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Issue Details: First known date: 2020... no. 11 2020 of Humanities Australia est. 2010 Humanities Australia
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'This year, 2020, has been a tumultuous year for the world to which Australia has added its own particular troubles and concerns. We began the year with bushfires around the country and then encountered the Covid-19 pandemic, with its immense threats to lives and livelihoods and with the creative and performing arts and universities being amongst the sectors hardest hit by its economic consequences. Along the way there have been heightening tensions in our relations with China and renewed attention to Indigenous disadvantage, highlighted by the Black Lives Matter movement, while government funding proposals have provoked questions about the place in our education system of key disciplines in the humanities. Human solutions are needed to address the immense challenges facing humanity and in this context the value and strength of the humanities in facing human issues has never been clearer. The articles in Humanities Australia have always, by their very nature, addressed topics of relevance to this country, but it so happens that a number of articles in this edition address issues that have been particularly prominent over the course of the year, either through considering contemporary events or through the lens of other places and times. So we offer this issue of Humanities Australia as a particularly direct response to this troubled year in which it appears.' (Graham Tulloch, Editor's Introduction)

Notes

  • Contents indexed selectively.

Contents

* Contents derived from the 2020 version. Please note that other versions/publications may contain different contents. See the Publication Details.
Being Humane : A Contested History, Joy Damousi , single work criticism
Maya Waabiny : Mobilising Song Archives to Nourish an Endangered Language, Clint Bracknell , single work criticism

'Turrbal, Yagera, thank you for caring for this land we meet on today. It is a big responsibility and what I consider a very human thing to do. When last here, for the AIATSIS research conference, I witnessed an impassioned local performance to welcome attendees. In the old days, we visitors might have been expected to perform in response. Although a number of Aboriginal people were there, many of us may not have had a song to share—at least not yet.

'I am Noongar, with a Noongar mother and white Australian father. I have a Noongar wife and son. My ancestral Country is far from here, along the southern coast of Western Australia. Here in Brisbane, our endangered Noongar language is strange and foreign. I speak about it in the hope that the things we are doing in the southwest might be useful to people here and elsewhere.

'It is an honour to be invited to present as part of the Academy’s auspicious 50th Symposium. This year’s theme ‘Humanising the Future’ resonates with my interest in the intersection between tradition and digital technology. This lecture is held in honour of Sir Keith Hancock, who contributed to the foundations of environmental history studies in Australia. Although his biographer Jim Davidson notes that Hancock ‘shared the general ignorance of the extent of Aboriginal resistance’, he rightly critiqued characterisations of Australia as untouched wilderness.1 This continent is an inherently peopled landscape, Country with a capital C—‘nourishing terrain’ as Deborah Bird Rose would put it—alive and intertwined with Aboriginal people and knowledge systems.2 Our longstanding and very current environmental crisis can be understood as not just the fault of flawed science and economics, but also a disconnection between culture and nature, between humans and landscapes.3 Although frequently overlooked in scientific research, factors supporting human connection to the environment such as story, language and song are key to people’s everyday wellbeing.4 Our future is dependent on Country. Things that most connect us humans to Country—like language, story and song—are crucial to our future.' (Introduction)

About Sending Letters, Alexis Wright , extract novel

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

Last amended 12 Jan 2021 11:36:04
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