Australian Cultural History Research Articles

“Painting the Woods into Existence”: Australian Fiction on the Value of the Arts

ABSTRACT This article analyses two works of contemporary Australian fiction—Wayne Macauley’s Caravan Story and Julie Koh’s “Inquiry Regarding the Recent Goings-On in the Woods”—and places their depictions of artists under attack in the context of Australian cultural policy history. Despite the surreal hyperviolence contained in these stories, their concerns neatly align with the academic criticisms of cultural policy in their respective eras. Caravan Story, published at the end of the John Howard era, shows how a focus on economic return in lieu of artistic merit can erode the value artists place on themselves and their work. “Inquiry”, published soon after Minister for the Arts George Brandis had significantly reduced available arts funding, represents the drastic effect the funding cuts had on artists and the passionate community response. The texts are further connected by their optimistic endings, contextualised here through an exploration of the artists’ biographies and their struggles to push back against cultural demands of economic success. This article shows how these experimental works of fiction make the case for the intrinsic value of the arts through narratives that reject the economic imperative and in their very constitution as creative works.

Making Light of Convicts

Making Light of Convicts

What Can be Done to Reduce the Public Stigma of Gambling Disorder? Lessons from Other Stigmatised Conditions.

Gambling is embedded in Australian cultural history, and perceived as a normal, legitimate leisure activity. Despite this normalisation, people who experience gambling problems are heavily stigmatised which can lead to a variety of harms that extend beyond the individual. The stigma from the general public appears to be based on a stereotype of a typical "problem gambler"-selfish, greedy, impulsive and irresponsible. However, research suggests that people experiencing gambling problems have widely varying characteristics and do not conform to this stereotype. Regardless of whether the stigma is justified, it is both present and problematic. Gamblers experiencing problems delay help-seeking due to feelings of shame and, not unwarranted, expectations of negative judgement because of the heavy stigma associated with the stereotype. As stigma is a primary barrier to treatment and a reason why gambling problems can take longer to acknowledge, it is important to understand and address how stigma can be reduced to minimise the negative consequences of gambling on individuals, their families and friends and the wider community. There is little research on reducing gambling-related stigma, so there is a need to examine strategies used in other stigmatised conditions, such as mental health, to understand the general principles of effective stigma reduction measures. Because gambling disorder is unique, well-hidden and consequently not well understood, there is a need to recognise that techniques used in other domains may differ in their effectiveness within the context of gambling stigma.

Australian popular music history on television: Long Way to the Top

Public and commercial television has increasingly looked to popular music histories to fulfil content requirements. The recent ratings success of INXS: Never Tear Us Apart (Channel 7, 2014) and Molly (Channel 7, 2016) as television drama series calls to attention how and why Australian pop and rock histories are created for general audiences. Originally aired on the ABC in 2001, Long Way to the Top is the most detailed attempt to construct a pop/rock narrative that intersects with broader Australian social and cultural history. This article examines the methods deployed by the series’ writers and producers, and the challenges in reconciling musicians’ and fans’ experiences with traditional television documentary practices. It argues that the Long Way to the Top series remains important in informing later TV histories, and in the ways in which it interacted with prior local music industry mythologies.

Reframing ‘Inky’ Stephensen's place in Australian cultural history

ABSTRACTThis article examines the existing literature surrounding Percy Reginald Stephensen (1901–1965). ‘Inky’ to his friends, Stephensen was a prominent yet complex and ostensibly contradictory figure of the Australian literary, cultural and political landscape of the 1930s and early 1940s. In an attempt to overcome what this article presents as the persistent sense of analytical obscurity and uncertainty surrounding both Stephensen and his most famous essay, The Foundations of Culture in Australia, the following analysis reveals that, taken together, attempts to explicate this perplexing figure present an inconsistent and often conflictual picture of Stephensen. In particular, two central ambiguities in the existing historiography are highlighted, the first revolving around divergent interpretations of Stephensen as either radical or reactionary in intent, the second hinging on competing conceptions of Stephensen as either a cultural cringer or an anti-imperial chauvinist in sentiment. The article concludes by introducing a settler colonial studies interpretive perspective as a potential means of bringing the admittedly ambivalent aspects of Stephensen within the same analytical frame. In so doing, the analysis proposes a reinterpretation of Stephensen as a settler nationalist intellectual.

Enhancing Intercultural Communication and Understanding: Team Translation Project as a Student Engagement Learning Approach

This paper reflects on a team translation project on Aboriginal culture designed to enhance university students’ intercultural communication competence and understanding through engaging in an interactive team translation project funded by the Australia-China Council. A selected group of Chinese speaking translation students participated in the project and two English books on Australian Aboriginal history and culture were translated to Chinese from August 2011 to May 2012. The two bilingual books were published by Aboriginal Studies Press in May 2013. After the one-year translation project was completed, the author conducted a survey and audio-taped interviews about the participants’ translation experience. Using social constructivist theory (SCT), the author coded the data, conducted critical analysis of the contents, and categorised the themes. It was found that the participants not only improved their translation skills through combining theories with practices, but also got better knowledge of Australian Aboriginal cultural tradition and history than before. Having understood cross-linguistic differences, they combined translation theory with practice and raised their intercultural awareness after going through various organized learning activities centring on the translation project. Such an interaction-based student engagement learning approach helped student translators achieve meaningful communication and learner autonomy through individual reflections, group discussions, and seminars. Finally the pedagogical implications of the team translation project were discussed.

A Tap on the Shoulder: The Disciplinary Techniques and Logics of Anti-Pokie Apps

A Tap on the Shoulder: The Disciplinary Techniques and Logics of Anti-Pokie Apps

‘What route are you taking?’ The transnational experience of the Barry McKenzie movies

In this article I focus on the offshore life of The Adventures of Barry McKenzie and its big budget sequel to demonstrate the value of Australian cultural history to the field of screen studies and researchers interested in the transnationality of Australian cinema. The concept of historical mobilities and ‘routes’ helps us move beyond discourses of the Australian film revival, home-grown types and tropes and colony versus mother country to consider the creative influence of cosmopolitan bohemian and avant-garde movements in which the film-makers honed their craft and aesthetics, the offshore creative context, notably British satire, and the experience of cross-border travelling itself – and obstructions to that act – which is the central thematic and narrative concern of both films.

Anxious Settler Belonging: Actualising the Potential for Making Resilient Postcolonial Subjects

When I arrived in Aurukun, west Cape York, it was the heat that struck me first, knocking city pace from my body, replacing it with a languor familiar to my childhood, although hea more northern. Fieldwork brings with it its own delights and anxieties. It is where I feel competent and incompetent, where I am most indebted and thankful for the generosity kindness of strangers. I love the way “no-where” places quickly become somewhere and some to me. Then there are the bodily visitations: a much younger self haunts my body. At time adult self abandons me, leaving me nothing but an awkward adolescent: clumsy, sweaty, too m body, too white, too urban, too disconnected or unable to interpret the social rules. My body in that this is not my home, but home for Wik and Wik Way people. Flailing about unmoored from socio-cultural system that I take for granted, and take comfort from – and I draw sustena Anxiety circles, closes in on me, who grows distant and unsure, fragmented. Misusing Deborah Rose, I’m tempted to say I’m separated from my nourishing terrain. Indeed it can feel like nation (not the country) slipped out from under my feet.

Coffee Palaces in Australia: A Pub with No Beer

Coffee Palaces in Australia: A Pub with No Beer

Performing the Rest Cure: Mrs Patrick Campbell's Ophelia, 1897

In 1897 audiences welcomed Johnston Forbes-Robertson's new interpretation of Hamlet to the London stage, and his sane, intelligent Prince was received as an exciting departure from tradition. Mrs Patrick Campbell's own experiments with the role of Ophelia in this production were not so warmly greeted, critics describing her playing as ‘curiously weak’ and ‘unconvincing and unimpressive’. Campbell had rejected the conventional model of the character as emblematic of the prettiness and pathos exemplified by Ellen Terry, and instead offered a vacant, depressive, ‘beaten’ Ophelia. In this article, Fiona Gregory examines the influences behind this choice, including the actress's own experience of mental illness and the notorious ‘rest cure’. The reception of the performance is read in terms of contemporary attitudes to Ophelia and mental illness, as well as of responses to Campbell and her celebrity identity in the visual arts. Ultimately, Campbell's performance of Ophelia can be read as a ‘witness account’ of neurasthenia and the ‘rest cure’, to stand alongside texts such as Charlotte Perkins Gilman's story ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’. Fiona Gregory lectures in the Centre for Theatre and Performance at Monash University, and has published work on the career of actress Judith Anderson, Australian cultural history, and Victorian and Edwardian writers. She is currently undertaking a wide-ranging study of actresses and mental illness from the nineteenth century to the present day, drawing on historical examples and literary and cultural representations to consider the intersections of ‘hysteria’ and the ‘histrionic’.

Right to the City, Desire for the Suburb?

The 2000s have been a lively decade for cities. The Worldwatch Institute estimated that 2007 was the first year in human history that more people worldwide lived in cities than the countryside. Globalisation and new digital media technologies have generated the seemingly paradoxical outcome that spatial location came to be more rather than less important, as combinations of firms, industries, cultural activities and creative talents have increasingly clustered around a select node of what have been termed “creative cities,” that are in turn highly networked into global circuits of economic capital, political power and entertainment media. Intellectually, the period has seen what the UCLA geographer Ed Soja refers to as the spatial turn in social theory, where “whatever your interests may be, they can be significantly advanced by adopting a critical spatial perspective”. This is related to the dynamic properties of socially constructed space itself, or what Soja terms “the powerful forces that arise from socially produced spaces such as urban agglomerations and cohesive regional economies,” with the result that “what can be called the stimulus of socio-spatial agglomeration is today being assertively described as the primary cause of economic development, technological innovation, and cultural creativity”

Preface

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Acknowledgements A project of this scale and comprehensiveness is necessarily a team effort. The Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, and the Humanities Division of the University of Otago have, again, provided sponsorship for the post-election Workshop—the important first step in the writing and discussion processes. The Workshop, held at University House, the Australian National University (ANU) in January 2008, was also supported by the School of Social Science, in the ANU's Arts Faculty, and the Political Science Program, in the ANU's Research School of the Social Sciences. The editor is also grateful to the Advisory group, comprising political scientists from across Australia including Dean Jaensch (Flinders University), Carol Johnson (University of Adelaide), James Jupp (ANU), Elaine Thompson (Macquarie & UNSW), John Warhurst (ANU) and Dennis Woodward (Monash University); the group assisted with the refereeing process. In the four previous volumes of this post-election study series, John Warhurst has been a co-editor and we have alternated the chief editor's role. His decision to retire from the ANU left a gap which the Advisory team is partially filling. Sonya Welykyj, also from the ANU, provided valuable administrative support to the editor. The editor is especially grateful to Richard Nile at Murdoch University for facilitating the publication of the Academy Workshop papers in two special issues of his new journal; and to Catherine Raw and her excellent production team at Taylor and Francis for their efficiency in dealing with such a large number of submissions. The editor is also grateful to the University of Otago, via its research cluster funding for supporting this venture; more recently, Deakin University has provided a congenial environment for the final stage. Notes 1. ‘Special issue: Kevin 07 – The 2007 Australian Election Part I’, Australian Cultural History, 2009, vol 27, no 2. 2. Marian Simms, ‘Preface’, Australian Cultural History, 2009, vol 27, no 2, p 79. 3. Carol Johnson, ‘The ideological contest’, Australian Cultural History, 2010, vol 28, no 1, pp 7–14. 4. ibid. 5. John Wanna, ‘Business and unions’, Australian Cultural History, 2010, vol 28, no 1, pp 15–22. 6. Marian Simms, ‘The leaders and the press’, Australian Cultural History, 2010, vol 28, no 1, pp 23–30. 7. John Warhurst, ‘Religion’, Australian Cultural History, 2010, vol 28, no 1, pp 31–7. 8. Kevin Rudd, ‘Faith in Politics’, The Monthly, 22–30 October 2006. 9. Geoffrey Craig, ‘The leaders and the mass media’, Australian Cultural History, 2010, vol 28, no 1, pp 39–46. 10. ibid., p 45. 11. Peter Chen and Lucas Walsh, ‘The e-election campaign’, Australian Cultural History, 2010, vol 28, no 1, pp 47–54. 12. ibid. 13. Haydon Manning and Robert Phiddian, ‘Political cartoons’, Australian Cultural History, 2010, vol 28, no 1, pp 55–67. 14. ibid. 15. Murray Goot, ‘Underdogs, bandwagons or incumbency? Party support at the beginning and end of Australian election campaigns, 1983–2007’, Australian Cultural History, 2010, vol 28, no 1, pp 69–79. 16. Nick Economou, ‘Victoria’, Australian Cultural History, 2010, vol 28, no 1, pp 81–6. 17. Narelle Miragliotta and Campbell Sharman, ‘Western Australia’, Australian Cultural History, 2010, vol 28, no 1, pp 87–93. 18. ibid. 19. Tony McCall, ‘Tasmania’, Australian Cultural History, 2010, vol 28, no 1, pp 95–102. 20. Dean Jaensch, ‘Northern Territory’, Australian Cultural History, 2010, vol 28, no 1, pp 103–6. 21. Malcolm Mackerras, ‘Australian Capital Territory’, Australian Cultural History, 2010, vol 28, no 1, pp 107–12. 22. Dennis Woodward and Jennifer Curtin, ‘Rural and regional Australia’, Australian Cultural History, 2010, vol 28, no 1, pp 113–19. 23. ibid.

A summer fling: the rise and fall of aquariums and fun parks on Sydney's ocean coast 1885–1920

‘A summer fling’ examines the brief period in which Sydney's most popular beaches were occupied by aquariums, merry-go-rounds, fun parks, giant slides and other sites of paid amusement. It seeks to understand the role amusement structures played in the formation of a beach culture in Sydney, which by the early twentieth century was developing independently of European and American influences. This paper therefore provides new insight into the history of Australian beach culture, exploring a previously unstudied yet highly formative element of Sydney's early beach culture. It argues that the failure of private entertainment enterprises to take hold on Sydney's coast reflected a beach culture which was firmly centred on the sand and surf, a culture which ensured the creation of a coastal landscape which for most of the twentieth century was unmarked by artificial entertainment sites. It argues that this was not an inevitable outcome, but was the result of ongoing and shifting debates between government authorities, coastal residents and beach users about what constituted ‘appropriate’ ways to use the beach space.

Colonialism and the Role of the Local Show

Agricultural shows are important events in rural and regional Australia. For over a century, they have often been the main annual festival on any given town's calendar. This importance makes the lack of scholarly attention to rural and regional shows puzzling. Recently, Australian exhibitions and agricultural shows have come in for some very welcome scholarly attention, although very little has been written about rural and regional events. Scholars such as Kate Darian-Smith and Sara Wills, Joanne Scott and Ross Laurie, Judith McKay, and Kay Anderson have all written on exhibitions and shows – although, of this group, only Darian-Smith and Wills have written on rural shows, the rest focusing more on inter-colonial and metropolitan Australian shows. Even Richard Waterhouse's groundbreaking study of rural Australian cultural history, The Vision Splendid, provides little detail on agricultural shows and their role in rural cultural life, although the show's importance is recognised.

Countrymindedness and the democratic intellect: permutations and combinations in a Victorian country state school, 1853 to 2007

‘Countrymindedness’ is a resonant but perhaps manufactured term, given wide currency in a 1985 article by political scientist and historian Don Aitkin in the Annual, Australian Cultural History. Political ideology was his focus, as he charted the rise and fall ‐ from the late nineteenth century to around the 1970s ‐ of some ideological preconceptions of the Australian Country Party. These were physiocratic, populist, and decentralist ‐ physiocratic meaning, broadly, the rural way is best. Aitkin claimed the word was used in Country Party circles in the 1920s and 1930s, but gave no examples. Since the word is in no dictionary of Australian usage, or the Oxford Dictionary, coinage may be more recent. No matter. Countrymindedness is a richly evocative word, useful in analysing rural populism during the last Australian century. I suggest it can usefully be extended to analyzing aspects of the inner history of Euro‐settlement in recent centuries.

Teaching & Learning Guide for: Whose War Was It Anyway? Some Australian Historians and the Great War

Teaching & Learning Guide for: Whose War Was It Anyway? Some Australian Historians and the Great War

Before and after Climate Change: The Snow Country in Australian Imaginaries

Before and after Climate Change: The Snow Country in Australian Imaginaries

The Brisbane Years of Laurence Collinson

The autumn 1944 ‘Ern Malley’ edition of Max Harris's Angry Penguins was a defining moment in Australian cultural history for more than one reason. To add to the exposure of the Malley hoax in June 1944, Harris found himself in August having to defend charges of ‘indecent advertisements’ (Heyward, 184). Harris's partner in publishing Angry Penguins, John Reed, wrote in a letter of 5 September 1944 — the day the trial began in the Adelaide Magistrates Court — that the ‘indictment includes 7 of the Malley poems, all of Max's, the Cowan and Stivens stories and Collinson's poem’ (Reed, 367). The 19-year-old Brisbanite Laurence Collinson had conjured up a typically dramatic moment to announce his entry onto the national cultural stage — stumbling into a bit part in a drama that was both a crucial battle in the war between Australian literary modernists and traditionalists, and a worthy local precursor to Britain's Lady Chatterley trial of 1959.

When the imaginary Australian is not uncanny: Nation, psyche and belonging in recent Australian cultural criticism and history

Postcolonialism does not exists outside the shadow of colonialism and even as Australia remains under the shadow of colonialism, it is postcolonial because it does things that could not have been done if Australia were still just colonial. Postcolonialism in Australia means more Aboriginal presence, but for non-Aboriginal Australians, less Aboriginal contact and so the emphasis on one to one relationships is important, especially in a postcolonial context that conceptualises and officialises contact primarily in pedagogical terms.