School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Theses
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ItemSpectacular! Spectacular!: Cole's book arcade, Melbourne: 1863 to 1927( 2008)This thesis will investigate Cole's Book Arcade, which operated in Melbourne's Bourke Street from 1863 to 1927. Cole's Book Arcade provides a case study with which to interpret social and cultural practices occurring in the context of Melbourne's retail and entertainment environment during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Cole's Book Arcade was a product of its time and location. The thesis argues that the Arcade is an example of how Melbourne's citizens experienced modernity and leisure in the city during this historic period. It is necessary to define the boundaries of this case study. The thesis will also employ the definitions and practicalities of public history to examine the place of the Cole's Book Arcade story within The changing face of Victoria exhibition at the State Library of Victoria. The notions of cultural landscape, modernity, leisure, the New-World city, urban history and material culture will be employed to consider the significance of the entertainment and entrepreneurial environment of Cole's Book Arcade. Since the early settlement of colonial Melbourne, Bourke Street had been a popular destination for city dwellers to find entertainment. By the late nineteenth-century, modern cultural landscapes were emerging within New World cities. E.W. Cole was an entrepreneur who tapped into the commercial interests of a general public who embraced the popular leisure activities with shopping as their focus. This case study of Cole's Book Arcade will provide the historical record with greater knowledge of the personalities and places responsible for motivating these processes and outcomes.
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ItemPicturing politics: cartoons of Melbourne's Labour Press, 1890-1919( 2008)This thesis undertakes a comprehensive survey of the cartoons published in Melbourne's labour press from 1890 to 1919. Through an examination of the picturing of labour politics, this thesis points to the role of social recognition and collective identification in the formation of the political labour movement. It is argued that the key icons of the Worker and Mr Fat embodied an esteemed identity, a labour collective self, which subsumed different forms of labour movement politics and presented a number of claims for rights and social recognition. In addition, these icons relied on contemporary standards of masculinity to give respectability to labour's new form of politics. The criticisms made in the cartoons of the commercial press are examined. These criticisms help show how the idea of the public was employed in the legitimisation of the labour politics. The representations of politicians are also explored. Conservative politicians were shown as hopelessly mired in their own particularity. In comparison with depictions of the generic Worker, the cartoons were ambivalent in their representations of labour movement politicians and the Labor Party. The cartoons also tapped directly into the historically contingent and varied discourses of race and nation. The nation was always defined by its working-class characteristics and labour's enemies were shown as inimical to genuine Australian values. While the cartoons rarely treated race as a subject, they did employ it as a tool in presenting other issues, in particular class and political enemies. There was a consistent pattern of depicting enemies—the Fatman, or conservative politicians—as less than white. Finally, allegorical women were far more commonly depicted than actual women. By consistently using the female form to represent things other than women, while simultaneously refusing to acknowledge women in their own right, the labour movement cartoons failed to recognise women as a valid subject of politics. It is argued that this points to a misrecognition at the heart of labour politics.