AHA Newsletter 8: April 2009
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CONFERENCES
DRAGON TAILS: RE-INTERPRETING CHINESE-AUSTRALIAN HERITAGE
Sovereign Hill Museums Association, Ballarat, Victoria
9–11 October 2009
In 1984, noted historian Jennifer Cushman challenged researchers to move beyond the prevalent one-dimensional approach to understanding the Chinese presence in Australia-an approach that was primarily concerned with examining Australia's attitudes towards the Chinese. In taking up this challenge, and seeking to understand the Chinese 'on their own terms', researchers have uncovered new sources and applied inter-disciplinary approaches to reveal the complex picture of Chinese community cultures, identities and race relations in Australia.
We are particularly interested in work that:
Tells about early Chinese-Australian history from Chinese-Australian perspectives.
Discusses Chinese-Australian heritage/history within broader perspectives (e.g. Australian, Chinese, comparative, and/or transnational).
Draws on new resources to tell new stories.
Focuses on intercolonial (Northern Territory and Queensland) and/or trans-Tasman connections.
Abstracts (max 200 words), with speakers' full contact details and short biographical notes (max 100 words) should be sent to enquiries.dragontails@gmail.com by Monday 18 May 2009.
Enquiries about the conference should be directed to enquiries.dragontails@gmail.com
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17TH GEORGE RUDÉ SEMINAR IN FRENCH HISTORY AND CIVILIZATION
The University of Sydney
14–16 July 2010
Every two years, the George Rudé Seminar brings together specialists in French history and other areas of French studies from Australia and New Zealand with colleagues from around the world for a major conference. A selection of papers from the biannual conferences is now published in peer-reviewed format on H-France.
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The 2010 Rudé Seminar will be held at the University of Sydney. Among the featured guests will be Professor Olivier Wieviorka from the Ecole Normale Supérieure (Cachan), author of numerous works on twentieth-century French history.
The general theme of the 2010 Seminar is 'History and Memory.'
Proposals for papers should include a tentative title, a one-paragraph summary of the paper, a one-paragraph biographical note on the speaker and full contact details. They should be addressed by 1 October 2009 to: RUDE.2010@usyd.edu.au.
If you have questions, please contact the Chair of the organising committee, Professor Robert Aldrich
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PUBLICATION
NADINE KAVANAGH
CONJURING AUSTRALIA: ENCYCLOPAEDIAS AND THE CREATION OF NATIONS
Saarbrücken: Südwestdeutscher Verlag für Hochschulschriften, 2009
ISBN: 978-3-8381-0379-2
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The foundation of the Australian nation was unspectacular: the Commonwealth of Australia came into being with the stroke of a pen on a summer’s day in 1901. At the time of federation, the majority of Australians was of British heritage and the mother country was by many still considered ‘home’. With no foundation myth or unique defining history or culture to resort to, how could Australians forge a national identity? Nadine Kavanagh presents strong evidence that, surprising as it may be, encyclopaedias played an important role in the Australian nation building process. Contrary to their objective appearance, encyclopaedias have the power, along with other cultural, artistic and educational products, to subtly control and, paradoxically, to change the societies which produced them. Like Prospero,
encyclopaedists appear to conjure new realities. Kavanagh argues that the Australian Encyclopaedia, published in 1925/26 by Angus & Robertson in Sydney, was a cultural product with an agenda: to fill the conceptual void left by the unspectacular foundation of the Australian nation.
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Last modified by Carolyn Brewer
6 April 2009 1100
URL:
http://www.theaha.org.au/newsletters/2009/newsletter8.htm
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