Dr Stephen Robertson
BA (Hons) (Otago); PhD (Rutgers)
Senior Lecturer
Room 818 MacCallum Building
+61 2 9351 3782
Stephen Robertson joined the History Department in 2000. Prior to that he was a post-doctoral fellow at the American Bar Foundation in Chicago (1997-98), and the JNG Finley Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of History at George Mason University (1998-99). He also taught for a semester at Massey University in New Zealand. In 2006, Stephen was awarded a Carrick Australian Award for University Teaching Citation for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning.
Research areas
- The twentieth-century United States
- The history of sexuality
- Law and society
- New York City
- Hypertext and digital history
Current projects
- Black Metropolis: Harlem 1915-1930 (with Shane White, Stephen Garton and Graham White)
- Private Eyes and Ears: Covert Surveillance in American life, 1865-1941
- Make Love Not Law: Sex Crime and Sexual Revolution in the United States, 1945-1985
| Books |
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Crimes Against Children: Sexual Violence and Legal Culture in New York City, 1880-1960, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005
| Articles |
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"Shifting the Scene of the Crime: Sodomy and the History of Sexual Violence," Journal of the History of Sexuality (forthcoming)
"Harlem Undercover: Vice Investigators, Race and Prostitution in the 1920s," Journal of Urban History (forthcoming)
"Showing Its Age," Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth (forthcoming)
""Boys, of course, cannot be raped": Age, Homosexuality and the Redefinition of Sexual Violence in New York City, 1880-1955," Gender and History 18, 2 (August 2006): 389-416.
“What’s Wrong with Online Readings? Text, Hypertext, and the History Web,” The History Teacher 39, 4 (August 2006): 441-54.
"Seduction, Sexual Violence and Marriage in New York City, 1886-1955," Law and History Review 24, 2 (Summer 2006): 331-74.
"Teaching Students to Read Online Sources," Australasian Journal of American Studies 24, 1 (July 2005): 112-124.
"What's Law Got to Do with it? Legal Records and Sexual Histories," Journal of the History of Sexuality 14, 1/2 (January/April 2005): 161-185.
"Doing History in Hypertext," Journal of the Association for History and Computing 7, 2(August 2004)
"Making Right a Girl's Ruin: Working-Class Legal Culture and Forced Marriage in New York City, 1890-1950," Journal of American Studies (August 2002).
"Age of Consent Law and the Making of Modern Childhood in New York City, 1886-1921," Journal of Social History 35, 4 (Summer 2002): 781-798.
"Separating the Men from the Boys: Masculinity, Psycho-Sexual Development and Sex Crime in the United States, 1930s-1960s," Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 56, 1 (January 2001): 3-35.
"Signs, Marks and Private Parts: Doctors, Legal Discourse and Evidence of Rape in the United States, 1823-1930," Journal of the History of Sexuality 8, 3 (January 1998): 345-388.
| Teaching |
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- HSTY1076: American History from Lincoln to Clinton (Semester 1, 2009)
- HSTY2670: New York, New York (Semester 1, 2008)
- HSTY2671 Law & Order in Modern America
- AMST2601 American Foundations (Semester 1, 2008; Semester 1, 2009)
- HSTY4011 Crime & Punishment (Semester 1, 2008)
- USSC6914 Key Issues in American Culture (Semester 1, 2008; Semester 1, 2009)
| Supervision |
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Topics in twentieth-century American history, the history of sexuality, law and society, and the history of childhood.
I am currently supervising PhDs on the Christian Left and American foreign policy, the movement against the Vietnam War, and the memorialization of Martin Luther King, and Honours theses on the innocence movement in the contemporary US, the underground press in 1960s Detroit, Jacqueline Kennedy, the insanity defence, Nixon in China, and American influences on Australia in 1996.
2008: "Mapping Harlem: Everyday Life in a Digital Neighborhood," presented at the Organization of American Historians Conference, New York City (March 28)
2007: "Race, Religion and The West Wing: New Tensions in Who Americans Are and What They Believe – a Response to Prof. Bill Chafe," presented at the United States Studies Centre National Summit 2007 (December 12)
2007: "Shifting the Scene of the Crime: Sodomy and the History of Sexual Violence," presented at the Yale Research Initiative on the History of Sexualities, Yale University (September 24).
2006 "Watching Harlem," presented at the Australian and New Zealand American Studies Association Conference, Launceston, (July 12).
2006: "Shifting the Scene of the Crime: Sodomy and the History of Rape," presented at the Organization of American Historians Conference, Washington, D.C., (March 21).
2005: "Weaving a History Web," presented at the "American Studies with an Australian Accent" symposium, Australian National University, Canberra, (July 15).
2003: “Seduction, Sexual Violence, and Marriage in New York City, 1886-1955,” invited presentation at the Social Science Research Council’s Sexual Worlds, Political Cultures Conference, Washington, D. C., (October 2-4).
2002: "Seduction and Sexual Violence Against Adult Women in New York City, 1886-1955," presented at the Australia and New Zealand Law and History Society Conference, Katoomba, (July 12).
2002: "Seduction and Sexual Violence Against Adult Women in New York City, 1886-1955," presented at the Australian and New Zealand American Studies Association Conference, Geelong, (July 7).
- Associate Dean for Undergraduate Matters, Faculty of Arts (2004-2007)
- Webmaster, Australian and New Zealand American Studies Association (ANZASA)
- Coordinator, 'American History for Australian Schools,' a joint project of ANZASA and History Teachers Associations from Australia and New Zealand
- For even more information, Stephen has a personal web page: http://www.arts.usyd.edu.au/~sterobrt
