News from the Faculty of Arts, Monash University, Melbourne Australia
Travel in Atomic Sunshine
Robin Gerster’s book Travels in Atomic Sunshine: Australia and the Occupation of Japan has won the prestigious New South Wales Premier’s Australian History Prize for 2009. The prize was awarded by the NSW Premier the Hon Nathan Rees at a dinner in Sydney on 27 October.
Travels in Atomic Sunshine is published by Scribe Publications, 2008.
Gough Whitlam: A Moment in History
The latest book from Professor Jenny Hocking, Gough Whitlam: A Moment in History, has been shortlisted in the non-fiction category of the 2009 Prime Minister’s Literary Awards. Earlier in the year the book was also shortlisted for The Age Non-Fiction Book of the Year 2009.
Comments from the judges stated:
“No stranger to the political biography, Hocking gives us a portrait of a man who has cast a longer shadow on Australia’s history than most of his predecessors or successors as Prime Minister. There have been many books on Whitlam as Prime Minister—yet no detailed biographic account of his long and remarkable life, of his journey to the Lodge. Hocking combines fine writing with exemplary research including extended interviews with Whitlam and his family. A vivid and engaging book.”.
Gough Whitlam: A Moment in History is published by Miegunyah Press.
More information about the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards.
Visit Jenny Hocking’s profile page on the National Centre for Australian Studies site.
Travel in Atomic Sunshine
Robin Gerster’s book, Travels in Atomic Sunshine: The Australian Occupation of Japan has been shortlisted, in a group of three, for the 2009 NSW Premier’s Australian History Prize.
Travels in Atomic Sunshine was also shortlisted earlier this year for the Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards.
Travels in Atomic Sunshine is published by Scribe Publications, 2008.
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.”
Slicing the Silence
Professor Tom Griffiths of the Australian National University has been named joint winner of the 2008 Prime Minister’s Prize for Australian History. The prize was awarded for Professor Griffiths’ 2007 book Slicing the Silence: Voyaging to Antarctica.
The prize is awarded to publications deemed to make a significant contribution toward the understanding of Australia’s history and is described as “Australia’s pre-eminent award for excellence in the field”. It includes a grant of $100,000.
The Advisory Committee for the prize made the following comments regarding Professor Griffiths’ book:
Slicing the Silence is a highly original and beautifully crafted book, which is a model for communicating complex historical research in engaging and widely accessible ways. Griffiths blends his own experiences of journeying to Antarctica with those of the explorers and scientists who went before him — so producing a multi-layered history of human interactions with the polar environment of the South. Slicing the Silence offers a broader, international view of Australian engagement with the wider world, and addresses the new global era of trans-national histories which span disciplines and continents within Australian spheres of human engagement. Griffiths strikingly manages to convey the embodied experience of the place, to make the reader wonder how they themselves might cope with the snow, the cold and the silence. It is an eminently readable and highly enjoyable book which will meet the test of scholars and general readers — a rare combination. The book opens up a new dimension of the Australian past and present; and which also, combined with its sheer literary merit, already has claims to become a ‘classic’ in the body of modern Australian historical writing.
Professor Griffiths completed his PhD, Hunters and Collectors: The Antiquarian Imagination in Australia, at Monash in 1994. He is now an environmental historian with the Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University.
Slicing the Silence: Voyaging to Antarctica is published by University of New South Wales Press
Australian Catholic University, Melbourne City Campus
Room 5.29
115 Victoria Parade
Fitzroy
Perspectives on local and inter-country adoption: Canada, US and Australia.
Speakers include:
Short films on adoption screening as part of the TTAF tour, plus a reading of a new play, Umbilical, by Dominic Hong Duc Golding.
This event is proudly brought to you by Monash Arts, in collaboration with the Australian Catholic University and the Inter-Country Adoptee Support Network.
Note: Seats at this event are strictly limited. Please contact Amy at amy.pollard@arts.monash.edu.au to reserve your place.
Turkish flag
The National Centre for Australian Studies has hosted a number of events exploring the ongoing significance of Gallipoli in the lead up to Anzac Day.
The Director of the Centre, Professor Bruce Scates, spoke at a community event attended by several hundred members of the Turkish Australian community and chaired by the Turkish Consul General, Mr Aydin Nurhan.
On 25 March, Tony Robinson MP launched the “Return to Gallipoli” Exhibition at Melbourne’s Shrine of Remembrance, an event attended by diplomatic representatives from Turkey, New Zealand, the United States and Great Britain. A powerful exploration of pilgrimages past and present it will remain at the Shrine until June this year and the Turkish flag shown in this article is one of its many fascinating exhibits.
The Shrine also hosted a recent lecture by NCAS Professor Ken Inglis, recounting his own return to Gallipoli in 1965, the 50th Anniversary of the Landing.
All these events noted the need for reconciliation in the wake of war and explored the contested meanings of the ANZAC in popular memory. Anzac Day is considered Australia’s national day by many and the involvement of the National Centre for Australian Studies hopes to promote a more balanced and reflective understanding of this tragic and costly campaign.
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.
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.
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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