Historians to discuss Australian 'legends' and laws

September 18, 2007

About 240 historians and lawyers from throughout Australia will gather at the University of New England at the end of this week for three interconnected conferences that will explore a wide range of themes: from colonial, political and legal history to ancient history, oral history, and mining history.

One strand of the Regional Conference of the Australian Historical Association (AHA), to run from the 23rd to the 26th of September, will be dedicated to reflections on the life and work of the famous historian Russel Ward, who taught at UNE from 1957 and served as Head of the University's Department of History from 1967 to 1974. The conference will mark the 50th anniversary of the publication of Ward's landmark book The Australian Legend, which was published in 1958. Papers in this strand will include studies of the place of shearers, stockmen, gold miners, and Aboriginal bush workers in the "legend" that has helped to form Australia's national identity.

Speakers in the "Australian Legends" strand will include some of Australia's most respected historians, including UNE's Professor Alan Atkinson, and Professor Joy Damousi from the University of Melbourne. The organising committee for the conference is based in UNE's School of Humanities.

UNE's annual Russel Ward Lecture, to be delivered this year by Professor Gillian Cowlishaw from the University of Technology, Sydney, will form part of the conference. Professor Cowlishaw, in this public lecture at 8 pm on Monday 24 September, will explain how anthropology can challenge what she calls "the political complacency that arises from displacing responsibility for the present onto our ancestors".

Another strand of the AHA conference – "Frontiers of History" – will explore topics from "Aboriginal education history and the British Empire" to "The Seamen's Union and the Moscow Olympics boycott".

Running in conjunction with the AHA conference will be the 13th annual conference of the Australian Mining History Association. The 20 papers in this conference will cover subjects from "The legend of Lasseter's Reef – fact or fiction?" to "South Australia's new mining boom".

Immediately before the AHA and Mining History conferences will be the 26th Annual Australian and New Zealand Law and History Society Conference (21-23 September). Scholars in the field of legal history will travel to Armidale from every Australian State, as well as from New Zealand and the UK, to share their historical insights into the way the law has helped to shape society.

Michael Lobban, Professor of Legal History at Queen Mary College, University of London, will deliver the Keynote Address at the conference, which is being hosted by UNE's School of Law. Professor Lobban will discuss differences between "the politics of the law courts" and "parliamentary party politics" in the nineteenth century. The 38 papers in this conference will tackle subjects as varied as "Citizenship tests" and "The birth of the Diocese of Grafton and Armidale".

For more information on all three conferences, go to:
www.une.edu.au/campus/confco/aha2007/

Posted by Jim Scanlan at September 18, 2007 10:33 AM