Fiery Tales: The correspondence of Gwen Harwood and Larry Sitsky
Book launch
Join Dr Ann-Marie Priest as she discusses her latest book Fiery Tales: The correspondence of Gwen Harwood and Larry Sitsky (Monash University Publishing) with Dr Susan Lever.Ann-Marie Priest is the author of My Tongue Is My Own: A Life of Gwen Harwood, which won the 2023 National Biography Award…
Six Conservative Australian Feminists, 1901-1970: Towards a Collective Biography
Seminar
Content warning: this presentation will refer to eugenics.To steal from E.P. Thompson in a way he would have deplored, I am seeking to rescue conservative feminists from the enormous condescension of posterity! Although they have had greater scholarly attention in recent years, we know more about…
Musquito: The real story of a legendary colonial warrior, by Naomi Parry Duncan
Book launch
In her new book Musquito: The real story of a legendary colonial warrior, historian Naomi Parry Duncan wades through misinformation and myth to tell the story of one of the best-known First Nations resistance warriors of the early colonial period. In the process, she uncovers and grapples with the…
Biography as Justice: Recasting Cultural Legacies of Harm
Seminar
Content warning: This talk will reference experiences of childhood sexual abuse, framed by the voices and stories of survivors.This paper considers questions from a forthcoming biography of Dorothy Hewett that explore not just how her legacy can be reconsidered in the light of revelations about…
Queering Auto/Biography: The Many Lives of Alison Clark
Seminar
Please note that this presentation will discuss gender based violence and trauma associated with the HIV/AIDS epidemic.In life-writing by and about queer lives, there are few examples of auto/biography that reflect, in their presentation of both content and structure, the anti-normative experience…
'My study is an archive of my mind': The making of Greg Dening
Seminar
Pacific historian and anthropologist Professor Greg Dening (1931-2008) was a man of many silences. Trawling through the large Dening archive in the State Library of Victoria, I am struck by the silences, the gaps and the stories left untold. In one of Greg’s many metaphors, that of…
The Stained Man: A Crime, a Scandal, and the Making of a Nation, by Patrick Mullins
Book launch
The Stained Man: A Crime, a Scandal, and the Making of a Nation (Scribe, 2026) tells the story of Richard 'Dick' Meagher, the Sydney solicitor who incited a campaign to free a man he knew was guilty of attempted murder and subsequently lost it all, including his reputation and ability to…