Arts Faculty News

Lisa Curtis-Wendlandt, who recently completed her PhD in History in the School of Historical Studies, is a joint winner of the Australian Historical Association-Copyright Agency Limited Postgraduate Essay Prize for 2009. Lisa’s essay, ‘Beating Around (In) the Bush: Corporal Punishment and Moral Reform at Hermannsburg Mission in Late-Nineteenth and Early-Twentieth Century Australia’, will be published in History Australia.

The citation for Lisa’s essay reads, “This article provides a subtle, astute analysis of the relationship between corporal punishment and the practices of Lutheran missionaries in Australia, most particularly those of Carl and Freida Strehlow’s Hermannsburg Mission in Central Australia. Conceptually rich and making careful, probing use of archival sources, the author traces the interdependence between Lutheran proselytisation, an ostensibly benevolent patriarchal mode of missionary authority, and the mutually reinforcing tendency of this ‘protectionist agenda’ and practices of ‘indigenous male violence’ among the Aranda and Loritja people. In insisting that ‘the image of the missionary and his whip deserves a closer look’, and mining mission records for the gendered impact and legitimacy accorded to abuse within cultures fostered by the missions, the author has brought a powerful new dimension to themes in Australian Indigenous history, and a offered a perspective with considerable resonances in contemporary debates.”

From Australian Historical Association

INT3140/INT4140/ITM4140 After Atrocity: the Holocaust, South Africa, Rwanda

This unit brings together students from Monash campuses in Australia and South Africa to study the contemporary histories of post-genocide and post-conflict societies through three specific cases: European Jews after the Holocaust; the South African approach after apartheid; and local and global responses to the Rwandan genocide. Held in the mid-semester break as a 2 week intensive course, students will spend a week in Johannesburg and a week in Rwanda exploring public debates on memory and justice through visits to memorial sites and museums. This unit is a LEVEL 3 and 4 Intensive for undergraduate students of International Studies, History, Jewish Studies and Graduate Students of Global Studies, History, and Holocaust and Genocide Studies.

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Monash is the first Australian university, and second outside the US, to gain access to the University of Southern California (USC) Shoah Foundation Institute Visual History Archive, the largest visual history archive in the world.

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Vera Bradford

Monash University recently added an innovative dimension to its historical research and publishing facilities with the inclusion of video imagery in an online journal.

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Journal cover

In a publishing first, Monash University ePress has introduced sound bite technology to its online scholarly journal, History Australia.

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