Michael Sturma

Eye of the Beholder: The stereotype of women convicts, 1788-1852

Between 1788 and 1852 over twenty-four thousand women were transported to Australia. They made up about one-sixth of Australias convict population. New South Wales received most of the early convicts and, when transportation to that colony ended in 1840, the flow of offenders was diverted to Van Diemens Land...

Public Health and Sexual Morality: Venereal Disease in World War II Australia

Australians during the Second World War were not only preoccupied with events overseas; they also experienced a period of intense domestic crisis at both the national and family level...

Aliens and Indians: A Comparison of Abduction and Captivity Narratives

Stories of captivity among North American Indians dating from the 17th century in many ways parallel the more recent narratives of alien abduction. Telling a story inevitably involves elements of selection, and in both Indian captivity narratives and alien abduction narratives the elements included are often analogous. They share a number of common structures, conventions, themes, and images. I will begin by outlining the origin and some of the salient features of Indian captivity and the alien abduction phenomenon. Next, some explicit compar- isons will be drawn between the narratives of Indian captivity and alien abduction. Finally, some interpretations of these similarities are suggested.

JFK in the Classroom

Feature films have long been part of the curriculum for history courses at some high schools and universities. Researchers have generally assumed that movies help stimulate and motivate student learning (e.g., Considine 1989, 230 and 233; Rebhorn 1988, 1; Romiszowski 1974, 194), but because of their visual and emotive power, films also have potential to distort learning. In this article, we focus on the way one feature film, Oliver Stone’s JFK (1991), was incorporated into a twentieth-century American history course and examine the film’s effect on students’ learning and critical thinking. Our comments on this film result from a larger research study on student learning that involved forty-six students who were enrolled in a one-semester course at Murdoch University and who agreed to participate in questionnaires and interviews.

Mimicry, Mockery and Make-overs: Western Visitors in South Pacific Dress

The social meanings attached to dress are always potentially ambiguous, but especially so in cross-cultural encounters. This inquiry focuses on Westerners adopting indigenous dress in the South Pacific, employing three historical case studies. The first examines the role of clothing in relations between Tahitians and the mutineers from the HMS Bounty. The second shows how dress mediated the expectations of U.S. soldiers sent to the Pacific theatre during World War II. Finally, the documentary film Cannibal Tours (1987) is discussed in relation to dress and modern tourism. As these cases illustrate, the motives for Westerners adopting local fashion may range from mimicry to mockery.

Death and ritual on the gallows: Public executions in the Australian penal colonies

Of all public rituals in the nineteenth century, hanging was intended to be the most dramatic and didactic. The Australian penal colonies of New South Wales and Tasmania, as receptacles for transported British convicts during the first half of the nineteenth century, provide a rich context for examining public executions. This article explores the interplay between state, church, and judicial system in managing the death ceremony and reinforcing authority. The reactions of victims and witnesses to public executions is also explored, drawing on modern studies of death and the terminally ill. Of central concern is the role of ritual in interpreting and coping with death in the extraordinary circumstances of public hanging.

Myall Creek and the psychology of mass murder

The Myall Creek massacre of 1838 is one of the most emotive symbols of European-Aboriginal relations in Australian colonial history. It symbolizes the conflict of the actions of those on the frontier with the ideals espoused by humanitarians and colonial authority. The massacre also raises issues which are not so much symbolic as symptomatic of racial attitudes and indeed human violence. Historians, it seems to me, have adequately explained the nature of racist attitudes, but are still struggling with precisely why and how a mass murder took place. How did the Myall Creek murders come to be capable of committing inhuman acts?

Convoy HI-72: US Submarines versus Japanese Escorts in the Pacific War

The Japanese convoy HI-72, attacked by a wolf pack of American submarines after it departed Singapore in September 1944, has gained some notoriety because two of the ships sunk carried Allied prisoners of war. Beyond this, however, the convoy’s fate highlights some of the factors which made US submarines so effective while disclosing the shortcomings of Japanese escorts. An examination of the extant battle reports by the convoy ships reveals that the Japanese were aware of many of the factors which contributed to their shipping losses, but also unaware of how heavily the odds were stacked against them at this stage of the war.

The Limits of Hate: Japanese prisoners on US submarines during the Second World War

The Pacific War is frequently characterized as a ‘race war’ and a ‘war without mercy’. The experience of Japanese prisoners on American submarines, however, suggests that hatred could often quickly be overcome once combatants spent time in close proximity. The confined space of submarines made a degree of interaction between prisoners and captors unavoidable. Through a series of case studies, the evidence suggests that submariners sometimes contravened the Geneva Convention in extracting work and obtaining information from prisoners. On the other hand, it appears that relations between prisoners and captors were for the most part amicable and at times mutually supportive. Although these relationships were manifestly unequal, occasionally prisoners exercised a degree of influence over submariners’ fates.

US Fleet Submarines in the Atlantic during the Second World War: A Case Study of Relative Failure:

The contribution of US submarines to the Battle of the Atlantic during the Second World War has been almost entirely neglected by historians. Admittedly that contribution was relatively small, as reaffirmed by this study of eight modern American fleet submarines assigned to Operation Torch and subsequent patrols from Britain to the Bay of Biscay and the Atlantic. Faced with stringent rules of engagement and mechanical problems, along with limited refit and recreational facilities, the American submariners found assignment in the Atlantic frustrating. Arguably the experience honed their skills for later war patrols in the Pacific, but even this is open to question.