United States History in the Department of History
The Department of History has the largest concentration of historians of the United States in the country, and, as a recent study of the field of American history in Australia recognized, is at "the forefront of US History in Australia" (Australasian Journal of American Studies (December 2004): 73). As such, it regularly hosts leading scholars from the United States.
One of the fruits of this concentration is the possibilities that it offers for collaborative research. Four members of staff are currently involved in a research project entitled 'Black Metropolis: Harlem, 1915-1930'. From 2004 to 2007, the project was supported by an ARC Discovery Grant, one of the largest ever awarded in the humanities and the first for a collaborative project on this scale.
The concentration of American historians also allows for an unmatched range of units of study to be taught, with a survey of recent American history offered at first year and a range of more specialized lecture and seminar courses offered at the senior level.
Staff
Specialist Staff
Dr Frances Clarke Nineteenth century history; Gender relations; Cultural history; Civil War & Reconstruction
Dr Clare Corbould African American history; the Harlem Renaissance; transnational history
Dr Michael McDonnell Early and Revolutionary Virginia; American Revolution; Native Americans in North America; cultural intermediaries and brokers; popular politics in the early Atlantic; labour, race, class and class struggles in the early Atlantic
Associate Professor Stephen Robertson Twentieth century social and cultural history; history of sexuality; legal history; history of childhood; hypertext and history
Dr Graham White Nineteenth and twentieth century; African American history; political history
Professor Shane White African American History; history of New York City; cultural history
Staff with Research Interests related to United States history
Clare Corbould, Becoming African Americans: Black Public Life in Harlem, 1919-1939 (Harvard University Press, 2009)
Michael McDonnell, The Politics of War: Race, Class and Conflict in Revolutionary Virginia (Omohundro Institute for Early American Studies/University of North Carolina Press, 2007)
Shane White and Graham White, The Sounds of Slavery: Discovering African American History Through Songs, Sermons, and Speech (Beacon Press, 2005)
Stephen Robertson, Crimes against Children: Sexual Violence and Legal Culture in New York City, 1880-1960 (University of North Carolina Press, 2005)
Frances Clarke, “‘Let All Nations See’: Civil War Nationalism and the Memorialization of Wartime Voluntarism,” Civil War History 52, 1 (2006): 66-93.
Clare Corbould, "Streets, Sounds and Identity in Interwar Harlem," Journal of Social History 40, 4 (Summer 2007): 859-894.
Michael McDonnell, “Class War? Class Struggles during the American Revolution in Virginia,” William and Mary Quarterly LXIII, no. 2 (April 2006): 305-44 (Winner of the 2006 Lester Cappon Prize for the best article).
Black Metropolis: Harlem, 1915-1930 (Professor Shane White, Professor Stephen Garton, Dr Graham White and Dr Stephen Robertson) Supported by an ARC Discovery grant, 2003-2007
Dean Bertram, Flying Saucer Culture: An Historical Survey of American UFO Belief (2006)
Clare Corbould, Making African Americans, 1919-1936 (2005)
Zoe Couacaud, How the alien invaded the American mind: a history of experts, entrepreneurs, story-tellers, and a love of the alien in modern American culture (2006)
Obelia Modjeska, Seeking Dad, Seeking Master: Patriarchal Crisis, Middle Class Masculinity and the Representation of the Father in American Cinema, 1970 to the Present (2005)
Alwyn Williams, The Color of Sound: Jazz and the American Intelligentsia, 1919-1939 (2004)
Nicholas Gebhardt, Against the Ruin of the World: Jazz, Ideology, and the Modern American State (1998)
Current PhDs
Michaela Cameron, "Soundscapes of Early America: Native American and European Conflicts over Sound"
Ivan Coates, "Code Red: Western Union Infiltrates Hollywood"
Conor Hannan, "‘‘Flower Children with Thorns’: Art, Activism, and the Avant-Garde in New York City, 1968-76"
Nicholas Irving, "Global Thought, Local Action: A Transnational Reassessment of the Australian Anti-War Movement, 1959-1972"
Anna Lebovic, "Vogue Magazine and Fashion in post-1945 America'
Alan Rome, "Insanity in Early America: Madness across Cultural Borders"
Michael Thompson, "The Origins and Practice of Christian Internationalism in the Early Twentieth Century"
Clare Corbould's Becoming African Americans: Black public life in Harlem, 1919-1939 (Harvard University Press) was shortlisted for the 2009 General History Prize in the NSW Premier's History Awards.
Shane White has been appointed the Challis Professor of History. The Challis Chair is one of nine created as a result of a bequest from John Henry Challis in 1880, and is held by the senior Professor in the History Department.
Frances Clarke was awarded a Research Grant for 2009 by the United States Studies Centre, for her project, "Dear Father Abraham: Defining the rights and obligations of citizenship in Civil War America".
Stephen Robertson was awarded a 2008 Faculty of Arts Excellence in Teaching Award
Michael McDonnell won the General History Prize in the 2008 NSW Premier's History Awards, for his book, The Politics of War: Race, Class and Conflict in Revolutionary Virginia, published in 2007 by the University of North Carolina Press.
Cassandra Pybus (with Prof RL Isaac; Prof I Berlin; Prof OV Burton; and Prof J Sidbury), was awarded an Australian Research Council Discovery Grant, commencing in 2009, for the project, "Interrogating the Book of Negroes: explorations of slavery and freedom in the Atlantic world in the era of the American Revolution"
Michael McDonnell was awarded an Australian Research Council Discovery Grant, commencing in 2009, for his project, "Charles Langlade, the Anishinaabeg, and the making and unmaking of the Atlantic World"
Jack Sexton, an Honours student in 2007 supervised by Michael McDonnell, published "Monticello: The invention of an American place," in the July 2008 issue of Common-Place.
Naomi Hart has been awarded the 2008 Norman Harper Prize for the best undergraduate essay in American Studies by the Australian and New Zealand American Studies Association. Her essay, "'Exercising 'those faculties which they desire in their offspring': Enlisting parents in the crusade against vice," was published in the July 2008 issue of the Australasian Journal of American Studies. This is the fourth consecutive year that a University of Sydney student has won this prize.
Michael McDonnell and Shane White have been appointed to the Organization of American Historians Distinguished Lectureship Program. Chosen by the president of the organization, this appointment recognizes "outstanding speakers who have made major contributions to the study of American history." Lecturers give at least one lecture a year and agree to designate their fees as donations to the organization.
Michael Thompson, a PhD student supervised by Stephen Robertson and Clare Corbould, published "An Exception to Exceptionalism: A Reflection on Reinhold Niebuhr’s Vision of “Prophetic” Christianity and the Problem of Religion and U.S. Foreign Policy," in the September 2007 issue of American Quarterly.
Shane White was invited to give the 13th Annual Bernard Bailyn Lecture, at La Trobe University, on August 8, 2007. Since 1995, the Bernard Bailyn Lecture has been presented annually by La Trobe University to mark the University’s expertise in North American studies, and to provide an opportunity for a distinguished scholar in a relevant discipline to visit La Trobe University.
Michael McDonnell's article, "Class War? Class Struggles during the American Revolution in Virginia," was awarded the 2006 Lester Cappon Prize for the best article published in the William and Mary Quarterly, the leading journal of early American history, and selected by the Organization of American Historians to be included in The Best American History Essays 2008, published by Palgrave Macmillan.
The University of Sydney was selected as the home of the United States Studies Centre, a collaboration of the Federal government and the American Australian Association.
Stephen Robertson was awarded a 2006 Carrick Institute Australian Award for University Teaching Citation for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning.
Gregory Britton has been awarded the 2006 Norman Harper Prize for the best undergraduate essay in American Studies by the Australian and New Zealand American Studies Association. His essay, "September 11, 'American Exceptionalism', and the War in Iraq," was published in the Australasian Journal of American Studies, vol. 25 no 1 (July 2006), pp. 125-141. This is the third consecutive year that a University of Sydney student has won this prize.
Clare Corbould and Frances Clarke were awarded Faculty of Arts Teaching Excellence Awards for 2005.
Professor Shane White has been awarded a five-year Australian Research Council Professorial Fellowship, commencing in 2006, for the project The Making of Black Manhattan
Professor Shane White and Dr Graham White's book The Sounds of Slavery has won the 2005 Queensland Premier's Literary Award for Best History Book. The judges called the book "breathtaking," and "extraordinarily effective in its ingenuity and brevity."
Conferences
ANZASA Biennial Conference 2008
The 2008 Australian and New Zealand American Studies Association Conference was held at the University of Sydney in July 2008.
Professor Joy Kasson (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill) (May 2009)
Previous Years
Professor Rhys Isaac (La Trobe University and College of William and Mary) 2007
Professor George Chauncey (University of Chicago) (2005)
Professor Edward Ayers (University of Virginia) (2005)
Professor William Chafe (Duke University) (2005)
Professor Steven Hahn (University of Pennsylvania) (2004)
Professor Stephanie McCurry (University of Pennsylvania) (2004)
Professor Clarence Walker (2004)
Professor Joyce Chaplin (Harvard University) (2004)
Professor Kathy Peiss (University of Pennsylvania) (2003) Fulbright Senior Scholar
Professor Lawrence Levine (George Mason University) (2003)
The Sydney American History Reading Group
The American historians at the Department of History organise and host the Sydney American History Reading Group. This group meets on the last Thursday of each month from March to November, from 6:00 to 7:30 PM.
We discuss either a work in progress by a local or visiting American historian or a recently published work in American history. After the discussion we have dinner in Newtown.
Anyone interested in receiving e-mail notices of meetings, or who would like to present their work should contact Stephen Robertson at .
