Introduction to Australian Society: The Australian Imagination

Class code SOC-UA 9TBA

Instructor Dr Toby Martin Details [email protected]

Consultation hours: Wednesdays 2:30pm-4:30pm

Class Details Introduction to Australian Society: The Australian Imagination

Wednesdays 9:30am Lecture Theatre Ground Floor 10:30-1:30 Tutorials 3rd Floor NYU Sydney Academic Centre Science House, 157 Gloucester St, The Rocks.

Prerequisites None

Class The Australian imagination is wondrous, vast, quirky and full of contradictions. Australians like to Description see their nation as, variously: the ‘lucky country’, yet with a debt to pay for the theft of Indigenous people’s land; the ‘land of the fair go’, which cruelly detains refugees; a place with a satirical sense of humour, coupled with a noticeably sentimental worldview; a multicultural nation with a history of a ‘white Australia policy’; a place proud of its traditions of egalitarianism and mateship, with rules about who is allowed in ‘the club’; a place with distinctive local traditions, which takes many of its cues from global culture; a place with a history of anti-British and anti-American sentiment that also has had strong political allegiances and military pacts with Britain and the USA; a place of a laid- back, easy going attitude with a large degree of Governmental control of individual liberties; a highly urbanised population that romances ‘the bush’ and ‘the outback’ as embodying ‘real’ Australia; and a place with a history of progressive social policy and a democratic tradition, which has never undergone a revolution. This course will provide ways of making sense of these contradictions.

Through lectures, discussion and reading we will examine major issues in contemporary society and their historical precedents. We will also focus on the way in which culture – i.e. music, journalism, history, literature, comedy, cinema, food and sport – has imagined Australia and its people. Where possible, it will look at how major themes in Australian culture and society have played out or been embodied in its largest and oldest city: Sydney.

Classes will take the form of a 45min lecture and a 45min tutorial. Approximately half the lectures will be given by the instructor; the other half will be given by guest lecturers. The tutorial will begin with a presentation by one or two students, followed by a class discussion. Students should come prepared to discuss the week’s topic and the required readings.

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Students will be expected to develop: Desired Outcomes - a critical understanding of Australian culture and its history; - an awareness of the politics of gender, race and class in Australian society; - an understanding of the ways in which issues in Australian society are both local and transnational; - their capacity to form arguments – both oral and written – based on critical reading of texts and of the popular culture around them.

Assessment 60% Tutorial presentation and paper (30% for each component). You will need to address the Components required readings and one of the supplementary readings in both the presentation and the paper. The presentation should be approx 5 minutes long and its aim is to stimulate discussion, rather than be a comprehensive summary of the readings. The paper must answer the set tutorial question, needs to be 600 words (+/- 10%) and is due in class the week after your presentation.

30% End of semester presentation. This will be done in groups of three and should be 15 mins long. The aim is to share with your fellow students what you have discovered or learnt during your time in Sydney. As a provocation, you will need to choose a site to explore during your stay in Sydney – ie the Australian Museum, Redfern, the War Memorial, Oxford St, the Botanic Gardens. Part of your presentation should include your responses to your site.

10% Class participation. This is judged not on how much you speak, but critically engaged you are with the material.

Failure to submit or fulfil any required course component results in failure of the class.

Assessment Grade A: Excellent performance showing a thorough knowledge and understanding of the topics of Expectations the course; all work includes clear, logical explanations, insight, and original thought and reasoning. Creative work is of a highly sophisticated standard.

Grade B: Good performance with general knowledge and understanding of the topics; all work includes general analysis and coherent explanations showing some independent reasoning, reading and research. Creative work is of a superior standard.

Grade C: Satisfactory performance with some broad explanation and reasoning; the work will typically demonstrate an understanding of the course on a basic level. Creative work is of an acceptable standard.

Grade D: Passable performance showing a general and superficial understanding of the course’s topics; work lacks satisfactory insight, analysis or reasoned explanations. Creative work is of a basic standard.

Grade F: Unsatisfactory performance in all assessed criteria. Creative work is weak, unfinished or unsubmitted.

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Grade NYU Sydney uses the following scale of numerical equivalents to letter grades: conversion A=94-100 A-=90-93

B+=87-89 B=84-86 B-=80-83

C+=77-79 C=74-76 C-=70-73

D+=67-69 D=65-66

F=below 65

Where no specific numerical equivalent is assigned to a letter grade by the class teacher, the mid point of the range will be used in calculating the final class grade (except in the A range, where 95.5 will be used).

Grading Policy NYU Sydney aims to have grading standards and results similar to those that prevail at Washington Square. At the College of Arts and Sciences, roughly 39% of all final grades are in the B+ to B- range, and 50% in the A/A- range.

We have therefore adopted the following grading guideline: in any non-Stern course, class teachers should try to insure that no more than 50% of the class receives an A or A-. (Stern has a different grading policy that we follow in all Stern courses).

A guideline is not a curve. A guideline is just that: it gives an ideal benchmark for the distribution of grades towards which we work.

Attendance NYU Sydney has a strict policy about course attendance for students. Faculty will not give students Policy permission to be absent for any reason. Students should contact their instructors to catch up on missed work but should not approach them for excused absences.

All absence requests must be presented by the student to the Assistant Director, Academic Programs. Wherever possible, requests should be made in advance of an intended absence. In the case of illness, the student should contact the Assistant Director, Academic Programs within three days of the absence or as soon as practicable and provide medical documentation. Faculty will be informed of excused absences by the Assistant Director, Academic Programs.

The faculty will report all unexcused absences to the Assistant Director, Academic Programs, and students’ final grades will be negatively impacted by each such absence. Each unexcused absence will result in the deduction of 3 percentage points from the final grade.

Be aware that absences from class may also impact on the participation grade awarded by your instructor.

Students are expected to arrive to class promptly both at the start of class and after breaks. This

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attendance policy also applies for classes involving a field trip or other off‐campus visit. It is the student’s responsibility to arrive at the agreed meeting point on time.

Late Written work due in class must be submitted to your instructor during classtime. Submission of Work Late work should be submitted in person to the Assistant Director, Academic Programs during regular office hours (9:00am‐5:00pm, Monday‐Friday). In the absence of the Assistant Director, Academic Programs, another member of the administrative staff can accept the work in person. Students must also submit an electronic copy of late written work to Turn-It-In within 24 hours.

Work submitted after the submission time without an agreed extension receives a penalty of 2 points on the 100-point scale (for the assignment) for each day the work is late.

Written work submitted beyond five (5) weekdays after the submission date without an agreed extension fails and is given a zero.

Plagiarism The academic standards of New York University apply to all coursework at NYU Sydney. NYU Sydney Policy policies are in accordance with New York University’s plagiarism policy. The presentation of another person’s words, ideas, judgment, images or data as though they were your own, whether intentionally or unintentionally, constitutes an act of plagiarism.

It is a serious academic offense to use the work of others (written, printed or in any other form) without acknowledgement. Cases of plagiarism are not dealt with by your instructor. They are referred to the Director, who will determine the appropriate penalty (up to and including failure in the course as a whole) taking into account the codes of conduct and academic standards for NYU’s various schools and colleges.

All written coursework must to be submitted in hard copy AND in electronic form. All students must submit an electronic copy of each piece of written work to the plagiarism detection software Turn-it-in. Instructions will be provided to you in class.

Required You are not required to buy any texts. The required and supplementary readings will be available on Text(s) the NYU database. Further readings will be available in the Science House reading room, on other on-line databases (ie jstor.org, search.informit.com.au or trove.nla.gov.au) or in the collection of State Library on Macquarie St, 15 mins walk from campus.

Supplemental Books: Texts(s) (not Michelle Arrow, Friday On Our Minds: Popular Culture in Australia since 1945, UNSW Sydney, 2009. required to Bain Attwood, Telling the Truth about Aboriginal History, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 2005 purchase as Bain Attwood, In the Age of Mabo: History, Aborigines and Australia, Sydney, 1996 copies are in Melissa Bellanta, Larrikins, UQP, 2012. NYU-S Library) Tony Bennett, Michael Emmison and John Frow, Accounting for tastes: Australian everyday cultures, Cambridge Univeristy Press, Cambridge, 1999 John Birmingham, Leviathan: The unauthorized biography of Sydney, Vintage, Sydney, 2000 David Carter, Dispossession, Dreams and Diversity: Issues in Australian studies, Pearson Education, Sydney 2006 Grace Karskens, The Colony, Allen & Unwin, Sydney 2010 John Connell and Chris Gibson, Soundtracks: Popular Music, Identity and Place, Routledge, London, 2003 Fran De Groen and Peter Kirkpatrick (eds), Serious Frolic: Essays on Australian Humour, UQP,

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Brisbane, 2009 Catriona Elder, Being Australian, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 2007 Bill Gammage, The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines made Australia, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 2011 Ghassan Hage, White Nation: Fantasies of white supremacy in a multicultural society, Pluto Press, Sydney, 1998. Melissa Harper, The Ways of the Bushwalker, UNSW, 2007 Melissa Harper and Richard White (eds), Symbols of Australia, UNSW Press, Sydney, 2010. Philip Hayward (ed), From Pop to Punk to Postmodernism, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1992. Donald Horne, The Lucky Country, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1965 Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds (eds), What’s Wrong With Anzac: The militarisation of Australian history, New South Press, Sydney, 2010 Mark McKenna, The Captive Republic, Cambridge University Press, Cambride 1996. Mark Mckenna, Looking For Blackfellas Point, UNSW Press, 2003 Stuart McIntyre, A Concise history of Australia, Cambridge University Press, 2009. Stuart McIntyre and Anna Clarke, History Wars, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 2003 Andrew Markus, Australian Race Relations, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1994. David Marr and Marian Wilkinson, Dark Victory, Allen & Unwin, Sydney 2003. Tony Moore, Dancing with Empty Pockets: Australia’s Bohemians, Pier 8/9, Sydney 2012. Henry Reynolds, Aboriginal Soverignty: Reflections on race, state and nation, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1996. Deryck M. Schreuder and Stuart Ward (eds) Australia’s Empire, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2008. Babette Smith, Australia’s Birthstain: The Startling Legacy of the Convict Era, Allen & Unwin, Sydney. 2008. Hsu-Ming Teo and Richard White, Cultural history in Australia, UNSW Press, Sydney, 2003 Clinton Walker, Buried Country, Pluto Press, 2000 David Walker, Anxious Nation: Australia and the rise of Asia 1850-1939, UQ Press, 2009 Russel Ward, The Australian Legend, 2nd Edition, Oxford University Press, 1978. Richard White, Inventing Australia, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1981. Richard White, On Holidays, UNSW, 2005 Richard White and Caroline Ford (Eds), Playing in the bush, University of Sydney Press.

Journals: Aboriginal History Australian Cultural History Australian Economic History Australian Historical Studies Australian Journal of Politics and History Australian Liteary Studies Gender and History Griffith Review History Australia Journal of Australian Studies Journal of Women’s History Labour History Meanjin Overland Public History Review Quadrant Southerly

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Movies:

Consiton Sweetie Gallipoli The Castle Muriel’s Wedding Bran Nue Day Puberty Blues Beneath Clouds Head On Finished People Samson and Delilah Adventures of Barry Mckenzie Sunday too far away The Proposition Wolf Creek Wake In Fright Picnic At Hanging Rock I’m Not Dead Yet: Chad Morgan Buried Country The Hunter The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith The Sapphires For The Term of his Natural Life They’re A Weird Mob Playing Beattie Bow

Television: Kath and Kim Summer Heights High An audience with Dame Edna Everage Dumb, Drunk and Racist

Music: The Triffids, Born Sandy Devotional Go-Betweens, Before Hollywood Various artists, Buried Country Sara Storer, Beautiful Circle Anne Kirpatrick, Showman’s Daughter Slim Dusty, Best of Slim Dusty Paul Kelly, Post You Am I, Hourly Daily

Web Sites: Dictionary of Sydney: http://home.dictionaryofsydney.org/ Trove (digitised newspapers and more): http://trove.nla.gov.au/ State Library of NSW: http://sl.nsw.gov.au

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Internet N/A Research Guidelines

Additional N/A Required Equipment

Session 1: Entering the Harbour: Introduction to Australian Studies Feb 13th The lecture will introduce the course, provide a brief overview of Australian society and look at the construction of two icons just out the window: the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House. In tutorials this week we will discuss the assessment criteria for the course and assign weeks for the presentations. As such there are no required tutorial readings. However, for those interested in the Harbour and the early history of Sydney, these texts may be interesting:

Robert Hughes, ‘Introduction’ in The Fatal Shore, Collins Harvill, London, 1987, pp. 1-18 Peter Spearritt, ‘Sydney Harbour Bridge’ and Richard White & Sylvia Lawson ‘Sydney Opera House’ in Melissa Harper and Richard White (eds), Symbols of Australia, UNSW Press, Sydney, 2010, pp. 145-152 & 185-192 Grace Karskens, The Colony, Allen and Unwin, Sydney 2010 Inga Clendinnen, Dancing With Strangers, Cambridge University Press, c2005 Watkin Tench, 1788, Text Publishing, Melbourne, 2012

Film: They’re a Weird Mob (Dir Michael Powell, 1966, 112 mins)

Session 2: The Bush Legend: Urbanisation and the Romance of the Bush Feb 20th Australia is one of the most urbanised countries in the world. More than two-thirds of the population live in major cities, most of these on the east coast. And yet the ‘bush’ and the ‘outback’ have been key ingredients in the Australian imaginary. The bush has been invented as both rural idyll and terrifying dystopia. This week will attempt to make sense of these apparent paradoxes.

Required Readings: 1. Primary Source: Banjo Paterson, ‘Clancy of the Overflow’, in Richard Walsh, Traditional Australian Verse, Allen and Unwin, Sydney 2009, or on-line: http://clancyshotel.com.au/clancy_of_the_overflow.html

2. Richard White, ‘Bohemians and the Bush’, in Inventing Australia, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1981, pp 85-109.

Supplementary Readings:

• Toby Martin, ‘Country Music Capital: The past in Tamworth’, History Australia, 8:1, April 2011, pp 153-174; or • John Scott and Dean Biron, ‘Wolf Creek, rurality and the Australian Gothic’, in Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies, 24:2, April 2010, pp 207-322

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Further Readings: • Marcus Clarke, ‘Preface’ in The Poems of Adam Lindsay Gordon, Messina, Melbourne, 1892. • Kay Schaffer, Women and the Bush: Forces of Desire in the Australian Tradition, Cambridge University Press, 1989, pp 1-28. • Graeme Davison, ‘Sydney and the Bush: An urban context for the Australian Legend’, Historical Studies, Vol 18, No 71, Oct 1978, pp 191-209 • Don Aitken, ‘Countrymindedness’ – the spread of an idea’, in SL Goldberg and FB Smith (eds), Australian Cultural History, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1988. • Russel Ward, The Australian Legend, 2nd Edition, Oxford University Press, 1978. • JB Hirst, ‘Pioneer Legend’, Historical Studies, 1978, 18:71, p 316. • Frederick Jackson Turner, The Frontier In American History, Holt, New York, 1921.

Tutorial question: Why has ‘the bush’ been so important in the Australian imagination?

Questions for consideration: What is the bush legend? Why has it been so important in creating Australian identity? To what degree is it due to city-based romanticisation? How egalitarian is it? Who and what does it exclude? How does it compare to America’s ‘Frontier Legend’? What other ‘legends’ have constituted Australian identity? Is there an ‘Australian Gothic’ that treats the bush as a site of terror?

Films: Sunday Too Far Away (Dir Ken Hannam, 1975, 94 mins) The Proposition (Dir John Hillcoat, 2005, 104 mins)

Session 3: th New Chums: Immigration, Assimilation and Multiculturalism 27 Feb Australia is famously the land of the fair go: egalitarian and open-minded. Yet, for some sixty years it restricted immigration from non-European nations. Today, immigration policy is a fraught political issue and racial tensions still exist within an increasingly multicultural society.

Required Readings: 1. Primary Source: John Howard’s 2001 election campaign speech, especially the three paragraphs that begin ‘So ladies and gentlemen they are some of the new plans we have for Australia’s future….’ And end ‘…we will decide and nobody else who comes to this country.’ http://www.australianpolitics.com/news/2001/01-10-28.shtml 2. Ghassan Hage, ‘Multiculturalism and the Ungovernable Muslim’ (pp 165-186) in Raimond Gaita (ed), Essays on Muslims and Mulitculturalism, Text, Melbourne, 2011

Supplementary Reading: • Catriona Elder, ‘White Australia Meets Multiculturalism: Ethnicity and Nation’, (pp 115- 146) in Being Australian, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 2007.

Further Readings: • Andrew Markus, ‘White Australia, 1890-1945’, (pp 110-154) in Australian Race Relations, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1994. • Ghassan Hage, White Nation: Fantasies of white supremacy in a multicultural society, Pluto Press, Sydney, 1998. • David Marr and Marian Wilkinson, Dark Victory, Allen & Unwin, Sydney 2003.

Tutorial Question: What has been ‘white’ Australia’s’ attitudes to ‘non-white’ immigration?

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Questions for consideration: What were the reasons for the White Australia Policy? Why have Asians been seen as incompatible with Australian values? What are the connections between 9/11 and immigration policy? Why are Muslims considered ungovernable? What is multiculturalism? Is Australia genuinely multicultural? Is it racist? To what degree is racism invented and inflamed by tabloid media?

Film: Head On (Dir Anna Kokkinos, 1998, 104 mins)

Session 4: th Private Acts in Public Spaces: Gay Liberation and the Sydney Mardi Gras March 6 Guest lecturer: Robert French, writer, archivist and activist

With the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras taking place in March, this seems like the perfect time

to look at the history of attitudes to non-heterosexual behaviour and the history of the gay liberation movement. Both histories have a current incarnation in the same-sex marriage debate.

Required Readings: 1. Primary source: Malcom Turnball speech on gay marriage at http://www.malcolmturnbull.com. 2012au/media/speeches/reflections-on-the-gay- marriage-issue-michael-kirby-lecture-2012/

2. Garry Wotherspoon, ‘Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras’, 2008, at http://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/gay_and_lesbian_mardi_gras

Supplementary Reading:

• Garry Wotherspoon, ‘Chapter 5: The Pearl in the Oyster’, City of the Plain: History of a gay subculture, Hale & Ironmonger, Sydney, 1991. Pp 173-210.

Further Readings: • Kevin Markwell, ‘Construction of Sydney as an International Gay and Lesbian City’, GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 8:1-2, 2002, pp 81-99.

• Jeremy Fisher, Into the light: The early days of gay liberation’, Overland, no.191, Winter

2008, pp 52-56.

• Garry Wotherspoon, ‘From Subculture to Mainstream Culture: Some impacts of homosexual and gay subcultures in Australia’, Journal of Australian Studies, 15:28, 1991, pp 56-62 • Robert Aldrich, Colonialism and Homosexuality, Routledge, London, 2003. • Robert Aldrich and Garry Wotherspoon, Studies in Australian Culture, University of Sydney, 1998.

Tutorial Question: How has the gay liberation movement in Australia achieved its objectives?

Questions For Consideration: How have gay rights been fought for in Australia? What is the general consensus on same-sex marriage? How does the Australian experience differ/coincide with America? What is the power of

street protest? What are its limitations? To what degree are lesbians a visible part of the Sydney

Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras?

Film: Sadness (Dir William Yang, 1999, 54 mins)

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Session 5: Sites of Pleasure, Histories of Pain: Recreating the Past For Tourists 13th March Guest lecturer: Richard White, Historian, University of Sydney

One of the most common ways in which national histories are consumed is via tourism. Convict tourism and Aboriginal tourism have, since the late nineteenth century, been popular activities for visitors, and they remain so today.

Required Readings: 1. Primary Sources: please look at web sites of places of convict tourism, ie Hyde Park Barracks http://www.hht.net.au/museums/hyde_park_barracks_museum/ or Port Arthur http://www.portarthur.org.au/ and for Indigenous tourism, ie http://www.ealta.org/ 2. Maria Nugent, ‘Boomerangs For Sale: Tourism in the birthplace of the nation’, Botany Bay, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 2005, pp 63-90

Supplementary Reading:

• Sianan Healy, ‘Years Ago Some Lived Here: Aboriginal Australians and the Production of Popular Culture, History and Identity in 1930s Victoria’, in Australian Historical Studies, Vol 37, No 128, October 2006, pp 18-34

Additional Readings:

• David Young, ‘Chapter 2: Port Arthur: Terra Incognita: 1877-1889, in Making Crime Pay: The Evolution of Convict Tourism in Tasmania, Tasmanian Historical Research Association, Hobart, 1996, pp 23-42 • Graeme Davison, The Use and Abuse of Australian History, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 2000. • Jim Davidson and Peter Spearitt, Holiday Business: Tourism in Australia since 1870, Miegunyah Press, Melbourne, 2000. • Richard White, On Holidays: A History of Getting Away in Australia, Pluto Press, Sydney 2005 • Tom Griffiths, Beechworth: An Australian Country Town and Its Past, Greenhouse, Melbourne, 1987 • Jane Lydon, Eye Contact: Photographing Indigenous Australians, Duke University Press, Durham, 2005. • Indigenous collection at the Australian Museum on Macquarie St

Tutorial Question: What did tourists to Aboriginal communities ‘see’? Or: What did tourists to convict sites ‘see’?

Questions for consideration: How can shameful pasts also be objects of tourist consumption? What kinds of history are presented at these places? Are ‘dark’ elements of the past hidden or highlighted? How does convict tourism differ from Indigenous tourism? How are they similar? Can Indigenous culture be considered part of history tourism? What do debates about old buildings say about Australia’s attitude to history?

Films: Coniston (Dirs Francis Jupurrurla Kelly & David Batty, 2012, 55 mins For The Term of his Natural Life (Dir Rob Stewart, 1983, 180 mins)

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Session 6: National Pride or National Mourning: The legacy of Gallipolli and World War I March 20th Guest lecturer: Michael Mckernan, Historian, ex-Australian War Memorial and Battlefield Tour Guide

Anzac Day, 25th April, commemorates the landing of Australian soldiers at Gallipoli in Turkey as part of the World War I campaign. It is popularly seen as the moment in which Australian national identity was forged. Lately, the site has become popular with young Australians backpacking around Europe to visit it for the annual dawn service.

Required Readings 1. Primary Source: Philip Coorey, ‘Gillard Tells of a Nation Forged in Battle’, Sydney Morning Herald, April 25th 2012 2. Mark McKenna and Stuart Ward, ‘It was really moving mate: the Gallipoli pilgrimage and sentimental nationalism in Australia’, in Australian Historical Studies, Vol 38, No 129, April 2007, pp 141-151

Supplementary Readings:

• Marilyn Lake, ‘Introduction: What have you done for your country’ and Joy Damousi, OR ‘Chapter 4: ‘Why do we get so emotional about Anzac?’ in Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds (eds), both in What’s Wrong With Anzac: The militarisation of Australian history, New South Press, Sydney, 2010

Additional Readings: • Richard White, ‘Motives For Joining Up: Self-Sacrifice, self-Interest and social class, 1914/18, Journal of the Australian War Memorial, No 9, Oct 1986, pp 3-16 • Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds (eds), What’s Wrong With Anzac: The militarisation of Australian history, New South Press, Sydney, 2010 • Bruce Scates, Return To Gallipoli: walking the battlefields of the Great War, Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Tutorial Question: Why has Gallipoli been so important in imagining Australian national identity?

Questions for consideration: Does Anzac Day remember or glorify war? How do feminist readings problematise the way in which Anzac is remembered? What were the motives for soldiers enlisting? And how are soldiers and their deaths remembered now?

Film: Gallipoli (Dir Peter Weir, 1981, 110 mins)

Session 7: Man’s Country: Feminism and Challenges to the Myths of Masculine Australia March 27th Guest Lecturer: Diana Smith, Performer with the Brown Council and writer.

This week we look at how the orthodoxies of masculine culture have been challenged by feminist scholars, theorists and artists.

Required Reading: 1. Anne Summers, ‘Her Rights At Work: The political persecution of Australia’s first female

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prime minister’, http://annesummers.com.au/speeches/her-rights-at-work-vanilla/ (you can also watch a video of the lecture at this website).

Supplementary Readings: • Miriam Dixon, ‘Introduction’ to The Real Matilda Women and Identity in Australia, 1788- 1975, Penguin, Melbourne, 1976; or • Anne Summers, ‘Introduction’ to Damned Whores and God’s Police: the colonisation of women in Australia, Penguin, Melbourne, 1975

Additional Readings: • Gig Ryan, ‘If I Had A Gun’ http://www.poetrylibrary.edu.au/poets/ryan-gig/if-i-had-a-gun- 0531028/ • Ann Curthoys, ‘Visions, nightmares, dreams: Women’s history 1975’, Australian Historical Studies, 27:106, 1996, pp1-13 • John Hirst, ‘Women and History: a critique of Creating a Nation’, in Quadrant, 39:3, 1995, 35-43 • Joy Damousi, ‘Writing gender into history: Creating a Nation and Australian Historiography’, Gender and History, 11:3, 1999, pp 612-624 • Humphrey Mcqueen, A New Britannia, UQP, Brisbane, 2004.

Tutorial Question: What insights into Australian culture does a feminist critique provide?

Questions for consideration: What have feminist historians had to say about Australian culture and Australian history? Why did this flower in the 1970s? What did feminists have to say about the relationship between the past and the present? Did their challenges affect their own society? What is their legacy for feminism in Australia today?

Film: Sweetie (Dir Jane Campion, 1989, 97 mins)

April 3rd Spring Break, no classes

Session 8: The Body: Sport, the Beach, Masculinities and Femininities April 10th Guest lecturer: Caroline Ford, Historian, Cultural Heritage Researcher, NSW Govt

Required Readings: 1. Primary souce: ‘Calls for respect after criticism of swimmer’s weight’, New York Times, July 26th 2012 (and please clink on the links embedded in the Times article.) 2. Maree Pardy, ‘Eat, Swim, Pray’, in M/C Journal, 14:4, 2011, pp1-13

Supplementary Readings: • Caroline Ford, ‘Gazing, strolling, falling in love: culture and nature on the beach in nineteenth century Sydney’, History Australia, 3:1, June 2006, pp 08.1-08.14; or • David McNeil, ‘Black Magic’, nationalism, race and class in Australian football’, Race and Class, 49:4, April-June 2008, pp 22-37

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Additional Readings:

• James Skinner, Keith Gilbert, Allan Edwards (eds), Some like it Hot: The beach as a cultural dimension, Meyer & Meyer Sport, Oxford, 2003 • Martin Flanagan, 1970 and other stories of the Australian game, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1999

Tutorial Question: How can bodies ‘embody’ the nation?

Questions for consideration: Are sports-people’s bodies considered to be the property of the nation? How do Australians look at sports-people? How do they look at women’s bodies differently to men’s bodies? And white bodies differently to black bodies? To what degree is beach behaviour and dress ‘culture’? Can you map the ‘zones of undress’ at Bondi Beach?

Film: Puberty Blues (Dir Bruce Beresford, 1981, 87 mins)

Session 9: Black Armband versus White Blindfold History: Indigenous people in the Australian nation April 17th Guest lecturer: James Wilson-Miller, Curator of Koori Arts, History and Design, Powerhouse Museum

The 1980s, 1990s and 2000s have seen polarising debates about whether Australian history is the story of glorious progress to nationhood or the story of violent dispossession. The place of Indigenous people and their histories is central to these debates. Recent Prime Ministers such as Paul Keating, John Howard and Kevin Rudd have weighed in, employing history as a political strategy. This week we will look at what has happened to Indigenous culture and histories have within Australian politics and society.

Required Readings: 1. Primary Source: Paul Keating’s Redfern Speech, 1993 http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Redfern_Speech 2. Bain Attwood, Chapter 1 ‘Nation’ in Telling The Truth About Aboriginal History, Allen & Unwin 2005, pp 11-35

Supplementary Reading: • D. Short, ‘When Sorry Isn’t Good Enough: Official remembrance and reconciliation in Australia’, Memory Studies, 5:3, July 2012, pp 293-304; or • James Miller, Will To Win: The heroic resistance, survival and triumph of Black Australia, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1985.

Further Readings: • Richard Broome, ‘Historians, Aborigines and Australia: Writing The National Past’ (pp 54-72) and John Morton, ‘Aboriginality, Mabo and the republic: indigenising Australia’, (pp 117- 135) in Bain Attwood (ed), In The Age Of Mabo, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1996. • Stuart McIntyre and Anna Clarke, ‘History Under Fire’ (pp 1-13), ‘Bicentenary Battles’ (pp 93-118) & ‘Frontier Conflict’ (pp 142-170) in History Wars, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 2003 • Mark Mckenna, Looking For Blackfellas Point, UNSW Press, 2003.

Tutorial Question: What has been the experience of Aboriginal people in the Australian nation?

Questions for consideration:

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Was Australia settled or invaded? Can what happened on the frontier be called ‘war’ or ‘genocide’? Why are these questions so important and so divisive in contemporary Australian society? Why do some Australians feel guilt or shame for past injustices? Why are some hostile to such feelings? How has Aboriginal culture survived in Australia?

Film: Beneath Clouds (Dir Ivan Sen, 2002, 90 mins)

Session 10 Homes Away from Home: Expressing other cultures in white Australia April 24th Guest lecturer: Katy Nebhan, historian and heritage consultant

Required Readings: 1. Primary Source: Look at the rhetoric of ‘food safaris’ such as: http://www.gourmetsafaris.com.au/cart/sydney_safaris.php 2. Ghassan Hage, ‘Migration, Food, Memory and Home-Building’ in Susanna Radstone (ed), Memory: Histories, Theories Debates , Fordham University Press, 2010, pp 416-427.

Additional Reading: • Zora Simic, ‘What Are Ya’: Negotiating identities in the western suburbs of Sydney during the 1980s’, Journal of Australian Studies, 32:2, June 2008, pp 223-236

Further Reading: • Ien Ang, Gay Hawkins, Lamia Daboussy, The SBS Story, UNSW Press, Sydney, 2008 • Ghassan Hage, White Nation: Fantasies of white supremacy in a multicultural society, Pluto Press, Sydney, 1998. • Episodes of SBS’ Food Safari

Tutorial Question: How has the culture of recent, non-British, migrants been expressed in Australia?

Questions for consideration: How have new migrants sought to feel ‘at home’ in Australia? To what degree has the state accommodated these desires? How are non-white, non-western cultures consumed by white Australia? To what degree are such cultures ‘exotic’? To what degree are they ‘normal’?

Film: Finished People (Dir Khoa Do, 2003, 80 mins)

Session 11 Drinking Cultures: State Control and Subversion May 1st Australians love a drink, but do they have a drinking ‘problem’? The Australian state certainly has a problematic relationship with alcohol. On the one hand, it derives significant revenue from taxation, on the other it has sought to restrict access to alcohol on the grounds of morality, health and race. And Australian society often has very different ideas about how and how much women should drink, as opposed to men.

Required Readings: 1. Primary source: Michael Thorn, ‘Alcohol in Cross-Hairs but Premier Gun-Shy’, Sydney Morning Herald, August 17th 2012 2. Merle Thornton, ‘Our Chains: Rearview reflections’, Queensland Review, 14:1, 2007, pp51- 59

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Supplementary Readings: On the NT Intervention: • Marcia Langton, ‘Trapped in the Aboriginal Reality Show, Griffith Review, 2007; or • Alexis Wright, ‘Talking about tomorrow’, Overland, No 202, Autumn 2011, pp 35-37; or • Bob Gosford, ‘They took our culture, now there is now law’ Overland 202, 2011, pp 29-34; On women and pubs: • Tanja Luckins, ‘Satan Finds Some Mischief’ in Historical Studies, 22:86, April 1986, pp 116- 131, 32:3, September 2008, pp 295-307

Further Readings: • Marilyn Lake, ‘The Politics of Respectability: Identifying the masculinist context’ in Historical Studies, 22:86, April 1986, pp116-131;

• Tanja Luckins, ‘Pigs, hogs and Aussie blokes: the emergence of the term ‘six o’clock swill’, History Australia, 4:1, June 2007, 8.1-08.17 • Jonathan Crowe, ‘Giving back the space: freedom, meaning and the Northern Territory Intervention’, Law in Context, 27:2, 2010, pp 135-149. • The song ‘Cut A Rug’ by Dougie Young on Buried Country • Clinton Walker, Buried Country, Pluto Press, Sydney 2000.

Tutorial Question: Who has been restricted from drinking in Australia and why?

Questions for consideration: How can we characterise Australian society’s attitude to alcohol? How does it differ according to race, social class and gender? How does alcohol disrupt communities? How does it bring them together?

Film: Wake In Fright (Dir Ted Kotcheff, 1971, 109 mins)

Session 12 Music, Poetry and Place May 8th Required readings (and listenings):

1. Wide Open Road’ by the Triffids, ‘Cattle and Cane’ by the Go-Betweens, ‘My Island Home’ by the Warumpi Band, ‘Beds Are Burning’ by Midnight Oil (search on You Tube) 2. Jon Stratton, 'The Triffids: The Sense of a Place', Popular Music and Society, 30.3, July 2007, pp 377-399

Supplementary Readings: 3. Graeme Smith, ‘The voices of country’, in Singing Australian, Pluto Press, Sydney, 2005, pp 119-139

Further Readings: • John Connell and Chris Gibson, Soundtracks: Popular Music, Identity and Place, Routledge, London, 2003. • Philip Hayward (ed), From Pop to Punk to Postmodernism, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1992. • Brian Elliott, ‘Jindyworobaks and Aborigines’, Australian Literary Studies, 8:1, 1977, pp29-50 • Clinton Walker, Buried Country, Pluto Press, Sydney, 2000.

Tutorial Question: How has music in Australia articulated a sense of place?

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Questions for consideration: How do different types of music express a sense of place do differently? How has white music and literature appropriated an Indigenous sense of place? To what degree is Australian music ‘local’? To what degree is it ‘global’?

Film: Buried Country (Dir Andy Nehl, 2000, 74 mins) I’m Not Dead Yet (Dir Janine Hosking, 2011, 94 mins)

Session 13 Tutorials this week will go for an hour and will be taken up with end-of-semester presentations. As May 15th such, there are no required readings or lectures

Session 14: Tutorials this week will go for an hour and will be taken up with end-of-semester presentations. As May 22nd such, there are no required readings or lectures

Classroom This is a seminar subject and requires active participation. It also requires respectful and engaged Etiquette discussion, including listening to and respecting other points of view. Phones are not to be used during lectures or tutorials. Lap tops are not to be used during tutorials. Eating is not permitted in any classrooms. Please kindly dispose of rubbish in the bins provided.

Required Co- curricular Activities

Suggested Co- curricular Activities

Your Instructor Dr Toby Martin is an historian and musician. Since finishing his PhD at the University of Sydney in 2011 - titled 'Yodelling Boundary Riders: Country Music in Australia, 1936-2010' - Toby has published several articles on country music and its intersections with modernity, national identities and gender. He was the 2011 'Folk Fellow' at the National Library of Australia where he researched the music of Dougie Young and other Indigenous songwriters from western New South Wales and formed a band, with Young's grandson, to perform these songs. Toby is currently the David Scott Mitchell Fellow at the State Library of NSW where he is researching tourism to Aboriginal communities, 1880s-1950s, and, after many years playing in rock band Youth Group, he has recently released a solo album called 'Love's Shadow'.

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