School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Research Publications
Permanent URI for this collection
Search Results
1 - 10 of 113
-
ItemA preliminary investigation into the influence of archaeological material on the yellowing of polyethylene storage bags(Routledge, 2021)Concerns around the degradation of plastics have been part of conservation discourse for decades. The spotlight is usually on art and objects, and conservation and display materials, however it could be argued that a significant volume of the plastics in museums is associated with storage bags. This study asked whether the condition of plastic storage bags might be influenced by what is stored inside them. If specific materials can be identified as more likely to affect plastic degradation, museums may have a lead-indicator for efficiently monitoring storage risks. This case study developed a methodology for applying multivariate analysis to collected data to answer this question. A subset of polyethylene self-seal bags used to pack archaeological material from the ‘Casselden Place’ assemblage at Museums Victoria was evaluated. Objective data were combined with subjective assessment of bag degradation features gathered during a collection survey and interrogated using multivariate statistical analysis. Results indicate (1) different levels of yellowing are associated with particular plastic bag stocks and (2) ceramic, slate and tile finds are more likely than other materials to be contained within yellower bags. The research points to future enquiry and demonstrates this methodology shows promise for extension to other large cultural datasets.
-
ItemNo Preview AvailableIdentification of polymer-based artefacts from the former Wheeler Residence at the Mernda archaeological site in Victoria, Australia: A comparison of attenuated total reflectance and reflectance spectroscopic techniques(International Council of Museums, 2021)The purpose of this investigation was to identify the polymers in artefacts recovered from archaeological excavations at the former Wheeler Residence using attenuated total reflectance Fourier transform infrared and reflectance spectroscopy. The results from both techniques are compared and discussed. Identification will assist with the long-term management and storage of these polymer-based artefacts. Evaluation of these two sampling techniques included whether the physical characteristics and polymer type of the artefacts favoured the use of one technique over the other. The inherent challenges of archaeological artefacts such as cataloguing conventions, awkwardly shaped fragments and soil encrustations complicated the analysis. Of the 270 samples analysed, 67% were identified as containing ten different types of polymers, with the remaining 33% consisting of unidentified polymers, encrusted polymers in which only soil bands or other materials such as glass were identified. Although reflectance achieved better results for certain types of artefacts, it also revealed limitations. The identified polymers are compatible with the proposed occupation of the site from 1852 to the 1970s.
-
ItemThe Antipodean Legacies of Atlantic Slavery(History Teachers' Association of Victoria (HTAV), 2021)Compensation awarded to British slave-owners under the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 enabled them to redirect their Atlantic assets and practices to Australia’s burgeoning settler colonies.
-
ItemNo Preview AvailableProtecting the Empire's Humanity: Thomas Hodgkin and British Colonial Activism 1830–1870(Cambridge University Press, 2021-10-31)Rooted in the extraordinary archive of Quaker physician and humanitarian activist, Dr Thomas Hodgkin, this book explores the efforts of the Aborigines' Protection Society to expose Britain's hypocrisy and imperial crimes in the mid-nineteenth century. Hodgkin's correspondents stretched from Liberia to Lesotho, New Zealand to Texas, Jamaica to Ontario, and Bombay to South Australia; they included scientists, philanthropists, missionaries, systematic colonizers, politicians and indigenous peoples themselves. Debating the best way to protect and advance indigenous rights in an era of burgeoning settler colonialism, they looked back to the lessons and limitations of anti-slavery, lamented the imperial government's disavowal of responsibility for settler colonies, and laid out elaborate (and patronizing) plans for indigenous 'civilization'. Protecting the Empire's Humanity reminds us of the complexity, contradictions and capacious nature of British colonialism and metropolitan 'humanitarianism', illuminating the broad canvas of empire through a distinctive set of British and Indigenous campaigners.
-
ItemInquiring into the Corpus of Empire(University of Hawaii Press, 2021-06)This article tests the value of corpus linguistics in analyzing nineteenth-century commissions of inquiry into British colonies. It examines and improves the capacity of a computerized text analysis tool called the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count to identify word meaning, sentiment, and psycholinguistic constructs in nineteenth-century sources. By augmenting its dictionary with nineteenth-century language and cross-checking meaning, we show that the software can code with 97% accuracy. We then demonstrate the tool's potential to explore genres of colonial writing, and to locate emotive language and language relating to power differentials in commission reports, a function we argue may provide a "way in" to assessing how commissioners treated different kinds of British subjects and their testimony in the reports.
-
ItemOut of the madhouse: From asylums to caring community?(WILEY, 2021-07)The asylum era has occupied historians of madness for decades, but the story of deinstitutionalization has received comparatively less attention. While this complex process varied from country to country, there were common elements in the way it unfolded across the western world. Historians like to point out that deinstitutionalization was a long time coming, that the demise of the big public madhouses was grounded in their extraordinary expansion in the latter part of the 19th century. Even then, they had come in for scathing criticism suggesting they were inhumane and counterproductive. Public mental hospitals in the United States and some European countries began to empty soon after the Second World War, even before the new drugs arrived in the 1950s, partly driven by labor shortages that encouraged occupational rehabilitation. By then, psychiatrists and allied professionals had embraced the idea of a mental health continuum and shorter-term treatment in community-based services. The economic strains of the 1970s and 80s pushed the process along irreversibly, ensuring that longstanding critiques directly shaped social policy or served as convenient rationales.
-
Item[Review of the book Psychiatrist in the Chair: The Official Biography of Anthony Clare, by Brendan Kelly and Muiris Houston](Irish Studies Association of Australia and New Zealand, 2021)Review of: Psychiatrist in the chair: The official biography of Anthony Clare, by Brendan Kelly and Muiris Houston, Newbridge: Merrion Press, 2020, 292 pp., AU$42.34, ISBN 9781785373299.
-
Item[Review of the book Women, Crime and Punishment in Ireland: Life in the Nineteenth-Century Convict Prison, by Elaine Farrell](Irish Studies Association of Australia and New Zealand, 2021)
-
ItemThe Irish Women's Liberation Movement in Dublin during the mid-1970s(Irish Studies Association of Australia and New Zealand, 2021)The international movement known at the time as women’s liberation—later called second-wave feminism—emerged in Ireland at the beginning of the 1970s. The feminist activist and scholar, Ailbhe Smyth, has divided the Irish Republic’s women’s movement during that decade into three phases: mobilisation 1970–74; radicalisation 1975–7; and consolidation 1977–83.1 But these phases by no means capture the full diversity of the all-Ireland movement at the time. Experiences differed as between, for example, North and South, town and country, middle- and working-class women, gay and straight women, and those who wanted an autonomous women’s movement as opposed to those who sought to tie feminism to republicanism. Smyth’s phases do highlight the movement’s initial volatility though. Groups and campaigns came and went in rapid succession, before a degree of stability emerged towards the end of the decade.
-
ItemNo Preview AvailableEditorial(Informa UK Limited, 2021-01-01)