|
|
AHA Newsletter 19: 14 August 2009 Early Bird Scholarships 2009 La Trobe University's 'early bird' scholarships in History are open for applications now. Applications are called from outstanding candidates in the fields of comparative colonialisms and US/Australian labour history with an interest in pursuing postgraduate research in international and transnational frameworks. See http://www.latrobe.edu.au/rgso/Early_Bird_Schol/History-PhD2009.html Applications close 31 August 2009 Please contact Claudia Haake with questions. Dr. Claudia Haake NSW History Week, 5—13 September 2009 Scandals, Crime and Corruption History Week 2009 will be a wild journey through the dark shadows of our past. Discover the scandals, crime and corruption that have shocked us over time and shaped our history, sometimes in unexpected ways. History Week is our state’s annual festival of history. An initiative of the History Council of NSW, it is the event’s 13th year. With over 150 events across New South Wales, History Week gives a voice to our past and aims to promote that that history is exciting, interesting, relevant and all around us. NSW Annual History Lecture 2009 The Macquarie Bicentennial: A Reappraisal of the Bigge Reports 1 January 2010 marks the bicentennial of the arrival of Governor Lachlan Macquarie. Chief Justice James Spigelman will deliver the Annual History Lecture 2009 on the Royal Commission conducted by John Thomas Bigge. His conclusions have been the subject of controversy, particularly with respect to the balance between deterrence and rehabilitation in criminal punishment, and the balance between the public and private sectors.
Off the Beaten Track 2009 – Solitude of Sighs Presented by the History Council of NSW and Copyright Agency Limited 'We were a miscellaneous lot: murderesses and pickpockets, abortionists and shop-lifters, thieves and robbers, drunks and vags.' So wrote Rebecca Ross in 1908, two years after her release from Sydney’s notorious Darlinghurst Gaol. Ross was one of a handful of prisoners and ex-prisoners who wrote of their experiences of life inside the NSW prison system in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. NSW began as a penal colony in 1788. By the middle of the nineteenth century, the penitentiary model of the prison had become the dominant form of punishment. At the close of the century, sixty prisons had been built around the State, eight of which were classed as major gaols. Six of these were located in regional towns, including Bathurst, Maitland and Berrima. First-person accounts of prison life, which include letters, memoir, poetry and plays, covered a range of themes. In their writings, prisoners and ex-prisoners like Ross recounted the monotony of daily life and gave detailed descriptions of their cells; they expressed their frustration about their loss of liberty; and offered critiques of the prison system. This lecture series for Off the Beaten Track expands on scholarly and popular understandings of the NSW prison system from the perspective of those who spent time 'doing time'. Laila Ellmoos is a professional historian based in Sydney, with a passion for researching and writing about Australian social history. She is currently the historian at the NSW Government Architect's Office, and has been recently commissioned to write a history of the Peat Island Centre, a large residential centre for people with disabilities, which is located on the Hawkesbury River. Laila is a regular presenter on Fbi Radio’s "Scratching Sydney’s Surface" segment, which explores the history of Sydney. This lecture for Off the Beaten Track expands on research Laila carried out when she was the National and State Libraries Australasia Honorary Fellow at the State Library of NSW in 2007. Hay
Page constructed by Carolyn Brewer Last modified by Carolyn Brewer 11 August 2009 1219 URL: http://www.theaha.org.au/newsletters/2009/newsletter19.htm |