Michelle Arrow

'It has become my personal anthem' : 'I am woman', popular culture and 1970s feminism

Well! You would have thought I had suggested we look for the lost city and relocate. You can’t do that I was told. Women don’t do those sorts of things. It isn’t lady-like to drive a truck, and on and on they went. Then one morning (in a deep depression) not knowing where I would get the money to pay the mortgage payment I was listening to the radio and lo and behold ‘I Am Woman’ came out of the little black box in the kitchen. I found that [. . .] all the obstacles put in my way were of little consequence when one put one’s mind to what one wanted. Needless to say I did get my truck licence. [. . .] I have never forgotten that song and it was one of the first songs I downloaded onto my computer [. . .] and I play it at least once a day. I suppose you could say it has become my personal anthem and now that I am going through a very rough spot I listen to I AM WOMAN and know that I can ROAR and just sometimes someone will listen. (Emma 2006)

‘Everything Stopped for Blue Hills’: Radio, Memory and Australian Women's Domestic Lives, 1944–2001*

I’m glad that the Column 8 request only asked for memories of listening to The Lawsons and Blue Hills , because I remember listening, but not the slightest words of the text*/except the ‘goodbye’ [. . .] and I may have only heard that on replays [. . .]. But the snippet I wanted to mention if it is of any assistance is the memories that stumbling across the Column 8 item evoked. [. . .] I immediately felt hot feet and the smell of fresh bread, because these were the surroundings in which I used to hear the episodes. The episodes played during the school lunch hours when I nipped home from Primary School for lunch. Primary boys at least did not wear shoes in the late forties, early fifties, we could walk and run on gravel and even broken glass, but ‘hot footing’ it over tar was the real mode of travel in the hot mid days of summer. Out of the heat and into the house for Lunch prepared by a busy mother who had prepared for this midday break, and who was torn between the opportunity to communicate with the child and the wish to relax with the episode.

'Everyone needs a holiday from work, why not mothers?' : motherhood, feminism and citizenship at the Australian Royal Commission on Human Relationships, 1974–1977

The Royal Commission on Human Relationships was an initiative of the Whitlam government, instigated in 1974 to investigate ‘the family, social, educational, legal and sexual aspects of male and female relationships’, with particular attention to the concept of ‘responsible parenthood’. The Commission heard evidence from thousands of Australians on a broad range of topics, and given the Royal Commissions origins in the 1973 Federal Parliamentary debate over abortion, it is perhaps unsurprising that motherhood featured so prominently in submissions presented to the Commission. In this article it is argued that mothers’ submissions to the Royal Commission on Human Relationships reveal the ways that social and cultural meanings of motherhood were being contested in 1970s Australia. Rather than making claims for rights in the established language of maternal citizenship, many women deployed their private experiences of mothering to argue that the state should facilitate their access to both paid employment and time away from mothering. These mothers argued for equal citizenship rights, challenging the reproductive compact that had long been central to maternal citizenship. The submissions reveal the ways that mothers (and their critics) drew upon both new and old meanings of motherhood to articulate new cultural and political possibilities for motherhood and citizenship in 1970s Australia.

‘I Just Feel It’s Important to Know Exactly What he Went Through’: In Their Footsteps and The Role of Emotions in Australian Television History

In Their Footsteps (2011) was an Australian television history program in which individuals retraced the ‘footsteps’ of ancestors who had served in war. Like the British genealogical quest program Who Do You Think You Are? In Their Footsteps was premised on the idea that we can understand the past in experiential and emotional terms. It stressed the connections between present-day individuals and a larger national history through their ancestor’s participation in Australian military engagements. Australia’s interpretation of its national past has recently been the subject of heated, politicized debate, and this program appeared at a time when Australian historians were expressing concern at a resurgence in nationalist military commemoration. Some historians regarded this affective attachment to Australia’s military past with suspicion, arguing that these attachments were produced by a jingoistic political culture. Television histories, which operate in an affective register, are usually neglected in these debates. This article argues that understanding television history is essential to grasping what military history means to contemporary Australians. A close analysis of In Their Footsteps demonstrates the ways that the deeply affective mode of television history offers a complex and nuanced form of historical understanding. Such analysis can help us better understand the contemporary appeal of military history.

'Television program yes, history, no': Australian history according to Rewind

After working (mostly) as an academic historian for six years, in 2004 I became a historian-presenter on the recently axed ABC TV program Rewind, which presented historical stories in a magazine-style format. The program was created and received in the midst of a boom in history on television, but also at a time when history is being scrutinised and raked over in the public sphere as never before. In this paper I would like to consider the Rewind experience in both of these contexts — is it possible to make history television that satisfies the demands of both television and history? What sort of Australian history did we present on Rewind, and, in the wake of the History Wars and the re-election of the Howard government, what sort of history might we see on our television screens in future?

‘Studying Modern History gives me the chance to say what I think’: learning and teaching history in the age of student-centred learning

Abstract This article critically interrogates university history students’ ‘learning narratives’ in relation to the rise of ideas about student-centred learning in Australian universities. Drawing on interviews with third-year students, it suggests that we need to more carefully consider how students make choices about their educational activities and the ways in which some transformations in student culture may inadvertently sustain the possibility for students to ‘opt out’ of key learning activities. In short, this article calls for scholar-teachers to historicise our student cohorts carefully and use this understanding to disrupt some of the instrumentalising tendencies of late modern university life. This article has been peer reviewed.

Invisible Histories? History Features on Australian Radio

While there is a growing literature on the ways that film and television represent the past, there is remarkably little work on the ways that radio features present history. Such an absence is particularly startling in Australia, given the longevity of history features programmes like Hindsight (1996–2014) on ABC Radio National. This article suggests that radio should have a more prominent place in the expanding field of public and media histories. It argues that radios aurality, creativity, and relatively autonomous production modes offer rich possibilities to historians wishing to communicate their work to a broader audience. The article charts the emergence and development of history features programming on Australian radio since the late 1970s, and examines the ways that producers have deployed radios distinctive qualities to present history (especially oral history) in engaging, creative ways.

The Making History initiative and Australian popular history

In 2004, the Australian Liberal–National Party Coalition Government promised that, if re-elected, they would commission Film Australia to produce ten documentaries on Australias history. The fruit of this promise was the Making History initiative, and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation broadcast the resulting ten documentaries during 2007–9. The Making History initiative represented a significant funding boost to the documentary sector, and to history television in particular. The films were distinctive in their presentation of a largely masculine narrative of public achievement as Australias past. Yet they were also noteworthy for their reliance on dramatization: like much of history on television, the Making History films offered audiences the possibility of ‘knowing’ the past through emotions, empathy and images, rather than through the expertise of the historian. This paper explores the genesis and development of the Making History initiative in its industrial, televisual and political contexts. It argues that, in order to understand why interpretation of the past has become so contested in contemporary Australia, one needs to pay close attention to the ways in which popular histories communicate and understand the past. Dramatization has the potential to offer an emotional connection to history, and while this might make historians uneasy, its centrality to the popularity of television histories requires close analysis.

Broadcasting the past: Australian television histories

Many historians have been critical of the ways that television presents history, arguing that television histories are superficial, populist and lack complexity. They often criticise documentaries for their poor standards of evidence and accuracy or for their willingness to reinforce, rather than challenge, well-worn historical narratives. Television histories seek to engage audiences on emotional terms, to evoke empathy and to communicate in visual, rather than densely textual ways. Crucially, they also speak to a far broader audience than academic histories: for this reason alone, historians have a vital interest in understanding how television constructs and communicates history. Many of the criticisms made of television histories are based on misrecognition of their role and purpose: television histories and written histories are dramatically different forms of historical narrative, produced for different audiences and constructed in different ways. In this article, I will examine the current state of Australian history on television. What are the distinctive features of popular television histories? How does television communicate history? And finally, how might we take television histories seriously as objects of research? The article argues that we need to go beyond simply critiquing television histories for their failure to do what academic histories do and instead engage with them in ways that takes into account their distinctive modes of production and consumption. This article has been peer-reviewed.

Introduction—How the Personal Became Political: The Gender and Sexuality Revolutions in 1970s Australia

ABSTRACT How the Personal became Political presents new research on the events, policy changes and watershed developments in gender and sexuality in Australia in the 1970s. This Special Issue addresses the current political and theoretical significance of the 1970s revolutions, and key questions about the nature of sweeping change. How and why did matters previously considered private and personal, become public and political? What were the key policy shifts? How were protests in the streets connected to legislative reforms? Who were the critical players and what were the dramatic moments? How was resistance to change manifested, and what fears were articulated? How did Australia fit into the broader transnational movements for change? What have been the legacies and what can feminists and gay and lesbian activists today learn from them? Scholars from several disciplines offer fresh insight into this wave of social revolution, and its continuing relevance.