AustLit

'On an overcast Monday in March 2021, ten thousand people flooded into Melbourne’s Treasury Gardens for the March4Justice. It was a public outpouring of rage in response to a belated #MeToo moment within Australian federal politics. After sexual assault campaigner Grace Tame was named Australian of the Year, former Liberal staffer Brittany Higgins went public with allegations she had been raped in Parliament House. Mere weeks later, a historic rape allegation against Attorney-General Christian Porter hit the headlines. To all appearances, the scourge of sexual violence was running rampant within the highest offices in the country. In Treasury Gardens, the crowd voiced their disgust, joining a chorus of 110,000 at over forty events across the country. Many of those holding signs were older women, veterans of Women’s liberation, who expressed dismay that – five decades on – they were still protesting rape and gendered violence. From beneath the plane trees, march organisers led the Melbourne crowd in a rendition of Helen Reddy’s 1972 single ‘I Am Woman’. The anthem of women’s lib was back to rouse the masses once more.'  (Introduction)

'On the night of Tuesday 10 August, Australia’s population came under the microscope. The 2021 Census counted the number of engineers, of Buddhists, and single person households. It recorded the number of cars and tabulated our diseases. It even counted past and present ADF personnel.' (Introduction)

'A timely and thought-provoking memoir about the trans experience.

'Rees provides us with their deep insights into contemporary trans and gender diverse history as it's being made . . . All About Yves is the book I wish I'd been able to give my mother when I was transitioning.' Sam Elkin, Transgender Victoria Board Member

'Was I always trans, part boy beneath my skin, or was it that I landed in a place where 'girl' was a container so small it could break your bones?

'I learn that a ready smile and sympathetic ear are the only props required to impersonate a woman. The performance becomes so familiar I almost forget that it's staged.

'What happens when, aged 30, you understand you're transgender?

'This was the question that confronted Yves Rees, a historian whose life was upended by gender transition in 2018. Then known as a woman called Anne, Yves was forced to grapple with the sudden knowledge that they were not, in fact, female at all.

'But when you've lived a lie for so long, how do you discover who you really are? And how do you re-learn to live in the world as a different gender?

'All About Yves tells their moving journey of re-becoming, at the same time laying bare the messiness of bodies, gender and identity. It shares the challenges and joys of being transgender in Australia today, and reveals how trans experiences like Yves' can teach all of us about what it means to be human.

(Publication summary)

'The next generation of Australian historians face daunting challenges: the imperative to craft new historical narratives that inform and redirect unfolding ecological, economic and political crises, while facing escalating academic precarity and associated anxiety and depression. Honours level and PhD pedagogy, which remains little changed from the mid-twentieth century, is arguably insufficient for these challenges. How might we, as educators, find creative and pragmatic ways to better train and nurture tomorrow’s scholars? Critically reflecting on our Histories of Capitalism Winter School piloted in 2019, this article argues for the potential of grassroots ‘micro-utopias’ structured around interdisciplinarity, collegiality, inclusivity and public mindedness.' (Publication abstract)

'As we enter the 2020s, our times are daily getting more urgent. The climate and ecological emergency, catastrophic Australian bushfires, and now the COVID-19 pandemic and associated economic meltdown have launched us into a new era of seemingly incessant crisis. Through it all, history remains omnipresent. In press conferences and Zoom meetings, in newspapers and Twitter feeds, history is invoked to bring sense and meaning to our disorienting present. As public commentary mythologises the past in order to manage a destabilised and unknown future, what should the response of professional historians be? What are our responsibilities in the face of cataclysmic change? In this forum on ‘History in Urgent Times’, we present three attempts to grapple with what it means to be a historian in this alarming historical moment, and ask how historians ought to respond.' (Introduction)

'When I’m ten or so, my brother appears shirtless at the dinner table. Ever the eager disciple, I follow his example without a second thought. It is a sweltering January day, and our bodies are salt-crusted from the beach. Clothing seems cruel in these conditions.' (Introduction)

'Today marks the 100th anniversary of the establishment of the League of Nations — the intergovernmental organisation, headquartered in Geneva, that emerged from the ashes of the first world war.' (Introduction)