatta Residents Action Group reported that Katya Pesce was delightful to have on board, her enthusiasm and dedication was a joy to be around….It is great to know that Katya has become so engrossed in our campaign that she has asked to stay on and help outside the course.”
And Sharon Laura of the West Connex Action Group, Haberfield/Ashfield, wrote about Lucy Hodgkinson-Fisher that: “I was delighted and surprised by her thoughtfulness and integrity, by her pursuit of information from many others, as well as from me/us. I have been blown away by what she has produced – it is insightful and timely. Her project really has connected a past community struggle to a present day battle by residents. Good on you all at Sydney Uni and good on Lucy. Thanks.”

Continue reading “Feedback from our Community Partners”

As the dust settles on the academic year, feedback for our History Beyond the Classroom unit of study has continued to come in (HSTY 3902). We’ve been a little overwhelmed by the positive responses from students, guest lecturers, and our community and local partner organisations. We’ve now got back our Unit of Study Survey (USS) results, and we are in the midst of surveying our community partners. In an effort to be transparent, I’ve written a brief summary of the salient points from this feedback below, followed by a full report of the results, and comments (note, I’ve now separated out our community partner feedback into a different blog post, that can be found here: http://bit.ly/1m2zxkg).
Thirty of thirty-eight enrolled students responded to the USS survey, or roughly 80% of the class. Of these, 97% reported that they were satisfied with the quality of the teaching, with only one person “neutral” on the question. Significantly, 100% of students strongly agreed or agreed that the content of the unit “encouraged/stimulated their thinking and helped to develop an enhanced diversity of ideas, attitudes and approached to an beyond the subject matter.”
The positive qualitative comments to the question “What have been the best aspects of this unit of study?,” noted below, speak for themselves. I’ll only say here that students’ enthusiasm for the course was reflected in the results of their work, which was outstanding. In over twenty years of teaching, I have never seen such overwhelmingly impressive work. Students have inspired and energized me throughout the semester, as much as they have obviously enjoyed the course too. While many students noted it has been the best course they have ever taken at Uni, which is lovely to hear, I should also point out that it has been one of the most enjoyable courses I have ever taught! It has been such a treat and privilege for me to see students’ enthusiasm and intellectual development, and to watch these projects grow to fruition.

Continue reading “Reflections and Feedback from History Beyond the Classroom”

The Public History Prize is an annual award offered by the Professional Historians Association of NSW & ACT (PHA NSW & ACT). The prize is open to NSW & ACT students engaged with the field and practice of public history. The winner will receive a certificate and a prize of $500, presented at the PHA NSW & ACT’s Public History Prize awards night on the 1st of March, 2016.
2015 Public History Prize entries close on 4 December 2015.
http://www.phansw.org.au/pha-nsw-public-history-prize/

Continue reading “PHA NSW & ACT Public History Prize”

Come and join ‘History Beyond the Classroom’ students who will be presenting their work on Sydney’s Quarantine Station on site on Sunday 22 November https://wordvine.sydney.edu.au/files/1652/10591/
Scratching the surface: life after the first quarantine
Molly Clarke
What’s in a headstone? A look into the shipping networks of the early Quarantine Station
Jacob Mark
Qantas and the Q Station: a shelter from the storm
Miguel Alzona
Operation Babylift: Vietnamese refugees at the Quarantine Station
Stephanie Barahona

Continue reading “Quarantine stories”

In a very literal sense, the name of this subject – ‘History Beyond the Classroom’ – has proven to be platform on which my project has been both conceptualised around, and oriented upon. My community engagement over this semester has been with Cammeraygal High School, a comprehensive, co-educational government high school established on Sydney’s Lower North Shore in 2015.
‘What is History? Who, and what, is history for?’ were the questions which opened our discussions in Week 1 of this semester, and it is, somewhat fittingly, the change in my responses to these questions which reveal the significant learning this unit has forced me to undertake.
Indeed, thirteen weeks ago, I was debating several questions: What could be ‘historical’ about a school currently filled with 100 12 year-olds? Can a place that has only been in existence for ten months construct a ‘valid’ or ‘meaningful’ history? Would placing labels of ‘heritage’ and ‘legacy’ at this point of its story be artificial, forced, even contrived? What sorts of stories from its opening year could – or would – be worth telling and memorialising?
These questions have, in a sense, been dispelled as I’ve gone throughout the semester: firstly, as a result of the process of engaging with the school, its community, and its story; and secondly, because this unit has taught me to re-imagine the ‘boundaries’ I had put onto the historical discipline. My project has shaped into an examination of how the concepts of place, history, and community collide in the construction, access, use, and redefinition of public spaces. It seeks to situate this very early – and constantly developing – history of Cammeraygal High School within a broader reflection on the centrality of physical space in the construction of historical identities. It will, moreover, make the argument that a sense of history (or what might academically be referred to as a ‘historical consciousness’) has been present in the very conception of this school, and underscores and motivates the development of its vision and imagination.
As we near the conclusion of this semester, above all, I have been forced to realise the dynamic, multiplicitous, and meaningful place from which history originates. If anything, my initial concerns about whether my project could unearth a ‘valid’ or ‘meaningful’ history revealed a prejudiced view of what constituted a ‘significant’ account of the past. And as I’ve realised through the people and stories I have had the privilege of encountering, the telling of history originates from a place of generosity and a desire to have stories and memories preserved. That is not to say that history isn’t conflicting and contested – because it often is – but the spirit in which history has been offered and shared with me this semester has showed me its importance and its life beyond both the university and high-school classrooms.

HSTY3902 comrades!

Home stretch is here and I can almost see the finish line! As I scramble to put together my final research project, I thought I would give a rather honest opinion of my experiences so far…

I keep having these really frustrating dreams about my project. I wake up with heart palpitations and sweat beads down my face (okay, so maybe that’s a slight exaggeration, but still).

I have been working with the Whitlam Library in Cabramatta. They have a fabulous team of heritage officers who do all sorts of great local historical research, such writing books for local clubs, conducting oral interviews, much of which is in collaboration with the Fairfield Museum.

My project is to find the OFFICIAL date of establishment of each of the 27 suburbs under Fairfield Council (south-west Sydney). There are banners in each of the suburbs which state the “date of establishment”, but unfortunately, some of these dates are wrong. I have to go find primary sources showing the “real” dates and give the the info to the Fairfield Council (which is also my final project).

Historians love dates. They are our little comfort pillows; they slip complex situations into simple time frames. Ah, how lovely! How sweet! How romantic!

But I never imagined it would be so hard to find a single date.

I have spent hours wading through newspaper clippings, council records, advertisements, maps. You name it, I’ve looked. And yet, it has taken me hours to find one little piece of information.

I feel like the gods of history have been toying with me. I feel like a mouse being cruelly chucked around by a cat: lulled into a false sense of security, only to be once again snapped up in its deceiving paws.

Take the suburb of Edensor Park. There is heaps of information available through newspaper archives and private letters. Edensor Park was mostly isolated farmland up until the 1950s. But, it did have post office and telephone line (predicament #1: does that mean it’s “officially” established?”). However, it didn’t reach its suburban peak until the 1970s when a huge land release occurred, and much of the area became residential (predicament #2: is this the time of “official” establishment?). And on top of this, I can’t find a single document which explicitly states the date of proclamation. So many documents, but so little information. And Edensor Park is one of the least of my worries.

It’s times like these when my inner historian is really put to the test. I have learnt that you need creativity and you REALLY need to think for yourself. There are no history books to tell you what to think (so that’s what lecturers meant when they kept saying “critically and independently” analyse! Who would’ve thought?). At the end of the day, if I can’t find a date IN a source, I have to come to some conclusion, given the sources I do have. Maybe Edensor Park was established in the 1920s and maybe it was “reborn” in the 1950s? Perhaps I will give the Council both dates instead of just one.

Nevertheless, I have also had some breakthroughs (cue triumphant orchestral music). When I found a newspaper clipping which explicitly stated that Wakeley was established in 1979, I almost cried with joy. I felt like I was looking at my first child. So many emotions after such a long labour.

So, my comrades, BE BRAVE!

I used to think love was a battlefield, but you know what? History research is a battlefield, especially if you’re dating it (pun absolutely intended).

If there is one thing I have learnt, it’s that history isn’t a beautifully bound book written by some famous historian. History is the many tedious hours of research, scouring through barely legible newspapers, maps and photographs, only to find yourself exactly where you started. And when you do find that one magical piece of information, it’s about knowing what to do with it.

The end of semester is nigh at Sydney University. Our jacaranda is in full bloom, finding a free desk in Fisher is near impossible, and no doubt the students’ (and perhaps the staff’s) collective caffeine intake has skyrocketed. In the frantic rush to finish off assessments it can be difficult to recall our naïve enthusiasm of the beginning of semester, let alone the ghosts of semesters past. Yet as I was doing some final research for my project yesterday I was vividly reminded of one of readings from the 3000-level unit I took last semester: ‘Crying in the archives’ by Curthoys and McGrath. It provided helpful guidance on doing archival research as well as reflecting on its pleasures and challenges (hence the title). Even more than being reminded of this article, I found myself living it.
My project chronicles the history of writers at Callan Park – from poets who were patients there when it was a mental asylum, to the present activities of the New South Wales Writers’ Centre. One of my subjects is Frank Webb, a renowned Australian poet who spent several years at the asylum as well as at other psychiatric institutions. While I’d thought my research was complete, I stumbled across a catalogue listing for a package of papers donated to the State Library by a friend of Webb’s after his death. Based on the dates listed, I didn’t think it would be very relevant for my project and it got pushed to the bottom of my research list. Yesterday, motivated by my need to see another source, I finally made the trip. And what a goldmine it was! After a lengthy process that made me feel like a true scholar – obtaining the fancy gold Special Collections library card, requesting the item from a wizened librarian who recommended various others sources for me to look into, and finding a free desk in the impressive Mitchell Library, I finally opened up the file.

Among letters written from other institutions, there were two from Webb’s time at Callan Park – one photocopied but the other an original letter addressed to a friend. I knew I’d hit the jackpot with that one letter alone, but it wasn’t until I read through them all that I realised the significance of what I’d found. Biographers have described Webb’s stay at Callan Park as particularly bleak, with him composing no poetry at all in that four years. I don’t know if they’ve read these letters, but the truth of their assessment bleeds out of those pages. He writes of the Communists that supposedly surrounded him, and seems worried to the point of paranoia about rumours that were apparently spreading about him outside the asylum walls. Webb claims that his friend’s previous letter was withheld from him by a nurse, and seems to trust only one person to faithfully deliver notes to him.
In other letters he is frank (ha!) about his unhappiness, but weaves this in among relatively cheerful responses to his friend’s recent trip overseas and tales of mutual acquaintances. It is only in the Callan Park letters that you get a sense of his overwhelming despair: “I have been unable to think of writing a poem, nor ever be able again to write whilst in this Hospital.” His utter despondency brought me to tears in the middle of the library. To be fair I cried last week because I saw a happy dog, so I’m not sure I can be trusted to accurately gauge emotional impact. But holding the very pages he wrote on, seeing the shape and slant of his handwriting, and reading his words to “Dear David” was a visceral and moving experience. Curthoys and McGrath were certainly right when they described the “joy and exhilaration” of encountering personal documents in the archive.
And don’t worry – I made sure those priceless documents were safely out of the path of my tears!