Desley Deacon

Managing gender : the state, the new middle class, and women workers 1830-1930

Deacon here examines the complex relationships between state, gender and class during a central period of Australias history. The book focuses on the emergence of a new middle class centrally concerned with the consolidation and extension of state bureaucratic power and professional privilege, and the ambivalent role played by the men of that class in establishing the twentieth-century managerial state and its prescriptive policies towards gender.

Exploring historical thinking and agency with undergraduate history students

Recent research on historical thinking has instigated important disciplinary conversations and changes in pedagogical practice. They have, however, largely focused on the primary and secondary school sector, highlighting the gap in corresponding research into tertiary education. It is important to look at the experiences of history students at tertiary level, to assess the impact of perceptions and practices on graduate employment outcomes and transitions to research careers. In 2008 a national scoping study on student and staff perceptions of the nature and purposes of historical thinking was undertaken at 12 Australian universities, involving 1455 student questionnaires and 50 interviews with academics. This article examines student and staff perceptions of the social benefits of historical thinking, highlighting the great potential for transformative learning and civic contribution, and the vital role of agency in this process.

Historical Thinking in Higher Education - Staff and Student Perceptions of the Nature of Historical Thinking

This article provides an introduction to the results of a nationwide scoping study of student and staff perceptions of the nature and roles of historical thinking. In 2008–09, over 1400 students and 50 staff from 12 universities around Australia completed interviews and questionnaires. This research report examines student and staff responses to the second questionnaire item, asking for an assessment of the connection between particular activities and historical thinking. The national data reflected a surprisingly consistent pattern of responses and highlighted at least three things which should be of interest and concern to academics: first, students far more than their teachers associated the handling of secondary sources with historical thinking; second, students drew few connections between online work and historical thinking; and third, there were few discernible differences in the responses of introductory and upper-level students. These findings underscore the need for sector-wide work on promoting primary materials work with students, for developing the opportunities provided by computer-assisted learning and articulating and communicating to students the standards of achievement valued by the profession as marking the development of historical thinking at tertiary level.

Location! Location! Location! Mind Maps and Theatrical Circuits in Australian Transnational History: Presidential Address, July 2008

Desley Deacon is the retiring president of the Australian Historical Association. This address was given to the July 2008 conference of the Association, at the University of Melbourne.

National Elite Networks in the United States and Australia

action among the influential. Writing about Australia, for example, Playford (1972) argues that the propertied and privileged social origins of business, political and public service leaders, the close ties between business leaders and the Liberal Party, the ’increasing closeness’ of the top public servants to ’the world of business’, and the conservative bias of the armed forces, the police and the judiciary all point to the existence of a ruling class. Similarly, the power elite model rests, according to Mills (1956: 292), on ’the corresponding developments and the coincidence of interests among economic, political, and military organisations. It also rests upon the similarity of origins and outlook, and the social and personal intermingling of the top circles’. After a score of years, the empirical accuracy of Mills’ model continues to be a focus of American research

Furphies and Whizz-Bangs: Anzac Slang from the Great War, by Amanda Laugesen

mid-nineteenth century, this was an emphasis on ensuring that the white male worker and his dependent family were protected from the risk of poverty, a view that endured into the twentieth century and the establishment of social security provisions. What comes through most powerfully in Philanthropy and Settler Colonialism is the way in which philanthropy can never be a neutral activity. Where O’Brien has a significant contribution to make to the understanding of Australian nationhood is in unpicking the assumptions that underlie what it means to be a citizen, and how society should operate in order that citizens flourish—not tomention thosewho are excluded from so-called full citizenship. Philanthropy and Settler Colonialism proceeds in a linear fashion, its chapters dealing in turn with specific periods in Australian history, but in each O’Brien covers a considerable range of philanthropic activity in that time span. This enables O’Brien to tease out the ways in which the different actors—from women looking for a public role to self-help groups to Aboriginal activists—interacted with each other, promoting some voices to the exclusion of others, and the cultural contexts behind this. This could easily have been a book about, for example, the development of maternalist philanthropy in Australia, drawing out a line of women pioneers who carved out a role for themselves in protecting the poor and the needy. By not taking this approach, O’Brien is able to expose the dynamics of these interactions, and the tensions in what philanthropy meant. Rich as this is, I am left wondering who many of the funders of this philanthropic work were, how they made their money, why they donated and the degree to which this in turn impacted on the philanthropic sphere over time—this may be something that O’Brien addresses in future work. In this way, Philanthropy and Settler Colonialism makes an important contribution to the emerging field of philanthropy studies, be that historical or looking at the contemporary field, in an Australian context or beyond. What emerges in this study is the point that philanthropy is not a universal part of the human condition, but something that is socially constructed and historically contingent. O’Brien addresses this at various points, but most powerfully when discussing Aboriginal understandings of gift exchange and reciprocity in comparison to white conceptions of doling out charity. As with all historians of philanthropy, O’Brien is hampered by the paucity of sources that throw light onto the recipient’s experience, but nonetheless she has produced a rich, nuanced and rewarding analysis of a number of different factors in the development of welfare and philanthropy in Australia over the centuries. This book will make an important contribution to Australian history, but I would hope that it will also find a readership amongst those working on philanthropy in other contexts for its critical grit and its example of the potential of a longrange approach to the topic.

'Every-bit-as-good-as-gay': Restyling heterosexuality in 1940s New York

The relationship of novelist Mary McCarthy and her third husband, Bowden Broadwater, is an example of the rise and fall of a particular kind of heterosexuality in 1940s and 1950s urban America: the ‘nongay, every-bit-as-good-as-gay’ male partner. This article describes the course of this marriage and links its unusual aspects to a resistant culture that developed at Harvard during the 1940s, inspired by the life and work of the British novelist Ronald Firbank. It traces the marriage’s failure to the developing hostility, during the 1950s, to the experimental new relationships that were part of that culture. This article has been peer-reviewed.

Celebrity Sexuality: Judith Anderson, Mrs Danvers, Sexuality and ‘Truthfulness’ in Biography

Abstract Australian-born actress Judith Andersons portrayal of the housekeeper Mrs Danvers in Hitchcocks 1940 film Rebecca has made her the poster girl for scholarly analyses of lesbian sexuality on film; and the plethora of books in the last few years about gays in Hollywood—scholarly and sensational—assume that Anderson was a lesbian. Yet evidence about her sexuality is highly ambiguous. This article uses Andersons case to examine the biographers problem in dealing accurately and meaningfully with their subjects sexuality, especially that of celebrities.

Imperial Melodies: Globalizing the Lives of Cliff Richard and Engelbert Humperdinck

In 1995, a 55-year-old popular music sensation received a knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II for his services to charitable institutions, securing his role as a much-loved national treasure in the British imagination.1 That he should receive the ultimate recognition of service to the country was hardly surprising: he had been a household name since the 1950s, producing an impressive string of hit singles and exhibiting both a style and an attraction that seem to defy both generational change and the whims of fashion. This self-proclaimed religious philanthropist is also one of the most successful musical performers in British history. His single sales have been phenomenal with 33 of them selling over a million copies, and a national survey in 2004 found that he had sold nearly 21 million records in his career, eclipsing The Beatles who come second, and Elvis Presley who is in third place.2 As Sir Cliff Richard posed for photographs outside Buckingham Palace after the event with his three sisters, Donna, Joan and Jacqui, his journey to a distinguished place in the British establishment seemed complete.

Reply to Hopkins1

cess, however, he provides a one-sided, sometimes incorrect rendition of our theory, methods and interpretations. And unfortunately, his allegations of ideological bias say less about our book than about the persistence of quasi-utopian views and assumptions in political sociology. Hopkins’ main concern is whether elite studies such as ours can be justified conceptually and empirically. In his words, ’It is the question of whether elite persons have power to influence national policies which is at issue here’. As we read him, he argues (I ) that our sample of elite persons is inadequate because of questionable exclusions and inclusions and because it rests on the ’unsupported’ assumption that top position-holders exercise significant amounts of independent power; (2) that ’many of the elite’ actually perceive themselves to be powerless; and (3) that our own theory admits that the power of elites is ’severely limited’ by the orientations and pressures of non-elites. In fact, Hopkins continues, the background and attitudinal data