School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Theses
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ItemNever any work but all joy: F.C. and Penelope Morgan and the Morgan collection of children's books in the Baillieu Library, University of Melbourne, Australia( 2011)In 1954 Frederick Charles Morgan (1878-1978), known by family and friends as `Peter' but otherwise simply as `F.C.', donated his extensive and valuable collection of historical children's books to the University of Melbourne in Australia. This thesis investigates why and how Morgan made this gift to the University in the light of British-Australian relations in the 1950s, as well as analysing the importance of the collection and the books in it. It investigates Morgan's methods of collecting and his donation to Australia in the context of the rest of his life, and the importance of his daughter and helper Penelope Morgan's contribution. Morgan was for many years City Librarian in Hereford in England and on his retirement became Honorary Librarian of the Hereford Cathedral Library, best known for its `Chained Library'. His own collection of children's books, as donated to the University of Melbourne in 1954, comprised 1086 children's books collected by him over a lifetime, for many years with assistance from his daughter Penelope Morgan (1916-1990). The Morgan Collection came to the University of Melbourne because Morgan thought that his collection would not be noticed amongst the other riches in most major British libraries. He therefore decided to donate it to what he termed one of the `newer countries of the Commonwealth', where it might be of more research value. The Morgan Collection, consisting mainly of English children's books from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, constitutes a social document of childhood. Morgan collected in his immediate local area and pristine condition was not a primary criterion. Before entering the adult Morgan's collection, most of the books had been collected and owned by actual children rather than by adult collectors. By means of specific case studies the thesis investigates book ownership by children in provincial Britain during 200 years, including Morgan himself as a child. This thesis explores several facets of the Morgan Collection while retaining the focus on the collection. It demonstrates some of the ways in which a formed collection can highlight aspects of books that would remain hidden if they were scattered throughout a large institutional collection. In the present thesis the collection became a basis for exploring the connections between a collector and his collection as well as his evolving relationship with the recipient institution. The thesis demonstrates how provenance clues within the books can illuminate book ownership in various periods by connecting the books to real child owners. The traces of ownership in many of the books make them unique — no other copy of any particular book will provide the same clues.
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ItemA woman of spirit: Lorna Osborn (1922-2011) and her circles: citizenship and influence through religion and education( 2011)This thesis explores the life of the prominent and influential Victorian Methodist and Uniting Churchwoman and educator, Lorna Osborn (nee Grierson) who taught for a quarter of a century at Melbourne Church of England Girls' Grammar School. It analyses aspects of her family background, her education at school and university, her marriage and children, and the formation of the networks that underwrote her religious, social and educational activities as a mature woman from the 1940s to the 1980s. Though Australian women received political citizenship at federal level in 1902 following Federation, male-dominated social structures meant that most women, particularly if they were married and mothers of young children, seldom accessed positions that entailed influence, authority and effective leadership in business, politics or many of the professions, prior to the changed consciousness about gender following the second-wave feminist campaigns of the 1970s. The thesis illuminates how Protestant Christianity, especially Methodism, though it set limits to acceptable female behaviour, also provided spaces for women's agency outside the strictly domestic sphere. Osborn herself did not try to enter male preserves. Esteemed as an active and efficient churchwoman, she was able to operate at high levels in church affairs. Stemming from this foundation, Osborn was embedded in supporting networks which later helped her forge an impressive career at Melbourne Church of England Girls' Grammar School, where fresh circles of colleagues and students invigorated and extended her possibilities for innovation. Educationally on the conservative wing, Osborn's strong adherence to Christianity and to advancing the rights of girls to higher education drove her impressive, dynamic career that promoted talented middle-class girls into an advantaged position to compete academically and professionally in the wider society. This study of Lorna Osborn's life throws light onto the experience of many other women in her circles.
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ItemAn imperial partnership: the marriage of Henry and Alice Northcote( 2011)This thesis examines the lives of two Victorian era aristocrats, Henry (Harry) Stafford Northcote and Alice Stephen Northcote, who married in 1873, and in 1900 began an eight-year career in colonial government. It reviews in particular their negotiation of the system of imperial power that they represented, first in Bombay (1900-1903) and then in Australia (1904-1908). The combination of attention to biographical specificities and the various social and political contexts of the Northcotes' engagements allows the details of their lives to illuminate issues of wider historical significance. The study encompasses two different biographical challenges: interpreting the various correspondences that make up the main source of information about Harry; and discovering Alice despite a paucity of primary source material. Harry, scion of a minor aristocratic dynasty, first served in British politics what proved to be an apprenticeship for colonial service, while Alice, as the adopted daughter of a self-made millionaire, was a socially aspiring society hostess and little else. The couple experienced a dramatic life change at the end of the century: the means of resolving a painful predicament gave both Northcotes the opportunity to find personal renewal and professional fulfilment. They performed in the colonies with a measure of grace and humanity but, imbued as they were with the values of their era and class, Harry and Alice delivered what the British Empire required; they never questioned the ethos or mode of delivery. What the Empire required was always and everywhere the political, economic and social domination of others, particularly those of cultural and racial difference, for the ultimate benefit of the Mother Country and British colonials. In India Harry and Alice made separate but related efforts to impose Western standards of sanitation and medicine. Harry's administration was principally concerned with providing immediate relief for catastrophic famine, and the implementation of Western methods of dealing with epidemics of plague and smallpox. Alice's work involved raising revenue for the Dufferin Fund, a charitable venture characteristic of Victorian era philanthropy: a combination of culturally specific assistance and control. Harry's job description changed when he became governor general of the newly federated Australia. He moved from autocratic rule in a colony of extraction to performing a leading role in a constitutional monarchy in an increasingly self-governing settler society. Harry fulfilled both jobs with judgement and diplomacy, and in Australia he steered the ship of state through turbulent political waters. Alice, having found her metier as governor's "incorporated" wife, and having discovered considerable organisational skill, master-minded the First Australian Exhibition of Women's Work in 1907, an event designed to support fragile federation. On the couple's return to England Harry was active in the campaigns to prevent reform of the House of Lords and female suffrage, indicating that his conservative political views had not changed. Harry died in 1911 and Alice lived out a long widowhood until 1934, creating no new persona, but engaging in activities informed by Harry's legacy.
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ItemThe identification of mosaic workshops in Palestine and Arabia, 4th-7th Centuries CE( 2011)Mosaic pavements comprise the major extant medium of art during the Byzantine period in the Near East. The primary purpose of the thesis is to attribute several mosaic pavements from Byzantine Palestine and Arabia (4th-7th centuries CE) to specific workshops/artisans. The methodology used to reach the various conclusions involves a comprehensive stylistic analysis and comparison, examining idiosyncratic technical details in the mosaics, such as the linear elements of figural anatomy, and the application of polychrome and shading. A study of this nature in the field of mosaics has hitherto not been undertaken on such a broad scale. Information from two mosaic inscriptions makes clear that their mosaicists travelled relatively short distances. For this reason, a surmise is adopted that workshops primarily engaged in intra-regional travel in order to undertake commissions. Consequently, the assemblages of pavements selected are characterized according to geographical clusters. One of these series of mosaics comes from Madaba and its environs, a second from Beth Shean, and a third occupies the region between Jerusalem and Gaza in southern Judea. The examination findings confirm the validity of applying the methodology formulated in the thesis to the field of mosaic artist/workshop attribution. Several workshops are identified and their works isolated – notably from the Madaba region. A pattern emerges of workshops operating within local confines, and one particular mosaicist appears to have been potentially active for up to nineteen years. A study of the pavements from the Nativity basilica in Bethlehem, however, demonstrates that in the case of at least one imperial commission a workshop was sourced from Antioch.
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ItemShirley Andrews: a prismatic life( 2011)This thesis concerns the life and times of Shirley Andrews OAM, 1915-2001: biochemist, dancer, member of the Communist Party and activist for the rights of Aborigines. Through an exploration of her social milieu and diverse interests, the nature of her commitment to social ideals and political principles is explained. The thesis investigates how she developed and pursued her myriad interests, their effect on the various fields of practice and her emotional investment in these activities and her life as a single, professional and politically active woman.
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ItemWriting about the Reich: autobiography and history, a case study( 2011)This thesis brings autobiography and memoir, two generally underutilised sources, to the forefront of historical enquiry using a case study of Third Reich autobiographical writing from the English publishing sphere. The popularity of autobiographical writing outside academe cannot be denied as memoirs and autobiographies dominate bestseller lists worldwide. However, historians have labelled autobiographical writing as both misleading and a ‘revenge on history’ and seldom use it centrally in a study. Key difficulties of autobiographical writing include subjectivity, unreliability, narrativity, invention and emulation but, according to historian Kenneth Barkin, can be overcome. Using a specially created interdisciplinary methodology combining particular mechanisms extracted from autobiographical studies (literary narrative and historical narrative) with a chronological historical framework this thesis aimed to navigate the inherent difficulties of this source and seek a deeper historical engagement with autobiographical material. The interdisciplinary methodology was applied to a particular case study of Third Reich autobiographical works from the English publishing sphere. For ethical, methodological and analytical reasons, this analysis was further restricted to autobiographical writing by those once labelled bystanders but herein entitled ‘the entangled’: in particular, generalist military men, women and children. The period of writing covered began in 1948 with the first recorded Third Reich memoir and extended through three clear writing periods up to 1994, the year immediately preceding the memoir boom. This case study of Third Reich autobiographical aimed to look at the distinct groups of writers and ask of each: how do they write about the Reich? From the nearly one hundred memoirs collected it was clear that the need to consider and reconsider one’s life during the Third Reich remained strong within the cohort of the ‘entangled’. The writers variously framed their experience, indicating intricacies in personal memory and gender and age of the writers played a significant role in the formation of their autobiographical writing. However, one consistent trend was clear; the need to present the suffering self, albeit through varying mechanisms. Overall the study of these ‘collected memories’ worked to nuance existing Third Reich history and memory.
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ItemSarin traces: memory texts and practices in postwar Japan, 1995-2010( 2011)This thesis explores the aftermath of the 1995 Tokyo subway gassing, which killed 13 people and impacted over 6,000. In contrast to existing scholarship on this incident, the thesis is primarily concerned with how this incident has been culturally represented through the wide range of memory texts and practices produced in response to it in subsequent years. These responses include life narratives of victims, perpetrators and others associated with the sect responsible; commemorative processes; and proposals for permanent memorialisation. The thesis reformulates understandings of the gassing by focusing on victim experience and action as central to the incident’s cultural meanings. Victims have articulated their experiences through referencing historical narratives of victimisation such as the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, while also developing transnational connections with victims of other incidents of political violence, such as the terrorist attacks in the United States on 11 September 2001. These connections provide the means for victims to find common articulations of their experience, while also risking an over-simplification which elides differences between different historical and cultural contexts. Victims have also developed commemorative strategies that actively intervened into public space. These interventions allowed for re-engagement with sites of violence, and through this the construction of alternative meanings for these locations. The category of victim emerges as historically contested, moving from a narrow definition of victimisation applied to those directly impacted to a more expansive one. This expansion connects victim experience with a broader human vulnerability to violence in attempting to articulate ways through which further victimisation may be prevented. Those associated with perpetrators also struggled with their experiences of violence, creating a difficult relationship to questions of responsibility.
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ItemThe legitimacy of the trial of Charles I: historical precedent, the law and the roots of political power in England( 2011)The prevailing view amongst scholars is that there was no precedent or legal basis for the trial of Charles I: the trial was contrary to both the substantive and procedural law of the land. This thesis argues that such a view fails to take into consideration the justifications for the king’s trial that can be found in contemporary printed works. During the trial, the Lord President of the High Court of Justice, John Bradshaw, advanced arguments justifying the people’s right to try their king. These arguments have been the primary source used by historians when examining the legitimacy and legality of the king’s trial. However, Bradshaw was constrained by his position as the Lord President of the court. His role was to preside over the trial of the king, not to engage in a legal and philosophical debate with Charles I over the jurisdiction of the court and the power of the House of Commons. The justifications that he did provide constitute little more than bald declarations rather than reasoned arguments supported by evidence. Authors writing in support of the trial, however, were in a much better position to argue the case for the right of the people and the parliament to try their king. An examination of pamphlets and tracts written around the time of the trial shows that many contemporaries saw the trial proceedings as commensurate with historical precedent, with natural and divine law and with fundamental law. They also show that the focus of authors supporting the trial was not so much on demonstrating that the people had the right to place their king on trial. Instead, their focus was on establishing that the people had the right to call their king to account for tyranny or misgovernance. Implicit in these authors’ works was the idea that if the people had the right to call their king to account, then they were entitled to do that by any means they chose: by deposing him, executing him, or placing him on trial. Whilst the trial of a reigning king was unprecedented, the event of the people calling their king to account was not. This thesis will demonstrate that such an event and the justifications of writers supporting it were based on classical, medieval and early modern ideas of law, governance and justice, and that action based on these ideas was well established in historical precedents.
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ItemMutable history: Japanese language historiographies of wartime Korean enforced labor and enforced military prostitution, 1965-2008( 2011)In this thesis I analyze Japanese-language historiography on Korean enforced labor and enforced military prostitution which took place during the Greater East Asia War. Utilizing discourse analysis, I focus on works published from 1965 to 2008, examining variant historical narratives of these same historical events. The existence of both enforced labor and enforced military prostitution has been widely known since the war itself, and both topics have been widely written about and debated by researchers, scholars, and activists across the postwar period. However, while there has been a great deal of archival research on both topics, there has yet been no significant attempt to analyze the decades of accumulated historiography on either issue. Nor has there been any serious effort to present a comparative analysis of both topics across the postwar period. This research reveals that the interpretations of similar or identical source materials has yielded vastly different or conflicting analyses in historical narratives on enforced labor and enforced military prostitution. I argue within that there are hitherto unrecognized similarities in the ways these two sets of narratives are constructed despite their polarization in the historical literature along lines of gender. By exploring the production of historiography of enforced labor and enforced military prostitution, this thesis contributes to the ongoing political and academic debates about the veracity of Japanese war crimes and explicates Japanese-language thought and debate on these topics.
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ItemSelling the Sounds of the South: the visual and verbal rhetoric of Race Records and Old Time Records marketing, 1920-1929( 2011)In the early 1920s, the phonograph industry in America began producing two very distinct record catalogues of racially segregated Southern vernacular music, one called Race Records and the other called Old Time (or 'Old Time Tunes', 'Songs of the Hills and Plains', 'Familiar Tunes Old and New' and towards the end of the decade simply 'hillbilly' records). In the marketing for these new catalogues, two completely separate streams of Southern music were presented, one purely white and one purely black, a separation that denied any possibility or history of the intermingling of the races, a bifurcation of a shared tradition which became a revision of Southern history, and a segregation in keeping with the race policy of the Jim Crow era. ‘Selling the Sounds of the South’ argues that the verbal and visual rhetoric of the marketing for these new catalogues of music (contained not only in catalogues themselves, but in advertisements, window displays, and other promotional material), presented a unique utilisation of Southern images that offered a new definition of Southern black and white music. While heavily reliant on existing constructions of white and black musical culture, the creation of these catalogues involved the recasting of major cultural tropes and resulted in an intertextual construct that itself was something new. The record industry's Old Time artist remained at the mercy of Southern stereotypes, but these musicians were neither simply the pious folk relics projected by folklorists nor the comic caricatures of the radio hillbillies, but rather more complex characters, personified by the dignified mountain entertainer who sometimes sang contemporary songs as well as traditional material and who was a product of both the modernist and anti-modernist impulse. Likewise, the verbal and visual rhetoric of Race Records drew heavily on existing models for selling black music, such as minstrelsy and songbooks of folklorists, and yet the mostly sophisticated, professional, urban, vaudeville performers who became the first Race Records artists, and the music they made, also had a significant impact on the marketing images of Race Records. While these rhetorics were decidedly Northern white conceptions, the fact that both catalogues were created in response to consumer enthusiasm for a vernacular musical culture had a huge impact on their marketing, and it is the matrix of cultural and commercial forces that makes these constructs such interesting examples of the commodification of culture in the burgeoning consumer culture of the 1920s. Put another way, the record industry's marketing imagery for these musics ultimately combined well-worn stereotypes with modern images that were inspired by, and to some degree produced by, this music and its practitioners, and this created a new version of Southern black and Southern white musical culture in 1920s consumer culture.