Physical treatments for war neurosis

School of Humanities and Social Science,
The University of Newcastle
2012, Semester 1

Held in the Cultural Collections (near the Information Desk)
Level 2, Auchmuty Library, Callaghan Campus

Friday 1st June, 10:00am, followed by morning tea

Dr Elizabeth Roberts-Pederson,
University of Western Sydney

“Some measure of revolution”: physical treatments for war neurosis in Britain, 1939-1945

During the Second World War, thousands of British service personnel were treated for ‘war neurosis’ in the psychiatric wards of military and civilian hospitals in Britain and overseas. While historians of psychiatry have tended to emphasize the rise of ‘therapeutic communities’ during this period as a new and innovative means of rehabilitating neurotic service personnel, less attention has been given to the widespread use of what medical practitioners termed ‘physical treatments’ to mitigate neurotic symptoms.

In this paper I argue that the wartime adoption of drug therapies, insulin comas, convulsive therapies and prefrontal leucotomies for the treatment of neurotic conditions holds implications not only for the ways in which we understand the development of psychopharmacology and the ‘biological turn’ in psychiatry in the latter half of the twentieth century, but for our conceptualization of the problematic relationship between psychiatric theory and psychiatric practice in wartime.

All welcome!

Maurice Shadbolt, William Malone and Chunuk Bair

 

School of Humanities and Social Science,
The University of Newcastle
2012, Semester 1

Held in the Cultural Collections (near the Information Desk)
Level 2, Auchmuty Library, Callaghan Campus

Friday 18^th May, 10:00am, followed by morning tea

 Dr James Bennett

School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Newcastle University

‘Maurice Shadbolt, William Malone and Chunuk Bair:  Gallipoli and late 20^th century New Zealand cultural nationalist productions’

With some notable exceptions, representations of Gallipoli (especially popular ones) have long been confined to singular national (and nationalistic) interpretations of the campaign that are typically built around the elevation of mythology, national identity and sentiment. Peter Weir’s 1981 feature film, Gallipoli, a near classic version of the Anzac legend, is perhaps the most influential text ever on this historical turning point.

Given the audience’s familiarity with Weir’s feature film, the paper will introduce it as a comparative anchor for the discussion around Maurice Shadbolt, architect of a cultural nationalist moment in 1980s New Zealand. Particular emphasis will be given to Shadbolt’s dramatic 1982 stage play, Once on Chunuk Bair, and his related writings from other genres on the First World War. The 1991 adaptation of the play into a low budget feature film will also be briefly considered. The paper will interrogate Shadbolt’s motivation for this incisive intervention in New Zealand public life, situating it in an era when the nation was transitioning to decolonisation and cultural independence.

In order to place discussion of Gallipoli and cultural nationalism in a broader context, the presenter will also briefly speak to the issue of a key shift in Gallipoli studies over the past decade underpinned by a growing body of revisionist historical scholarship on the campaign. This work informs two significant transnational documentaries made to mark the occasion of the 90^th anniversary in 2005. Both are important tools in helping us to transcend the national paradigm and to rethink the campaign in more holistic and complex ways.

Was New Zealand part of New South Wales 1788-1817?

School of Humanities and Social Science,
The University of Newcastle
2012, Semester 1

Held in the Cultural Collections (near the Information Desk)
Level 2, Auchmuty Library, Callaghan Campus
Friday 4th May, 10:00am, followed by morning tea

Professor Lyndall Ryan
Centre for the History of Violence, Newcastle University

“Was New Zealand part of New South Wales 1788-1817?”

When Captain Arthur Phillip the first governor of New South Wales, read out his commission at Sydney on 26 January 1788 he said that the boundaries of the colony extended from Cape York in the north to South Cape, all the country westward as far as 135 degrees east and “including all the islands adjacent in the Pacific Ocean” between Cape York and South Cape.

Did Phillip’s jurisdiction include New Zealand? Between 1788 and 1817 the governors of NSW were in no doubt that NZ was part of the territory of NSW and encouraged trade and missionary enterprise between the two places. However in 1817 the British government ruled that NZ was not part of NSW. This paper explores the ways historians on both sides of the Tasman have written about this period in relation to their countries’ histories and argues for a new approach to trans-Tasman history.

All welcome!

Is a treaty any use at all?

School of Humanities and Social Science,
The University of Newcastle
2012, Semester 1

Held in the Cultural Collections (near the Information Desk)
Level 2, Auchmuty Library, Callaghan Campus

Friday 23rd March, 10:00am, followed by morning tea

Emeritus Professor Alan Ward

Is a treaty any use at all?
A perspective from restless New Zealand

Since the 1960s there have been insistent proposals for a ‘treaty’ (or ‘Makarata’) between the Commonwealth and Australian Aboriginal people, as a basis for Aboriginal advancement. Lately the trend has been towards explicit recognition of Aboriginal rights in the federal Constitution. Arguments in support of such proposals sometimes include reference to the allegedly better race relations in New Zealand, allegedly deriving from the Treaty of Waitangi concluded between representatives of the British Crown and some 530 Maori rangatira in 1840. There is an assumption that the Treaty of Waitangi has constitutional force, or the force of fundamental law, against which statute law and the received common law are measured. This talk will examine those assumptions.

All welcome!

Edward Close: Prospects of the Colony

History Seminar Series

School of Humanities and Social Science,
The University of Newcastle

2012, Semester 1

Held in  Cultural Collections (near the Information Desk)
Level 2, Auchmuty Library, Callaghan Campus
10am, followed by morning tea

Friday 9th March – 10am

Prof. Michael Rosenthal, Warwick University, England
Edward Close: Prospects of the Colony

In 2009 Dr David Hansen discovered that the watercolours attributed to amateur colonial artist, Sophia Campbell were the work of Lieutenant Edward Close, of the 48th Regiment, which arrived in Sydney on August 3rd, 1817. This paper builds on Dr Hansen’s foundation, to discuss some of the technical problems surrounding even knowing what we’re looking at in the field of colonial Australian art, and works are discussed according to their genre – caricatures, views, landscapes – and the latter are investigated with a view to decoding what messages their aesthetic references tell us about how Close was viewing New South Wales, Sydney and Newcastle. These in turn are linked into other issues – the ethos of the Macquarie era, the impact of European occupation upon the Aborigines and their places – to argue that art can be as eloquent as any written documentation about the actualities of historical process.

Everyone is welcome to attend

Upcoming History Seminar Series

History Seminar Series
School of Humanities and Social Science,
The University of Newcastle
2011, Semester 2

Held in the Cultural Collections (near the Information Desk)
Level 2, Auchmuty Library, Callaghan Campus

5th August, 10am – Colin Barr, Ave Maria University (Florida)
“Ireland’s Empire: The Roman Catholic Church in the Anglo-World, 1830-1922″

23rd September, 11am – Mark Dawson, ANU *Please note the start time
“CSI Early Modern? Crime, Astrology, and Physical Difference in Seventeenth-Century England”

14th October, 10am – Humphrey McQueen, independent scholar
“Changing places: a materialist explanation for nationalism”

4th November, 10am – Michael Ondaatje, Newcastle
“Saviors or Sellouts? Black Conservative Intellectuals in Modern America”

Public Seminar: Dr Colin Barr on ‘Ireland’s Empire’

History Seminar Series
School of Humanities and Social Science,
The University of Newcastle
2011, Semester 2

Held in the Cultural Collections
Level 2, Auchmuty Library, Callaghan Campus
10am, followed by morning tea

Friday 5 August 2011, 10am

Dr. Colin Barr
Ave Maria University (Florida)

“Ireland’s Empire: The Roman Catholic Church in the Anglo-World, 1830-1922″

Even the most passing familiarity with the United States, Canada, Australia, Scotland, New Zealand, and, to a lesser extent, South Africa reveals the historical importance not only of the Roman Catholic Church, but also the domination of that church by the ethnic Irish: think of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York – or Melbourne, Auckland, or Thunder Bay, Ontario.  In this paper I will show that this phenomenon was not merely ecclesiastical, but had important political and social consequences:  everywhere, the Catholic Church sought to play an important role in political life; everywhere, it sought to build a separate and distinct institutional structure of schools, hospitals, universities, and organisations ranging from religious confraternities to social clubs and insurance schemes. In the paper, we will consider the thousands of men and women who served as priests and religious; the many millions who took their moral, political, and social cues from their priests and bishops, or were educated in church-run schools and colleges.  By 1922, the Irish dominated both the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church and its institutions across the Anglo-world.  In many places, Irish and Catholic became virtually indistinguishable.  The Roman Catholic Church in the English-speaking world became, as a disgruntled (and English) Archbishop of Sydney complained in 1863, an Irish ‘imperium in imperio’.’  This paper will explore some of the ramifications of this widely held view.

Thinking Like a State in Early Modern Europe?

History Seminar Series

School of Humanities and Social Science,
The University of Newcastle

2011, Semester 1

Held in  Cultural Collections (near the Information Desk)
Level 2, Auchmuty Library, Callaghan Campus
11am, followed by morning tea

Friday 27th May – 11am

Dr. Nicolas Baker, Macquarie University

Thinking Like a State in Early Modern Europe? Frontiers, Boundaries, and the Limits of Power in Sixteenth-Century Tuscany.

The Cooee’s Career in English Literature

History Seminar Series
School of Humanities and Social Science
The University of Newcastle

2010, Semester 2

Held in the Cultural Collections (near the Information Desk)
Level 2, Auchmuty Library, Callaghan Campus

October 15^th ,11am, followed by morning tea

Richard White

“The Cooee’s Career in English Literature”

The cooee has long been heard in Australia in many varied contexts, but it has also had a presence in Britain ever since its notable debut on the streets of London in the 1840s. This paper considers its relatively autonomous literary history beyond Australia, from Sherlock Holmes to Lady Chatterley, Tin Tin and the Bobbsey Twins, from Agatha Christie to John Betjeman, Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett.

Richard White is writing a history of the cooee. He teaches Australian history and the history of travel and tourism at the University of Sydney. His most recent book is Symbols of Australia, co-edited with Melissa Harper.

The Return of the Mummy: Napoleon’s Funeral, Public Opinion, and the July Monarchy

History Seminar Series
School of Humanities and Social Science,
The University of Newcastle

Held in  Cultural Collections (near the Information Desk)
Level 2, Auchmuty Library, Callaghan Campus

Friday 10th September, 10am

SPECIAL HISTORY WEEK PRESENTATION

Associate Professor Philip Dwyer,
University of Newcastle.

‘The Return of the Mummy: Napoleon’s Funeral, Public Opinion, and the July Monarchy’

Napoleon’s funeral procession was one of the largest ever seen in Paris in the nineteenth century, with more than one million spectators lining the streets to see it. This seminar will examine the political and social tensions of the funeral itself and the broader strains of the July monarchy.

Napoleon's funeral car heads towards les Invalides. Print after Adolphe Jean-Baptiste Bayot and Eugène Charles François Guérard. Paris, Musée de l'Armée.