GENDER IDEOLOGY, RACIAL MYTHOLOGY AND THE CULTURAL POLITICS OF CHILD REMOVAL IN COLONIAL BURMA, CAMBODIA AND WESTERN AUSTRALIA, 1886-1947. The project aims to further understanding of colonial policies, missionary practices and public discourses supporting the removal of mixed-race children from Indigenous mothers and milieu. Its significance lies in its comparison of three diverse colonial regimes: British Burma, French Cambodia and Western Australia. Equally significant is its analysis of t ....GENDER IDEOLOGY, RACIAL MYTHOLOGY AND THE CULTURAL POLITICS OF CHILD REMOVAL IN COLONIAL BURMA, CAMBODIA AND WESTERN AUSTRALIA, 1886-1947. The project aims to further understanding of colonial policies, missionary practices and public discourses supporting the removal of mixed-race children from Indigenous mothers and milieu. Its significance lies in its comparison of three diverse colonial regimes: British Burma, French Cambodia and Western Australia. Equally significant is its analysis of the transcolonial traffic in ideologies of race and gender and the contingent development and deployment of such universalizing tropes as the "Half-Caste Woman" to rationalize policies of child removal. The final outcome will be a book. Interim outcomes include a graduate workshop, an international conference and journal articles.Read moreRead less
Elephants in the sacred grove: a transcultural history of Thomas Jones and the Calvinistic Methodist mission to the Khasi Hills. This project will assert the central role of religion in shaping cultural, political and ethnic identity, through an analysis of the Christian evangelical encounter in the Khasi-Jaintia Hills, India, and in particular the work of the Welsh Calvinistic Methodist missionary Thomas Jones (1810-1849). It will challenge current views of the simplistic relationship between m ....Elephants in the sacred grove: a transcultural history of Thomas Jones and the Calvinistic Methodist mission to the Khasi Hills. This project will assert the central role of religion in shaping cultural, political and ethnic identity, through an analysis of the Christian evangelical encounter in the Khasi-Jaintia Hills, India, and in particular the work of the Welsh Calvinistic Methodist missionary Thomas Jones (1810-1849). It will challenge current views of the simplistic relationship between missions and colonial order, exploring missionaries' spiritual, modernising and imperialist ideologies, as well as indigenous negotiations and adaptations of the missionary project. This will provide a significant new base for understanding the historical trajectory of Christianisation and acculturation, and inform contemporary debates about reconciliation and decolonisation.Read moreRead less
Indonesian labour migration to north Australia, 1880-1972. This study of mobility between Indonesia and Australia provides a historical context for understanding Australia's relations with Indonesia and the complex history of our shared maritime border. Exploration of Indonesian immigration experiences will add to current political debate over temporary labour migration. This project demonstrates the importance of cross-border research as a means of enriching Australian history and enhancing our ....Indonesian labour migration to north Australia, 1880-1972. This study of mobility between Indonesia and Australia provides a historical context for understanding Australia's relations with Indonesia and the complex history of our shared maritime border. Exploration of Indonesian immigration experiences will add to current political debate over temporary labour migration. This project demonstrates the importance of cross-border research as a means of enriching Australian history and enhancing our cultural capital in relation to our northern neighbours. This detailed study of our multi-ethnic northern communities from which came the first Indonesian-Australian citizens makes a significant contribution to our knowledge of Australia's Asian diaspora.Read moreRead less
Discovery Indigenous Researchers Development - Grant ID: DI0882245
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$170,648.00
Summary
Reconciliation game: Australian Football in the new South Africa. An understanding of the role sport has played in shaping settler/native relationships will enable Australia to support the development of enduring and meaning football contacts with post-Apartheid South Africa. These will be built on appraisals that admit a similar colonial inheritance to sport in South Africa. Recent embrace of Indigenous Australian participation in Australian Football indicates the possibility of reconciliation ....Reconciliation game: Australian Football in the new South Africa. An understanding of the role sport has played in shaping settler/native relationships will enable Australia to support the development of enduring and meaning football contacts with post-Apartheid South Africa. These will be built on appraisals that admit a similar colonial inheritance to sport in South Africa. Recent embrace of Indigenous Australian participation in Australian Football indicates the possibility of reconciliation and the potential for positive sporting interchange with post-Apartheid South Africa. This study examines how reconciliations through Australia - South Africa sporting dialogue can not only be promoted but realised in terms of developing sustained and socially meaningful engagements. Read moreRead less
Inhumanities: Asylum seeker letters and the precarious 'human' rights of contemporary life narrative. Letters exchanged between asylum seekers and activists between 2001-05 are a powerful repository of cross cultural exchange and political activism in Australia this century, and they offer unique insights into debates about citizenship and national identity in the very recent past. When read as a distinctive genre of life narrative, these letters and the epistolary communities which they engende ....Inhumanities: Asylum seeker letters and the precarious 'human' rights of contemporary life narrative. Letters exchanged between asylum seekers and activists between 2001-05 are a powerful repository of cross cultural exchange and political activism in Australia this century, and they offer unique insights into debates about citizenship and national identity in the very recent past. When read as a distinctive genre of life narrative, these letters and the epistolary communities which they engender are important new resources in current scholarship on human rights and testimony. This project will make a vital and distinctive Australian contribution to debates about representations of the human and the inhuman in contemporary literature.Read moreRead less
Aboriginal Femininity and Modern Identity: Gender and Race in the Late Colonial Visual Scene. The project is the first sustained cultural history of Aboriginal femininity in Australian from 1870-1967. It will draw on diverse forms of modern visual culture: painting, black and white drawing, mass commodity spectacle, film and photography, to investigate six modes of production of Aboriginal feminine visibility: the 'primitive' woman in Western exhibiting practices such as colonial museums: the pe ....Aboriginal Femininity and Modern Identity: Gender and Race in the Late Colonial Visual Scene. The project is the first sustained cultural history of Aboriginal femininity in Australian from 1870-1967. It will draw on diverse forms of modern visual culture: painting, black and white drawing, mass commodity spectacle, film and photography, to investigate six modes of production of Aboriginal feminine visibility: the 'primitive' woman in Western exhibiting practices such as colonial museums: the perceived failure of 'Mission Mary' to appear modern; the relation of Aboriginal femininity to imported forms of exoticism; the fetishism of Indigenous women; girl piccaninny kitsch in domestic and tourist ornaments; and the entrance of public Aboriginal women and celebrities into modernity.
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Picturing change: 21st Century perspectives on recent Australian rock art, especially that from the European contact period. Australia, long known for its prehistoric rock art of world heritage value, will now also be known for its unique and diverse body of contact rock art. This project will benefit tourism in remote regions, many of which are or are near World Heritage Areas (eg. Kakadu, Uluru, Blue Mountains). Contemporary indigenous knowledge about important cross-cultural landscapes will ....Picturing change: 21st Century perspectives on recent Australian rock art, especially that from the European contact period. Australia, long known for its prehistoric rock art of world heritage value, will now also be known for its unique and diverse body of contact rock art. This project will benefit tourism in remote regions, many of which are or are near World Heritage Areas (eg. Kakadu, Uluru, Blue Mountains). Contemporary indigenous knowledge about important cross-cultural landscapes will be synthesised along with other new knowledge to assist with the protection of sites, the development of new management plans and applications to place particular groups of sites on a new UNESCO World Heritage rock art list. Aboriginal participants will receive research skills training and both individuals and communities will reconnect to significant remote places.Read moreRead less
Confronting Representations: Performing Indigenous Protests. By using performance studies approaches to analyse public political events this work will provide the practical benefit of increasing our understanding of how different cultures interpret and misinterpret each other in public encounters. Examining the dynamics that have and continue to operate between people and social discourses increases our understanding of ourselves as Australians and our ability to interpret ourselves. A further b ....Confronting Representations: Performing Indigenous Protests. By using performance studies approaches to analyse public political events this work will provide the practical benefit of increasing our understanding of how different cultures interpret and misinterpret each other in public encounters. Examining the dynamics that have and continue to operate between people and social discourses increases our understanding of ourselves as Australians and our ability to interpret ourselves. A further benefit is that the project develops an innovative methodology for interdisciplinary research drawing from the fields of performance studies, media studies and cultural studies.Read moreRead less
The Humanities beyond Humanism: Race, Nature and the Human in Australia from Enlightenment to Federation. This Project injects much needed specificity into the emotive and circular logic of racism that characterises accounts of settler/indigenous history in Australia. In so far as Australia's Aboriginal people defied enlightenment/colonial ideas about humans as separate from nature, they shook the very foundations of western humanism. In crediting Aboriginal people with this impact on European k ....The Humanities beyond Humanism: Race, Nature and the Human in Australia from Enlightenment to Federation. This Project injects much needed specificity into the emotive and circular logic of racism that characterises accounts of settler/indigenous history in Australia. In so far as Australia's Aboriginal people defied enlightenment/colonial ideas about humans as separate from nature, they shook the very foundations of western humanism. In crediting Aboriginal people with this impact on European knowledge and self-regard, the Project carries forward the critique of Australia's settlement from a fresh perspective. It challenges the persistent tendency of Australians to write Aborigines into nature, and forces a novel revision in thought about what it means to be 'properly human'.Read moreRead less
A study of travel writing in Australian colonial history. Travel writing is a key mechanism by which readers learn about other peoples and cultures, a genre that is crucial to the formation of identities, ideologies, and ideas. Australian travel writing provided foundational texts for those emigrating to the colony. This project positions Australian texts within an international comparative sphere. It will advance the understanding of colonial culture in Australia, and of the perceptions and val ....A study of travel writing in Australian colonial history. Travel writing is a key mechanism by which readers learn about other peoples and cultures, a genre that is crucial to the formation of identities, ideologies, and ideas. Australian travel writing provided foundational texts for those emigrating to the colony. This project positions Australian texts within an international comparative sphere. It will advance the understanding of colonial culture in Australia, and of the perceptions and values of those who settled colonial Australia. It will make available to Australian and international students and researchers a rich archive of texts that have not been previously mapped. Australians are keenly interested in travel and its literature, and this project brings colonial travel texts to public attention.Read moreRead less