Events in the Department of History
History on Monday
Seminar Series for Postgraduates and Faculty
Held at 12.10-1.30
in The Refectory, Main Quadrangle
(take the stairs leading down from the south-west corner of the Quad)
2009 Coordinator: Dr Dirk Moses
Semester 2, 2009
27 July | Ann Curthoys (University of Sydney)
The British Empire, Indigenous Peoples, and Colonial Democracies: The Australian Colonies in an Imperial Context
Please note this event falls in week 1.
3 August | Kama Maclean (Professorial Research Fellow, United Arab Emirates University/UNSW)
The Posthumous Life of Bhagat Singh: Visual Culture and Popular History in Contemporary India
10 August | Alison Bashford (University of Sydney/Harvard University)
Food, Soil, People: Global Biopolitics in the mid Twentieth Century
17 August | Mark McKenna (University of Sydney)
The Making of an Historian: Scenes from the life of C.M.H. Clark, 1915-1991
24 August | Blanca Tovias (University of Sydney)
Mediated Histories of the Northwest Plains
31 August | Geoffrey Bolton (Murdoch University)
In Search of Paul Hasluck
7 September | Gideon Reuveni (University of Melbourne)
Advertising, Consumer Ambivalence and Jews in Weimar Germany
14 September | Jodi Frawley (Sydney)
Dr Jean White at Dulacca, 1912-1917: Environment and Biography in Prickly Pear Land
21 September | Peter Denney (University of Sydney)
A Taste for Quietness: The Polite Gentleman and the English Landscape Garden
28 September | AVCC Common Week
5 October | Labor Day
12 October | Craig Wilcox (independent scholar, Sydney)
Bungaree's Red Coat: Aesthetics etc.
19 October | Michael L. Ondaatje (University of Newcastle)
Saviours or Sellouts?: Black Conservative Intellectuals in Modern America
26 October ‘Interwar Crusaders: Gender and Politics in Sydney’
- Amanda Kaladelfos (University of Sydney)
Murder, Vigilantism and Mental Defectives in Interwar Sydney - Sophie Loy-Wilson (University of Sydney)
‘Sympathy for Shanghai’: Trade Union Publicity and the 'Liberation of Asia' in 1920s Sydney
Public Lectures
J.M. Ward Memorial Lecture
The Ward Lecture honours the late John Manning Ward AO, Challis Professor of History (1948-1979) and Vice-Chancellor (1981-1990) of the University of Sydney.
The 2009 Lecture:
Exclusionary Empire: The Spread of British Liberty Overseas,1600-1900
Professor Jack Greene, Andrew W. Mellon Professor Emeritus in the Humanities, Johns Hopkins University.
As early of the middle ages, English people celebrated themselves as a people devoted to liberty, and from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries, metropolitan and colonial Britons throughout the settler empire took pride in the belief that they were creating a free empire wherever British settlers went in large numbers. Examining the operation and policies of the principal settler polities within the empire, this stresses the extent to which Britain's free settler empire was also a highly exclusionary one.
Wednesday, 8th April 2009
History Week 2009
- Clare Corbould, 'Dreams from the Motherland,' Talk at the Mitchell Library, Monday September 7, 2009
An examination of the long, varied and fascinating relationship between black Americans and Africa, from slavery to the election of Barack Obama.
More information - Amanda Kaladelfos, Sophie Loy-Wilson and Agnieszka Sobocinska, Briony Nelson
'Scandalous Revelations,' at the Nicholson Museum, Tuesday 8 September, 6pm
Scandals often reveal changes and challenges to social, sexual and political mores in unique ways. In this discussion scholars from the University of Sydney will present new research into ‘scandal’ and explore how different incidents have illuminated diverse societies, past and present
More information - Craig Barker and Julia Horne, 'Scandal in the Quadrangle: The Nicholson Muesum and Great Hall' Walking tour, Main Quadrangle at the University of Sydney 10 September 2009, 2.00-3.30pm
- A chance to explore the early history of the University of Sydney and hear the gossip and rumour that surround the beginnings of the Nicholso Museum and Great Hall. Meet Sir Charles Nicholson, founder of the Nicholson museum and the University’s first Vice Chancellor (from 1851 to 1854). A a rare tour of the University of Sydney’s Great Hall, which celebrates its sequiscentenary this year.
- More information
Conferences
17th George Rudé Seminar in French History and Civilization, 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.
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’. However, paper proposals are invited on any area of French history, or on subjects in other areas of French studies with an historical perspective.
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:
If you have questions, please contact the Chair of the organising committee, Professor Robert Aldrich, Department of History, The University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia ().
Download call for papers
States of Statelessness: The 3rd International History Post-Graduate Intensive
University of Sydney, Australia
July 2010
Postgraduate students are invited to submit proposals for the third International History Postgraduate Intensive at the University of Sydney on July 23 - 25, 2010. Its theme is 'States of Statelessness'.
In recent years, historians have begun to reconsider the lenses through which the past may be viewed, and to restore an emphasis on the breadth of human experience beyond national and statist contexts. In particular, they are increasingly engaged in examining the complex transnational nature of economies, cultures, societies and politics.
The Postgraduate Intensive ‘States of Statelessness’ invites graduate students to reflect on ways of seeing beyond the state and beyond the nation. The remit is broad, and we are interested in students working on the history of migration, movement, mobility, and memory, and in fields including, but not limited to: diplomatic history, international history, economic history, environmental history, gender history, black diaspora history, migration history, histories of empire, human rights, legal history, histories of social movements.
There is no restriction on the regions or periods covered. However, students should be open to a consideration of the broader historiographical implications of their work, and in some way engage with the literature on transnational and or international historiography.
Further information including application form
University of Sydney Sawyer Seminar
The University of Sydney is the proud host of the first Mellon Sawyer Seminar to be held in Australia. The seminar will run from March 2009 to August 2010, consisting of eight special seminar sessions and one international conference. Its theme is The Antipodean Laboratory: Humanity, Sovereignty and Environment in Southern Oceans and Lands, 1700-2009.
The fifth seminar session will be held from 3-5.30pm on October 2009 in the Holme and Sutherland rooms, on ‘Varieties of Empire in the Antipodes: Taking Over and Letting Go’.
Presenters:
- Emma Christopher (Sydney),
The non-free white men and their freed African slaves: claims to British Liberty and its realities in Australia and Sierra Leone. - Kirsten McKenzie (Sydney),
The Daemon Behind the Curtain: prize slaves, convict escapees and the antipodean theatres of liberty. - Mark McKenna (Sydney)
Turning away from Britain: Manning Clark, History, Public Intellectuals and the end of Empire in Australia - James Curran (Sydney)
The “great age of confusion”: Intellectuals and the “new nationalism” in Australia - Discussant: Angela Woollacott (Manning Clark Professor of History, ANU)
The session will be followed by the launch of Kirsten McKenzie’s book, A Swindler’s Progress: Nobles and Convicts in the Age of Liberty. 6pm for a 6.30 launch.
For more information visit the Sydney Sawyer Seminar website
Visitors
Selina Todd (University of Manchester) (March/April 2009)
An International Visiting Research Fellow collaborating with Chris Hilliard, presenting in History on Monday, and presenting a master class for postgraduate students
Sheila Fitzpatrick (University of Chicago)