October 14 is Humphrey McQueen Day in Cultural Collections

Portrait of Humphrey McQueen by Karen Donnelly, 2009

Lecture 1

When: 14th October 2011 at 10am
Presenter: Humphrey McQueen
Title: Changing Places: a materialist explanation for nationalism.
Where: Cultural Collections Level 2 Auchmuty Library University of Newcastle.
Cost: Free

 

Lecture 2

When: 14th October 2011 at 1.30 pm
Presenter: Humphrey McQueen
Title: ‘Will you be long, Mr Barrack?’
Where: Cultural Collections Level 2 Auchmuty Library University of Newcastle.
Cost: Free

Everyone is welcome to attend two free public lectures to be delivered by well known Australian historian Humphrey McQueen in the Friends’ Reading Room Cultural Collections (Auchmuty Library) University of Newcastle.

The first will be held at 10am. Humphrey McQueen will be presenting on Changing Places: a materialist explanation for nationalism.

As part of the University’s Radical Newcastle Project an afternoon paper will be also delivered at 1.30 pm entitled ‘Will you be long, Mr Barrack?’ (Peter Barrack is a former Secretary of Trades Hall in Newcastle).

Humphrey McQueen is a freelance historian and cultural commentator. His most recent book is ‘Framework of Flesh: Builders Labourers Battle for Health and Safety’ published in 2009 (copies are now available at the Coop bookshop on campus). He has an impressive and diverse publication record in Australian history over a long period that includes his 1970 book, A New Britannia: An argument concerning the social origins of Australian radicalism and nationalism, released in several editions. He also contributed the Foreword to Radical Brisbane published in 2004.

This is an important opportunity to engage with a prominent Australian historian to help unpack the concept of ‘radicalism’ and to think through how it might be applied to the University of Newcastle’s own Radical Newcastle project.

Prior to Humphrey’s talk, you are also invited to a light lunch downstairs at Isabella’s adjacent to the Student Union Building from 12 noon to 1:15 pm. Isabellas is adjacent to the Student Union Building. This has once again been provided for us by the School of Humanities and Social Science. If you would like to attend the lunch could you please RSVP Linda Hutchinson (Humanities Research Institute) at Linda.Hutchinson@newcastle.edu.au by Wednesday 12 October.

I hope to see as many of you at the event as possible.

Dr James Bennett
for Radical Newcastle collective.
University of Newcastle

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 Use of Memory and Material Culture in the History of the Family in Colonial Australia

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

13th May – 11:00am

Dr. Tanya Evans, Macquarie University

The Use of Memory and Material Culture in the History of the Family in Colonial Australia

This paper explores the use of memory and material culture in the history of families who travelled between Britain and Australia and settled in the early colonies from 1788 until the late nineteenth century. It draws on diaries, memoirs, letters, and objects belonging to a variety of cultural institutions including the Museum of Childhood in Perth, Museum Victoria, the Powerhouse Museum, the Pioneer Women’s Hut and the Historic Houses Trust of New South Wales, as well as those within private collections, to explore some of the meanings of objects brought by families from Britain to Australia. Certain objects connected their owners with past lives back in Britain, reminded them of home, family ties and duty and were transferred to new owners to remind the next generation of their journeys round the world. It suggests that a focus on material culture enriches our understanding of the economic, social and cultural history of the family in late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century Britain and Australia.

The participation of women in the courts of Herod and Augustus

Classics Seminar Series 

Cultural Collections, Auchmuty Library Level 2,

11am Friday March 25, 2011

Hugh Lindsay
Senior Lecturer in Classics
School of Humanities and Social Science

 

High Lindsay

The participation of women in the courts of Herod and Augustus

Herod the Great was an Idumaean whose family had relatively recently converted to Judaiasm. Moreover his father Antipater was a leading administrator in the service of the Hasmonaean dynasty, rather than himself royal. Despite this background, Herod managed to secure the role of Roman client king in Judaea in 40 BC and to develop a court on Hellenistic lines in which women had a significant role. Herod himself was polygamous and was married at least 10 times, but this did not prevent women from gaining significant power at court. I shall attempt to chart the areas of influence of his sister Salome as well as Herod’s Hasmonaean bride, Mariamme. Another issue is the amount of influence that Herod’s womenfolk had on the court of Livia and Augustus, and the extent to which their concerns were driven by the imperial model.

General view of the fortress at Masada

Members of the General Public are welcome
to attend this free public lecture

History Seminar Series 2011 – Semester 1

History Seminar Series

School of Humanities and Social Science,

The University of Newcastle

2011, Semester 1

Held in the Cultural Collections (near the Information Desk)
Level 2, Auchmuty Library, Callaghan Campus, 11am start

18^th March – Wayne Reynolds, The University of Newcastle
“The Cold War and Beyond: The American Alliance and the Nuclear Choices of Australia and Sweden”

15^th April – Josephine May, The University of Newcastle

‘Gender, the nation, and the boy problem in Australian school films of the 1980s’.

13^th May – Tanya Evans, Macquarie University – 11:00am

‘The Use of Memory and Material Culture in the History of the Family in Early Colonial Australia’.

27^th May – Nicholas Baker, Macquarie University – 11:00am

‘Thinking like a state in Early Modern Europe? Frontiers, boundaries, and the limits of power in sixteenth-century Tuscany.’ 

The Cold War and Beyond

History Seminar Series

School of Humanities and Social Science,
The University of Newcastle

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

Friday 18th March, 2011, 11am.

Associate Professor Wayne Reynolds (University of Newcastle)

The Cold War and Beyond: The American Alliance and the Nuclear Choices of Australia and Sweden.

Associate Professor Wayne Reynolds

Since the end of the Cold War in 1989 there has been considerable debate about the prospects for the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the threat of the spread of nuclear weapons. There are 44 nations that can build nuclear weapons and some are seen as having the potential to revisit past nuclear weapons programs. In 2005 Australia and Sweden were on a list of 16 candidates prepared in the US National Defense University. This paper, part of a broader assessment of Australian nuclear choices, surveys the past views of two states that have been ignored by scholars interested in nuclear weapons. Like NATO and Japan, both Sweden and Australia worked within the American alliance to shape their nuclear choices. American nuclear policy, however, was not consistent during the Cold War with respect to nuclear alliances and has been subject to considerable strain since the end of the Cold War. Wayne Reynolds is an associate professor in history at Newcastle and has recently completed a book: The Longest Wait: The American Alliance, National Security and the Imperative of an Australian Nuclear Future. This paper is based on a chapter published with Professor John Simpson (Southampton University Mountbatten Centre) ‘Australia: A Potential Nuclear Proliferator? in the James Martin Nonproliferation Center, Monterrey volume Forecasting Nuclear Proliferation in the 21st Century: A Comparative Perspective (Stanford University Press 2010)

Francis de Witt Batty

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
10am- 11am, followed by morning tea

29^th October: Troy Duncan, University of Newcastle

“Francis de Witt Batty: advocate of the Middle Way and custodian of Empire”

This paper examines the contribution made to national political debates by Francis de Witt Batty during the twenty-seven years he served as Bishop of Newcastle from 1931. A graduate of Balliol College Oxford and a convinced imperialist connected to the Round Table Movement, Batty used his position as bishop of one of the more important non-metropolitan dioceses to strengthen ties between Australia and the empire both before and after World War Two. While Batty had deep reservations about the political activism of Bishop Burgmann and argued that it was not the church’s duty to devise specific programs of social reform, he nevertheless came during the Depression of the 1930s to accept certain elements of the Social Gospel. In the 1940s, Batty hosted a series of interdenominational “Religion and Life” conferences in Newcastle which encouraged debate among church members about such issues as the creation of the Welfare State.

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.

Prayer or protest? Fasting, nonviolence, and anti-nuclear activism in the United States

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

10am- 11am, followed by morning tea

6th August. Kyle Harvey, Macquarie University

“Prayer or protest?: Fasting, nonviolence, and anti-nuclear activism in the United States”

In the twentieth century, American pacifists began to experiment in more radical ways with nonviolence as a strategy for social change. Utilising ideas and tactics gleaned from Gandhi’s campaigns in India and South Africa, pacifists sought to bring about change by combining radical protest with religious ritual, satisfying their calling to bear witness to injustices, speaking to a higher truth in the process. This dualism can be seen through a variety of nonviolent protests by pacifists, but those involving the ritual of fasting speak clearest to the problems of combining a political protest with an act of inner spirituality. Fasts in protest of nuclear disarmament also considered themselves prayers of penitence, humility, and self-purification, which struggled to make sense to the targets of most anti-nuclear protest – the public. Attempting to soften the message of pacifist spirituality meant that anti-nuclear fasting campaigns needed to match their faith with a concerted public relations effort, fitting their protest in with the broader, mainstream, peace movement.

This compromise was not easy, and speaks to the marginalisation of radical pacifism in the anti-nuclear movement. In the 1980s, the popularity of the nuclear freeze campaign encouraged pacifists that their efforts might reach a larger audience. The Fast For Life, a 1983 campaign, attempted to combine a radical act of pacifism – an open-ended fast – with a moderate yet somewhat vague rhetoric of committed individuals, hope, faith and love. Building on a lengthy history of religious fasting, as both an ascetic pursuit and one incorporated into nonviolent activism, the Fast For Life used ritual and politics in strange ways that had mixed results. The campaign says much about the nature of religious pacifism, nonviolent action, and the place of spirituality in movements for social change. Moreover, it demonstrates that religious pacifism in the United States was often ruled by uneasy compromises between idealism and realism, between faith and pragmatic politics.