School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Theses

Permanent URI for this collection

Search Results

Now showing 1 - 10 of 14
  • Item
  • Item
    Thumbnail Image
    Social and scientific factors in the development of Melbourne's early water supply
    Gill, William (1946-) ( 1981)
    The research towards this thesis commenced in 1978 during a period of sabbatical leave from Melbourne State College. I would like to thank the College Council for the opportunity to consult material at the British Library and the Wellcome Institute, London. In my often fruitless searches for material I have been grateful for the knowledge and goodwill of many librarians and archivists. I would like to particularly acknowledge the assistance of Mr. R. Price, Wellcome Institute, London; Miss A. Tovell, Australian Medical Association library, Melbourne; Miss W. Johns, Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works Library; and the reference staff of the La Tribe Library and the Victorian Public Records Office. My supervisor Miss D. Dyason introduced me to the history of public health. Her expertise and wide knowledge were utilised extensively throughout this project. I will always be grateful to Ingrid Barker for her ability to translate my endless rough drafts and marginal notes into a typed manuscript. Finally, I wish to dedicate this thesis to my wife, Dawn, who more than anyone else encouraged me to continue my part-time studies and finally complete this research.
  • Item
    Thumbnail Image
    McCrea, a matter of paradigms
    Keen, Jill R ( 1980)
  • Item
    Thumbnail Image
    Magnificence, misery and madness: a history of the Kew Asylum 1872-1915
    DAY, CHERYL ( 1998)
    The Kew Asylum has been a dominant feature of Melbourne’s built environment for over 100 years. In addition to the visual impact it has made on Melbourne’s skyline it has been very much a part of the psychological landscape of the collective imagination of the city’s inhabitants. Despite this, comparatively little has been written about its impact on society, and almost nothing has been recorded in any comprehensive sense, about its occupants or inmates. This dissertation aims to go some way towards redressing this, not with a broad sweep institutional biography, but with an intimate portrait of the asylum’s earliest days. Covering a time frame of less than 50 years, this thesis adopts a multi-theoretical approach in order to illuminate the different facets of asylum life with the maximum clarity. The thesis contains several themes, some of which overlap and interweave in order to examine the complexity of institutional life.
  • Item
    Thumbnail Image
    "The friendly games"?: The Melbourne Olympic Games in Australian culture 1946-1956
    CAHILL, SHANE ( 1989)
    Melbourne is making a concerted bid to obtain the centenary 1996 Olympic Games. While much of its bid is occupied with explanations of the city’s ability to meet the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) requirements, it is underpinned by a common theme that the city possesses a unique quality of “Friendliness”. (For complete abstract open document)
  • Item
    Thumbnail Image
    Bodies in revolt: a look at three Melbourne based performance artists
    Matovski, Svetlana ( 1995)
    This thesis considers the work of three locally based performance artists; Jill Orr, Linda Sproul and Stelarc. Their performance work will be discussed with specific reference to the ways in which the human body is used and signified. Performance art is an anti-formalist practice which addresses embodied existence by placing 'the body' at the fore of the performance event. I will explore the themes which arise out of the selected performances by these well known performance artists, and in particular, I will demonstrate that the lived human body is continuously produced and reproduced through enactments, rendering essentialist notions of sex, gender and identity outdated. The human body is viewed as always and already mediated by the social and the cultural as well as the biological. The following discussion will also unleash an attack on a western philosophical tradition which has cast the body as a fixed and purely natural entity.
  • Item
    Thumbnail Image
    Twentieth century stained glass in Melbourne churches
    Hughes, Bronwyn ( 1997)
    This present study is intended to supplement the documented knowledge on Melbourne's church stained glass and to examine the major threads that run concurrently through the century: the continuation of nineteenth century images, techniques and themes and the influence of modernism on stained glass. It seemed appropriate to chronologically follow from Down's closing date of 1910, subsequently revised to cover the early years of the century and to close with the flurry of activity surrounding the Bicentennial Year, 1988. (From introduction)
  • Item
    Thumbnail Image
    Rupert Bunny's symbolist decade: a study of the religious and occult images 1887-1898
    Kane, Barbara Brabazon ( 1998)
    The late 19th century, Australian-born artist, Rupert Bunny has not been sufficiently acknowledged as a Symbolist figure. This study of his religious and occult works (the most explicit manifestation of the Symbolist preoccupation) shows how they engage with the Symbolist discourse of the day, both in France and in Britain. In the 1880s and 1890s there was a resurgence in religious belief and a general interest in religion, magic and the occult. Bunny began to paint images of the spiritual world, and a distinct occult thread, either from esoteric religions or classical myth, appears beside the Christian legends of the saints and bible stories. His depictions of the occult world are little known, as only photographic and literary evidence remains of rare paintings such as La Tentation de st. Antoine, and a group of works on paper housed at the Museum of Art, The University of Melbourne, is unpublished. The iconography of these works of Satanism, the Catholic occult, and ancient Greek and Nordic myths of death is examined in their contemporary context. However, like his contemporary Maurice Denis, Bunny's flutter with the occult is confined to his youthful period. In the new century, after a brief engagement with a more dramatic and naturalistic religious image, based on the Old Masters such as Rembrandt and Titian, he returns to the images of beautiful women at leisure which drew critical acclaim for him. Bunny's British cultural heritage has largely been ignored, yet his paintings fit more easily into the broad Symbolist canon if read in such a context. Paintings such as Les' roses de ste. Dorothee and the Burial of St. Catherine of Alexandria are analysed through their iconography, style and fresh contemporary critical sources which allows them to be reintegrated into the broader Symbolist dialectic. Although Bunny was a cosmopolitan by birth and education the question of nationalism arises as rival critics in France and Britain encouraged him to choose either Paris or London, and to paint a relevant style and subject. Bunny sought recognition as an artist in the conservative venues of the Royal Academy and the Société des Artistes français and his style reflects this context. Clearly, he did not engage with the radical Symbolism seen in the private images of Odilon Redon; nor did he lose touch with the sculptured form of the human body. However, Bunny was genuinely a Symbolist in his subject matter and it is hoped that through this study of his religious and occult work a broad reassessment of his oeuvre in the Symbolist decade will begin.
  • Item
    Thumbnail Image
    Piece pipes: clay tobacco pipes from the site of "Little Lon", Melbourne, Australia
    Courtney, Kris ( 1998)
    This thesis describes, discusses and illustrates some of the pipes from intact deposits at the historic Melbourne site of 'Little Lon'. A discussion of the current state of pipe research with specific reference to the situation in Australia - is followed by a background to 19th century clay tobacco pipes, which includes a background to Australian Aboriginal pipe-smoking, gender issues in smoking, and a discussion of the possible existence of a pipe industry in the State of Victoria. A summary of the history and archaeology of the site of 'Little Lon' is then given. The results of earlier artefactual, architectural, and historical research into several pits from the site are outlined, after which the pipes from these same areas of the site are described, discussed, and compared with the findings from other evidence at the site. Selected pipes of special interest are then discussed in greater detail, and a background to the manufacturers represented at the site is given. The work concludes with a discussion of the 'Little Lon' pipes and suggested directions for future research into clay tobacco pipes, particularly those found in Australian sites.
  • Item
    Thumbnail Image
    The yeast is red
    Mansell, Ken ( 1994)
    The Yeast is Red is a case study of the Australian new left of the late sixties. The new left initially emerged as part of a movement of growing opposition to the Vietnam War. The war shattered the previously dominant framework of 'Cold War' assumptions and profoundly altered the Australian political culture. Even though Vietnam and the associated conscription of male youths was the catalyst for the youth radicalisation of the sixties which produced the new left, the new radical consciousness was caused also by the effects of the social and cultural changes of the period. While actively opposing the foreign war, theorists of the new left began to develop an original and sophisticated critique, based partly on the demand for more participatory democratic forms, of their own society. Vietnam, an increasingly unpopular involvement, became a metaphor for what was seen as a suffocating and conformist malaise at home.