‘Serious and Seemingly Inherent Obstacles to Successful Judicial Biography’ in Writing Sir Gerard Brennan: The Law’s Good Servant
Seminar
Twelve years before I commenced work on a ‘judicial biography’, the US jurist Richard Posner warned that in addition to ‘all the problems of general biography’ the writer of a such a biography also faces other ‘serious and seemingly inherent obstacles,’ including:the impossibility of reliably…
From Thesis to Published Book: An Aboriginal historian’s multi-generational family history research and what it revealed about the impact of colonisation on Aboriginal people
Seminar
Shauna Bostock’s insatiable curiosity about her family history developed over time to become the focus of her academic research. She traced her four Aboriginal grandparents’ family lines to as far back as she could go in the written historic record, which was during the encroachment of white…
Dan Jacobson and the Story of a South African Family: A Collaborative Memoir
Lecture/seminar
Many of the published works of South African-born writer Dan Jacobson were autobiographical in nature and explored the theme of family. For example, Heshel’s Kingdom (1998) concerned the life and legacy of Dan’s maternal grandfather Heshel Melamed – a rabbi in the small Lithuanian town of…
What is a classic in history? The making of a historical canon
Seminar
The image above depicts the god Janus with his two faces, looking backwards and forwards, towards the past and the future simultaneously: a graphic and symbolic image of the permanence of the classic. What is a classic in historical writing? How do we explain the continued interest in…
The historian at large: Doing history outside the academy
Seminar
This masterclass explores the emerging sites of history making outside of the academy. It reflects on opportunities and limits, as well as their potentially transformative impact for the discipline. Fact: universities produce more history PhDs than they do academic history jobs. …
Life in Biography: Observations on writing about lives
Seminar
In the final Biography Workshop of 2024, historian and author Eileen Chanin will discuss the slipperiness of writing about lives: the challenges, frustrations, pleasures, and results. Eileen Chanin documents lives and writes and publishes widely. She is a senior Visiting Fellow of King’s…
'All my petty schemes': The Hong Kong diaries of Chaloner Alabaster, 1855-56
Seminar
Chaloner Alabaster (later, Sir) became a Student Interpreter in the China Consular Service in 1855, aged 16. The Consular Service was established under the Treaty of Nanjing after the British victory in the First Opium War in 1843. Student Interpreters were the lowest rung on the ladder, but…