School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Research Publications
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ItemNo Preview Available'To exercise a beneficial influence over a man': marriage, gender and the native institutions in early colonial Australia(eScholarship Research Centre in collaboration with the School of Historical Studies and with the assistance of Melbourne University Bookshop, 2008)This chapter examines understandings of marriage among missionaries and humanitarians connected with two early colonial ‘Native Institutions’. A comparison of the Parramatta Native Institution in New South Wales and the Albany Native Institution in Western Australia demonstrates that concerns about marriage were central in discussions about the formation and maintenance of these Institutions. Both of these Institutions were established and supported by British evangelicals, who had brought with them to Australia powerful assumptions about gender roles, particularly in marriage. These assumptions influenced their decisions regarding the children who resided in the Native Institutions. Within specific colonial contexts, however, the assumptions of humanitarians and missionaries did not remain static, and debates over the futures of the Aboriginal children they sought to educate reveal complex and shifting hierarchies of race, gender and class.
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ItemNo Preview Available'A longing desire in my heart': faith, family and the colonial frontier in the life of Euphemia Kramer 1887-1971(eScholarship Research Centre in collaboration with the School of Historical Studies and with the assistance of Melbourne University Bookshop, 2008)This chapter considers how writing the life stories of women missionaries can inform larger narratives about Indigenous-settler relations, gender and colonialism, through an examination of Euphemia Kramer, a Pentecostal convert from Victoria who travelled across central Australia with her husband in the 1920s, spreading God’s word. The Kramers’ travelling mission (supported by Adelaide humanitarian group the Aborigines’ Friends’ Association) provided sermons and bibles to isolated Aboriginal groups in the interior, as well as medical and other essential supplies. An effective study of Euphemia’s life must consider her various roles as a ‘missionary wife’, as a missionary in her own right, as a white woman on the colonial frontier, and as a mother. Her intense commitment to the Pentecostal faith, like her husband’s, informed much of her behaviour and actions; indeed, her written recollections are notable for Indigenous people’s absence. Despite working for and with Indigenous people for much of her life, faith and family commanded a much greater focus in Euphemia’s own view. This apparent contradiction runs counter to historical narratives of colonialism which seek to place missionary work at the centre of the European oppression of Indigenous peoples, suggesting instead an approach that considers the missionaries’ many motives.
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ItemBaby bitches from hell: monstrous little women in film(Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, 2005)The Surrealists were fascinated by what they perceived as the dual nature of the little girl, her propensity for innocence and evil. This theme has also proven an enduring one in the history of the cinema and provided the basis for many acclaimed films from The Innocents to Lolita. The view of the female child as particularly close to the non-material world of fantasy and the imagination was central to the beliefs of the Surrealists. They regarded childhood as "the privileged age in which imaginative faculties were still à l’état sauvage – sensitive to all kinds of impressions and associations which education would systematically 'correct'". "Dissecting mystery is like violating a child", Bunuel was fond of saying.' In the 1924 Manifesto, Breton claimed, "The spirit which takes the plunge into Surrealism exultantly relives the best of its childhood."
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ItemThe ice-age(Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, 2007)Lee Bul’s Mon grand récit: because everything … 2005 is a table-top miniature world. One of a pair of major sculptures sharing the same title and mapping the same mysterious topography, the Govett-Brewster’s Mon grand récit: because everything’s alter ego, Mon grand récit: weep into stones… 2005 was shown at the Basel Art Fair in 2005. The two works are very similar, though the Govett-Brewster version is slightly larger and is dominated by a glossy, sprawling, white base resembling a vast glacier, whereas the same forms in Weep into stones… are suspended in space, like a huge train-set on scaffolding. Both works are composed of images of the wreckage of modern history’s mass utopias, of the twentieth century visions of crazy perfection that were shared by capitalism, fascism and communism. These visions have now disintegrated. First, this essay looks at Mon grand récit: because everything… as a work of art that represents the duration of modern history and its entropic end. It does this by translating duration into metonymic images, into images that represent the twentieth century’s failed utopias by architectural models of never-completed modernist monuments in construction: a hanging, bent wood freeway hovering above a snowy abyss; a mountainous central tower encrusted with miniature crystal models; a tiny scale model of Vladimir Tatlin’s never-constructed Monument to the Third International 1920 perched on a glacial waste. Second, the essay shows that because Lee Bul presents modern history as both personal and shared, the instructional diorama represents her quite strategic and very conscious argument against contemporary art criticism’s hermeneutics of nationality, in favour of a determinedly global perspective.
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ItemSusan Norrie( 2004)The work of Susan Norrie, which now spans more than two decades, is challenging, provocative and inspirational. As with all visionary artists, Norrie’s practice has developed and changed over time, now incorporating painting, objects, still and moving images and sound. from her paintings to her installations and video projections, Norrie’s work combines technical brilliance and extraordinary talent with an acute and restless intelligence.
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ItemDiagrammatology(Alt-X Press, 2007)Drawing together Derrida’s interest in grammatology and the inventive, and contemporary architectural interest in diagrams, this paper proposes the notion of ‘diagrammatology’.7 Diagrammatology is understood here as a generative process: a ‘metaphor’ or way of thinking – diagrammatic, diagrammatological thinking – which, in turn, is linked to poetic thinking. This understanding is informed by contemporary architectural theory which conceives of the diagram as a ‘temporary formulation of intentions still to be realized, a machine for learning and change’, a ‘heuristic method’.8 This paper develops diagrammatology through example, by exploring three iterations of the (architectural) diagram. The first iteration is Derrida’s choral grid diagram, which emerged from his reading of the chora section of Plato’s Timaeus – a reading that framed his collaboration with the architect Peter Eisenman on Bernard Tschumi’s Parc de la Villette project. The second iteration is the use Gregory Ulmer subsequently made of Derrida’s choral diagram and reading of the Timaeus in the development of the genre of ‘mystory’ and ‘heuretics’ (the ‘logic of invention’). The third iteration uses the choral grid as a guiding figure for speculating on the intermingled nature of contemporary teletechnologies.
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ItemLa Trobe: the making of a governor(Melbourne University Press, 2006)Charles Joseph La Trobe was Superintendent of the Port Phillip District of New South Wales and Victoria's first Lieutenant-Governor (1851-54). His administration, which coincided with the turbulent challenges of the Victorian gold rushes, was highly controversial.He departed from office a disappointed man whose contribution to the development of the colony was not immediately recognized. His was a vision of a cultured, economically viable and Christian society, with equality of opportunity for all. Any recognition of his achievements eluded him, especially regarding the Aboriginal people and the goldfields administration.As Dianne Reilly Drury shows in this fascinating investigation of the man, La Trobe's actions, ideas and behaviours during his fifteen years in office in Melbourne may be best understood by an examination of the way his character was shaped--especially by the influences on him of the Moravian faith and education, by his passion for travel and by the devotion and support of his family and friends in England and Switzerland.
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ItemRed rag to a British bull?: Australian trained nurses working with British nurses during World War I(RMIT Publishing, 2004)The outbreak of WWI caused a rush of patriotism and thousands of male volunteers demonstrated their keenness to serve the Empire. Both Britain and Australia’s female nursing fraternities were just as enthusiastic to enlist. Some 3000 Australian nurses who joined the Australian Army Nursing Service or served in the British nursing reserve spent part of their service working in British military hospitals alongside nurses from the QAIMNS – Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service. Many Australian nurses had trained under systems of British origin and believed that they shared the same qualifications, skills and outlook as the English sisters. However, British regular army nurses did not regard their colonial sisters as equals. From general snobbishness to giving them all the ‘hard’ duties, Australian nurses had to prove their worth. It was a success; in many cases, by the end of the war British matrons sought Australian nurses in preference to their own country women. This paper explores notions of imperial femininity through aspects of nursing culture, nursing politics, class and primarily labour practices thus making an important contribution to the small but growing number of investigations into women’s military work during World War I.
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ItemMaintaining Britishness in a setting of their own design: the Troodos Hill Station in Cyprus during the early British occupation(RMIT Publishing, 2004)Britain occupied Cyprus by virtue of the Anglo-Turkish Convention of 4 June 1878,which ceded the occupation and administration (but not sovereignty) to Britain. The LordBeaconsfield Government planned to convert Cyprus into a place of arms. The architectsof this policy saw Cyprus as ideal for stationing troops, and sent there a 10,000 strongarmy of occupation. They saw Famagusta Harbour as the perfect naval and commercialstation in the eastern Mediterranean. But within months of the occupation, uncertaintiesdeveloped over the military and naval value of Cyprus. The decision to build the TroodosHill Station stood in stark contrast to the uncertainties over the military and naval valueof the island, and the uncertainties over whether to act as if Cyprus was a British orOttoman territory.
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ItemEvolutions of Lascaux(Ashgate, 2005)This paper charts the evolutions of the Lascaux cave in its various manifestations from the ‘original’ rock art discovered in 1940 to the replica construction ‘Lascaux II’ and a recent travelling exhibition ‘Virtual Lascaux’. The discussion briefly outlines these evolutions and then, employing the notion of the ‘hyperreal’ and the ‘simulacrum’, examines them and the paradoxical nature of ‘copies’ of an ‘original’ work of rock art.