‘Reading biographies to overcome loneliness’: Reflections of an accidental biographer
Seminar
Frank Moorhouse (1938–2022) is best known as a writer of literary fiction. All of his fiction is connected, with his many books sharing characters and experiences, including across generations, and covering much of the 20th century: one of the most sustained feats of the imagination in Australia’s…
Women at the edge of the world: human extinction discourse history and historiography
Seminar
The concept of human extinction in European discourse simultaneously invokes a universal 'we' while delineating exclusive 'others'—notably dying races, languages, and tribes—exposing a paradox rooted in Enlightenment thought, colonialism, and scientific rationalism. This presentation critically…
‘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. …