Publications

Speakers
Prof Ann McGrath
Prof Jaky Troy
Dr Laura Rademaker

This symposium asks what are the various ways of conceiving and knowing the past – beyond the linear, diachronic, documentary past of Western or academic history of today – and how might these inform the practice of researching the ‘deep’ human past? Further, how might the past be understood in relationship to the present, and what might this mean for the study of history?

Further information: https://history.cass.anu.edu.au/sites/default/files/docs/2018/10/Laureate_Symp_Sept_18.pdf

Date and time
Fri 10 Aug 2018, 9AM–5PM

Location
UWA Institute of Advanced Studies

This Deep Time workshop will attempt to grapple with some of the methodological and theoretical issues that beset a deep time history of Australia. Such a project would require a realignment of the chronology of Australia’s national narratives. This workshop will discuss some of the game changing evidence that could potentially inform a deep time history of Australia. It will consider a range of potential research and narrative approaches in order to examine the challenges, possibilities and impossibilities of translating Indigenous and scientific evidence into historical narratives. After all, any such deep time histories could reconfigure both Australian and global history.

Archaeologists, rock art specialists, geological, climatic, genomic and other scientists are uncovering substantial evidence about Australia’s ancient past. Indigenous knowledge custodians often attest that these western knowledge ‘discoveries’ only confirm what they already knew through their own modes of knowledge transmission. Australia’s national history knowledge gap remains.

Despite a general acceptance that Indigenous Australian civilization stretches back 60,000 years, young Australians say they are not taught much about Australia’s long human history.

Via collaborative approaches to deep time narratives, will it be possible to displace the imaginative hold of European navigators and ‘discoverers’, whose accounts are told in writing and text, with narratives of Australia’s deep human past? Without the written evidence that has underpinned western historical traditions, is it possible or even advisable to conceive of and present such a long stretch of time as ‘history’? This event will be held during Kathleen Fitzpatrick ARC Laureate Fellow and Distinguished Professor Ann McGrath’s visit to UWA. During her visit she will also deliver the 2018 Tom Stannage Memorial Lecture.

Deep Time poster.

Speakers
Professor Ann McGrath, ANU
Dr Alice Gorman, Flinders University
Aileen Walsh, ANU
Dr Ben Silverstein, ANU
Dr Martin Porr, UWA
Dr Sven Ouzman, UWA
Professor Stephen Hopper, UWA
Alison Lullfitz, UWA
Dr Shino Konishi, UWA
Dr Glen Stasiuk, Murdoch University
Professor Len Collard, UWA

Date and time
Thu 09 Aug 2018, 10 AM–1 PM

Location
Institute of Advanced Studies, UWA

Speaker
Professor Ann McGrath

Must ‘History’ commence with a clear date? This interdisciplinary masterclass will explore why dates matter – or don’t. We will consider the processes of periodization that take place in researching and writing histories. What is the power, if not the sovereignty of periodization? What is the difference between dating, chronologies and periodization, and how can such techniques be applied to the deep human past?

The study of Australian history is still dominated by studies that commence with the dates of European landings – such as 1616, 1770, 1788 and 1826. This reinforces the notion that ‘history’ begins with written records and European arrivals. Yet the idea of a people without history or that history only started with written text is surely impossible to sustain.

An expanding field of archaeology has focussed upon gaining the most reliable dates for evidence relating to the deep human past. Periodization, timelines, dates and chronologies are key tools which are generally understood as essential to the practice of scholarly history. But why are dates necessary, and what kind of ‘history’ work do they do? How do they become meaningful in rituals of nation, in the assertion of sovereignty, in denoting identity and political power?

Drawing upon the co-edited collection (with Mary-Anne Jebb) Long History, Deep Time and the film Message from Mungo, we will explore contrasting approaches to the temporality of the deep human past. Historian Daniel Smail, among others, has called for an end to the use of the term ‘prehistory’ (2005) and for an expanded historical discipline that goes beyond ‘sacred history’ to explore the full expanse of the human past. Others argue for transtemporal approaches. However, indigenous knowledge custodians, interpreters and narrators have raised the greatest challenges, having long questioned standardized notions of temporality. What kinds of methodologies might enable disciplinary growth beyond conventional and prescriptive temporal boundaries?

Further information.

Date and time
Wed 08 Aug 2018, 6–7 PM

Location
Fox Lecture Theatre, UWA Arts Building

Speaker
Professor Ann McGrath

‘The 2018 Tom Stannage Memorial Lecture by Ann McGrath AM, the Kathleen Fitzpatrick ARC Laureate Fellow and Distinguished Professor, School of History, Australian National University.

1901, 1790, 1968. A federation re-enactment of Captain Cook’s Landing at Botany Bay, the arrival of the second convict fleet, the surfacing of Mungo Lady. Each dated event takes place on a continent of multiple Aboriginal nations on which the earth itself is associated with narratives of antiquity. Human societies create their own mythos – trans-temporal scenarios that communicate between past and present, and across time and place.

The Gweagal and Darug people’s uses of white clay attracted the attention of James Cook, Joseph Banks and Governor Phillip. In 1788, Phillip sent samples of Sydney clay to Banks, who sent them on to Josiah Wedgwood, who then manufactured a series of medallions depicting Hope, a Virtue from the Greek Pandora legend. To celebrate this, Erasmus Darwin published a poem that foretold a grandiose future for Sydney. Yet, the colony’s first colonial souvenirs and publications were transported alongside the convict cargo known as the death fleet.

In this memorial lecture, Professor McGrath will focus upon the story of how ‘Terra Australis’ or ‘Sydneia’ – Linnaean classifications for Sydney’s ‘primitive earth’ – became an agent in the importation of Anglo-Hellenic antiquity. What might such clay stories, replete with alluring female figures, reveal about plans to transform a strange earth? How could a fantastically storied antiquity, with it super-corporeal characters, co-exist with the Enlightenment’s fascination with science? Do Indigenous songlines provides clues? And how
might such questions relate to the more recent articulations of deep human pasts associated with ancient places like Lake Mungo and the many sites currently being researched in Western Australia?’

• From the University of Western Australia Flyer, attached.

Date and time
Mon 02 Jul 2018, 11 AM – Fri 06 Jul 2018, 12 PM

Location
Copland Theatre, The Australian National University

In 2018 the Australian Historical Association annual conference will be hosted by the School of History at the Australian National University. We are excited by the opportunity and look forward to welcoming you all to Canberra!

Please explore this website for information about the conference theme, keynote speakers, registration, accommodation, and more.

This conference has received financial support from the ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences, for which we are grateful.

Make new friends, catch up with old friends, cheer prize winners, get acquainted with the latest research and emerging scholarship – it will be five lively days of intellectual stimulation and collegiality!

Further information about the sessions.

Date and time
Thu 14 Jun 2018, 5.15 PM

Location
Northern Territory Archives Centre

Speaker
Dr Laura Rademaker

How did language and the possible confusions of translation shape interactions between missionaries and Aboriginal people? This talk traces the story of Angurugu mission, focusing on its establishment by the Church Missionary Society in 1943 and missionary attempts to engage Aboriginal people through language. This includes themes of English literacy, bilingual education and Bible translation.

Language, and the ambiguities of translation in a cross-cultural situation presented Anindilyakwa people with opportunities to avoid or reinterpret missionary messages, as well as to cooperate in creative ways. Dr Laura Rademaker has been researching Northern Territory history for almost ten years. She is the author of Found in Translation: Many Meanings on a North Australian Mission. She is currently working on a history of the Tiwi Islands mission as well as a history of Australia’s ‘deep’ human past.

NTAC Flyer.