Recent Historiography

Annotations:

• "For the enthusiastic amateur of local history, the academic historian is in a different world. Academics are often at a city-based university. Their journals are remote, guarded by a peer-review process. And their conferences beyond the resources of the amateur. This world is not readily entered by the amateur who, unlike professional historians who receive a regular salary, are volunteers with limited means. "

1. Also "Some academic historians think they are the only ones with the keys to the past. This is a form of professional arrogance. It creates a perception of aloofness."

Annotations:

• Writes with a novelists eye – no grand historical approach – can easily gets the fact right as a journalist.

1. Compared to the trained historians on this panel - Carlton seemed far less reflective of his practice as a history-maker and certainly was not discussing the impact of historiography - e.g. POMO and Braudel like Hoskins

Annotations:

• "They call themselves historical consultants, museum professionals, government historians, archivists, oral historians, cultural resource managers, curators, film and media producers, historical interpreters, historic preservationists, policy advisers, local historians, and community activists, among many many other job descriptions.  All share an interest and commitment to making history relevant and useful in the public sphere."

Annotations:

• " Monday's administrative directive to wrest control over history textbooks from private publishers comes after months of heated public debate over how to teach children history. The controversy has focused largely on how to characterise the history of modern Korea, including Japan's colonial rule in the early 20th century and South Korea's tumultuous, often bloody march toward democracy.  For years, conservative critics have charged that left-leaning authors poisoned the current textbooks and students' minds with their "ideological biases". The critics were especially upset with the way the textbooks described North Korea and the military dictators who once ruled South Korea, including Ms Park's father, Park Chung-hee, who seized power in a 1961 coup and remained in control using torture and martial law until 1979." - Would involve changing the law to allow the government to write textbooks  "Park Han-yong, a chief researcher at the Centre for Historical Truth and Justice, based in Seoul. "This is a history coup that supporters of pro-Japanese collaboration and the past dictatorship have been preparing for 10 years."   
• "Some of the privately-published textbooks now in use in South Korean schools delve into long-hidden aspects of the recent past: collaboration with Japanese colonialists, mass killings of civilians during the Korean War and the abuse of political dissidents under the dictators. Conservatives criticised what they called "masochistic historical views" in the books and accused the authors of inculcating youngsters with "left-leaning nationalism" that they said emphasised ethnic affinity with North Korea while casting an unfavourable eye on the US role in modern Korean history."   

1. Debate over how to represent particular episodes in South Korean past in school texts: Conservative (led by President Park Geun-hye) vs left-wing & current textbook (private) publishers - concerning how North Korea & military dictators who once ruled South Korea, relationship with Japan during WWII, civilian deaths during Korean War are being taught & represented - Park's father seized power in coup in 1961 so she has a vested interest in this

1. Barker (2015) - The Conversation - the use of Lego to entice a new audience into the Nicholson museum - yet is this so unusual? - Barker points out the use of dioramas & cork models has a lengthy history.

   Annotations:

   • "In recent times, there has been much debate on museum visitor engagement and reassessment of the concept that museums must be exclusively reserved for the “real” or the “genuine”. I argue that the idea of a museum of exclusively “genuine” material is a relatively recent invention."
2. Academic vs Amateur
   1. Ian Willis (2012) - The Conversation.

      Annotations:

      • "Local history is one of the most popular forms of history in Australia. Yet there is a yawning gap between the enthusiastic amateur and the academic historian. While some academic historians engage with local history, sadly there is an entrenched snobbery from the academy."
      1. Also - "Some historical societies are even able to bridge the gap. They provide a stimulating environment that interests academic historians."
3. History on film or TV: Widest possible audience or lowest common denominator?
   1. Alex von Tunzelmann's Reel History column in The Guardian
      1. E.g. Exodus review - 2015 - Using the Book of Exodus as a source? How can you be accurate? Yet the film does appear to diverge from the historic POSSIBILITIES - also the supernatural elements of the BOE: "Historians may raise their eyebrows but, as far as most film-makers are concerned, these are the good bits."
   2. Standards of accuracy - Tunzelmann (2015) - the case of Alan Turing
4. SWF (2016) - Anna Clark found that most ordinary Australians had never heard of 'History Wars' - this is an elite debate - Review by Deery (SMH, 2016) "The professional historian conducting archival research is detached from the keen amateur investigating a genealogical website. Equally, the practitioners and the devourers of popular history are remote from the academic scholar whose journal articles they would rarely read."
5. Video games - e.g. Assassin's Creed.

Annotations:

• BBC -  The University of New South Wales (UNSW) rejected claims on Wednesday it was "whitewashing" its curriculum. Its Indigenous Terminology guide urges students to use the term "invaded" rather than "settled" or "discovered", and to avoid the word "Aborigines".  Queensland state Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said she supported universities teaching "the truth".   

1. UNSW

1. Thucydides & the Ukraine - the 'Thucydides Trap' & human nature (esp during war & crisis)

   Annotations:

   • P. Jones (2014) - "As rebels, terrorists, fascists, foreign forces, activists, separatists, militants, militias, nationalist groups, Neo-Nazis, Right Sector forces — take your pick — spread civil war across the increasingly lawless cities of eastern Ukraine.... It was described with horror by the contemporary historian Thucydides, who imagined war as ‘a schoolmaster in brutality’, with both sides taking lessons from precedents already set to go to far greater extremes of destructiveness,"
   • Jones (2014)  - "Revenge was more important even than self-preservation, while pacts were made merely to overcome temporary difficulties. Neither justice nor the interests of the people prevented men doing anything to win power by any means, and those who relied on policy rather than brute force were easily destroyed. Conscience was ignored: more attention was given to the man who could justify outrages attractively. Those who remained neutral fell victims to both sides.  From the IRA to Syria and now Ukraine — as Thucydides concluded: ‘so it will always be, while human nature remains the same’.   
2. Is Exodus (2015) a piece of Zionist propaganda that deserves to be banned in Egypt?
3. SWF Mike Carlton (2015): Likes the idea of Coleridge: History as a lantern on a stern which shines a light on the waves behind it Use of history as a guide to the past – can’t know where we’re going if we don’t know where we’ve been.
4. Malcolm Turnbull & Thucydides by Classics Prof. Mackie (2015) - advising Chinese president Xi Jinping (in Turkey) and Premier Li Keqiang (in Malaysia) not to "fall into the Thucydides trap" - Mackie argues Thuc has much to teach us about present.

   Annotations:

   •    "The ancient motivation for war is relevant to the current situation of China and the United States, or so it is argued by American political scientist Graham T. Allison... You certainly won't find a simple answer to the scourge of terrorism in the pages of Thucydides. But what you do find are some brilliant analyses of social disintegration brought about by war or disease or socio-political strife (stasis). These have a timeless character about them, and they are just as relevant now as they ever were. When the people on the island of Corcyra (Corfu) turn on one another in the Peloponnesian war (in 427BC) it descends into unspeakable violence – Greek against Greek, oligarchs against democrats....Thucydides has much to offer us as we confront all sorts of crises of our own, especially after Paris. But one has to read him and think about what he has to say. Not many do, which is a great pity. Malcolm Turnbull is clearly one who has, and we can probably be thankful for that." -            

Annotations:

•    -        Review by Deery, 2016, SMH Just as there is an individual need, as Clark suggests, for historical connection, a need to be located within a longer and larger historical narrative, so there is a national need for an informed historical memory. But many nations, at different times, impose a selective amnesia. The past is insufficiently remembered, inadequately confronted and, therefore, partially reproduced. This act of forgetting produces a historical memory that is deficient and defective. Carr's unending dialogue between the present and the past is lacking   

1. The Museum of Aust. Democracy - #Dismissal 1975 - "Relive the events" via a Twitter feed or ANZAC Facebook profiles
2. Film/ TV
3. PODCAAAASTS!!! Some by amateurs/ limited history training (Rex Factor) & some more academic (In Our Time)
4. Archives being digitised (e.g, Trove) - easier access - does this open the door for more people to be historians? BUT not all material is digitised - e.g. story of female prisoners like Rebecca Sinclair at Long Bay/ SWF 2015 - Ian Hoskins would not have found invaluable account about Will Hargreaves shell collection in an archive

   Annotations:

   • Eleanor Limprecht on Cnnversations with Richard Fidler (3/8/2015)
   1. Is information secure now? - Ovendon (2016): “It’s by no means certain that the digital information created by our parliament today will still be secure and reliably accessible in 200 years.” - funding cuts, cyber criminals etc
5. Digital Revolution: “Digitisation is having a profound effect on the ways in which information is preserved, discovered, used and shared.” (Kiem, 2015) - history for a wider range of people and/or by a wider range of people - democratisation? Who are the gate-keepers? Do we need gate-keepers? (Ancestry.com?)
   1. Shared Authority? Wikipedia vs JSTOR?
6. Changing the way we read! - e.g. London Lives (2015) - links to sources
7. Is it meaningful, critical engagement? E.g. @HistoryinPics

1. SWF (2016) Distorted Histories: embracing wider perspectives? - Larissa Behrendt trying to include Indigenous perspective in the story of Eliza Fraser from 1836; Anna Clark trying to include the perspective of 'ordinary' Australians on Australian history in Private Lives, Public History
2. UNSW debates - March 2016 - Over the university using the word 'invasion' to describe the colonisation of Australia

   Annotations:

   • Stan Grant on the issue - should the university be forcing students to use the word 'invasion' - " Discovery and settlement and invasion: these words frame the debate about our history. A debate that should be based on fact and logic and respectful cogent persuasion and argument. I know what I believe. I am prepared to make my case but I don’t wish to force that on anyone else, in fact I welcome people who disagree and I absolutely reject any organisation, government, or institution instructing or guiding or forcing anyone how to think."   

Annotations:

• "The model provides a means of introducing students to issues of Roman daily life, architecture and the history of the excavations in a visual way, different from their classroom experience" - but it it that different to former use of cork models, dioramas etc? "The use of Lego in a museum context is a 21st-century continuity of this much older tradition of displaying interpretive models. Lego Pompeii and other models of this ilk are a fun and engaging tool for reaching audiences in an exciting new way."

1. Also "As a collector of stories, the amateur practises a form of antiquarianism often concerned with lists of facts... this provides no commentary on the past or present, no argument, and no analysis of sources and assessment of methods"

1. Robert Rosenstone & Hayden White

Annotations:

•    ·         Artist – Paul Cummins – London – ceramic poppies – 1 for each Brit soldier who died in WWI – 4 million people looking at artwork that conveyed some meaning to them about WWI