In the last decades of the twentieth century, biographies of Australian women scientists, and articles and book chapters focusing on women's contributions to science during and after World War II began to emerge. Such works seek to acknowledge and highlight the achievements of women in both industry and academia, and to understand how they managed to pursue and negotiate careers in traditionally male-dominated fields. In the first half of last century, women were well represented, both as students and as staff members at many universities in Australia but, while men climbed the career ladder, the majority of women were 'more or less limited to the bottom rungs'.
{"title":"Nancy Atkinson, bacteriologist, winemaker and writer","authors":"Emma McEwin","doi":"10.22459/ajbh.2018.03","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22459/ajbh.2018.03","url":null,"abstract":"In the last decades of the twentieth century, biographies of Australian women scientists, and articles and book chapters focusing on women's contributions to science during and after World War II began to emerge. Such works seek to acknowledge and highlight the achievements of women in both industry and academia, and to understand how they managed to pursue and negotiate careers in traditionally male-dominated fields. In the first half of last century, women were well represented, both as students and as staff members at many universities in Australia but, while men climbed the career ladder, the majority of women were 'more or less limited to the bottom rungs'.","PeriodicalId":143131,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of Biography and History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-12-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132291878","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
While living in Bogor in Indonesia during the mid-1980s, I became aware of an eccentric character who everyone referred to as ‘Dok’ Kostermans. I had heard a number of stories about Kostermans’s World War II (WWII) experiences and how he was lucky to have survived. There were also stories about his more recent jungle expeditions to remote tropical areas of the Malaysian Archipelago. He was a prodigious plant collector and highly regarded in his field of botanical taxonomy. With his reputation preceding him, when I met him one night at a birthday party, I was surprised to be introduced to a tall lanky man wearing a red wig. The occasion called for dress-up and he had come as Harpo Marx. Kostermans, then in his seventy-eighth year, exuded good humour, a zest for life and physical stamina that never seemed to diminish.
{"title":"Jungle stories from ‘Dok’ Kostermans (1906–94), prisoner of war on the Burma–Thailand railway","authors":"Michèle Horne","doi":"10.22459/ajbh.2018.08","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22459/ajbh.2018.08","url":null,"abstract":"While living in Bogor in Indonesia during the mid-1980s, I became aware of an eccentric character who everyone referred to as ‘Dok’ Kostermans. I had heard a number of stories about Kostermans’s World War II (WWII) experiences and how he was lucky to have survived. There were also stories about his more recent jungle expeditions to remote tropical areas of the Malaysian Archipelago. He was a prodigious plant collector and highly regarded in his field of botanical taxonomy. With his reputation preceding him, when I met him one night at a birthday party, I was surprised to be introduced to a tall lanky man wearing a red wig. The occasion called for dress-up and he had come as Harpo Marx. Kostermans, then in his seventy-eighth year, exuded good humour, a zest for life and physical stamina that never seemed to diminish.","PeriodicalId":143131,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of Biography and History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-12-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133373998","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Macintyre pointed to a fork in Australian biographical practice in the 1950s (common to western historiographies) when, on the one hand, professional historians turned to biography and, on the other, academic historians developed a newly found ‘mistrust’, finding defects in adequately comprehending a completed life and a tendency to rely on singularity and individual agency in preference to structural causation.3 Biography is perhaps only just starting to shake off this history, although to some it remains academic historians’ ‘unloved stepchild, occasionally but grudgingly let in the door, more often shut outside with the riffraff’.4 Macintyre, however, found evidence that Australian historians had ‘largely dropped any suspicion of the genre of biography’ by the end of the twentieth century, not least because they recognised its considerable potential for bringing historical research to
{"title":"Australian historians and biography","authors":"Malcolm Allbrook, M. Nolan","doi":"10.22459/AJBH.2018.01","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22459/AJBH.2018.01","url":null,"abstract":"Macintyre pointed to a fork in Australian biographical practice in the 1950s (common to western historiographies) when, on the one hand, professional historians turned to biography and, on the other, academic historians developed a newly found ‘mistrust’, finding defects in adequately comprehending a completed life and a tendency to rely on singularity and individual agency in preference to structural causation.3 Biography is perhaps only just starting to shake off this history, although to some it remains academic historians’ ‘unloved stepchild, occasionally but grudgingly let in the door, more often shut outside with the riffraff’.4 Macintyre, however, found evidence that Australian historians had ‘largely dropped any suspicion of the genre of biography’ by the end of the twentieth century, not least because they recognised its considerable potential for bringing historical research to","PeriodicalId":143131,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of Biography and History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-12-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115012189","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The word ‘dynasty’ evokes images of hereditary rulers, striding dusty castle corridors where their families have ruled for centuries. It might also suggest dominant political families, like the Kennedys, in republican settings like the United States of America. The term can, however, also be used to describe prominent families in other fields, such as business or the law, in which a succession of individuals from one family have scaled the heights of their profession. A number of such families have lived and worked in Australia, and their stories are captured in the biographies told in the Australian Dictionary of Biography and the associated People Australia websites. This article explores the stories of two families who might be thought of as Australian legal dynasties: the Stephens and the Streets. Between them, these two families produced across several generations four chief justices of New South Wales—and one person who turned the job down—as well as at least four other judges, and numerous successful barristers and solicitors.
{"title":"Australian legal dynasties: The Stephens and the Streets","authors":"K. Fox","doi":"10.22459/ajbh.2018.07","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22459/ajbh.2018.07","url":null,"abstract":"The word ‘dynasty’ evokes images of hereditary rulers, striding dusty castle corridors where their families have ruled for centuries. It might also suggest dominant political families, like the Kennedys, in republican settings like the United States of America. The term can, however, also be used to describe prominent families in other fields, such as business or the law, in which a succession of individuals from one family have scaled the heights of their profession. A number of such families have lived and worked in Australia, and their stories are captured in the biographies told in the Australian Dictionary of Biography and the associated People Australia websites. This article explores the stories of two families who might be thought of as Australian legal dynasties: the Stephens and the Streets. Between them, these two families produced across several generations four chief justices of New South Wales—and one person who turned the job down—as well as at least four other judges, and numerous successful barristers and solicitors.","PeriodicalId":143131,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of Biography and History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-12-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128725207","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
According to Tom Griffiths, chairman of the editorial board of the Australian Dictionary of Biography (ADB), the dictionary is ‘the largest and most successful cooperative research enterprise in the humanities and social sciences in Australia’, which captures ‘the life and times and culture of this country in an absolutely distinctive and irreplaceable way’.2 Since the first volume was launched in 1966, more than 4,500 authors have contributed just over 13,000 entries. The general editor, Melanie Nolan, has observed that ‘the dictionary has survived the test of time, providing material for others to construct their own images of the “real” Australian or the “typical Australian”’.3 To reflect this ‘real Australian’ ethos, the ADB records the cultural heritage (ethnicity) of subjects. Of the top 10 ethnicities in Australia, as recorded by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, a search on the ADB website (adb.anu.edu.au) found that, as of September 2018, 6,624 subjects were of British heritage (4,841 English, 1,624 Scottish, 159 Welsh), 294 were from New Zealand, 32 were Chinese, 10 were Indian, none were of Philippine or Vietnamese heritage, 88 were Italian, 29 were South African, two were Malayan and 321 were German.4 Thus, people of Asian heritage are clearly under-represented. To illustrate the significance of this omission, or neglect, I will take the Chinese entries as an analytic group, and suggest where improvements could be made. The Chinese are of particular importance because they were the largest non-European group in the Australian population in the nineteenth century.
{"title":"Chinese in the Australian Dictionary of Biography and in Australia","authors":"Tiping Su","doi":"10.22459/AJBH.2018.09","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22459/AJBH.2018.09","url":null,"abstract":"According to Tom Griffiths, chairman of the editorial board of the Australian Dictionary of Biography (ADB), the dictionary is ‘the largest and most successful cooperative research enterprise in the humanities and social sciences in Australia’, which captures ‘the life and times and culture of this country in an absolutely distinctive and irreplaceable way’.2 Since the first volume was launched in 1966, more than 4,500 authors have contributed just over 13,000 entries. The general editor, Melanie Nolan, has observed that ‘the dictionary has survived the test of time, providing material for others to construct their own images of the “real” Australian or the “typical Australian”’.3 To reflect this ‘real Australian’ ethos, the ADB records the cultural heritage (ethnicity) of subjects. Of the top 10 ethnicities in Australia, as recorded by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, a search on the ADB website (adb.anu.edu.au) found that, as of September 2018, 6,624 subjects were of British heritage (4,841 English, 1,624 Scottish, 159 Welsh), 294 were from New Zealand, 32 were Chinese, 10 were Indian, none were of Philippine or Vietnamese heritage, 88 were Italian, 29 were South African, two were Malayan and 321 were German.4 Thus, people of Asian heritage are clearly under-represented. To illustrate the significance of this omission, or neglect, I will take the Chinese entries as an analytic group, and suggest where improvements could be made. The Chinese are of particular importance because they were the largest non-European group in the Australian population in the nineteenth century.","PeriodicalId":143131,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of Biography and History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-12-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115347242","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Frederick Dalton (1815–80): Uncovering a life in gold","authors":"B. Dalton","doi":"10.22459/ajbh.2018.06","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22459/ajbh.2018.06","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":143131,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of Biography and History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-12-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125844258","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 1900-01-01DOI: 10.22459/ajbh.05.2021.02
Blair Williams
As women have become more visible in the Australian political sphere, the volume of writing about their lives, careers and experiences has also increased. This has brought to light certain challenges and shortcomings, as well as enduring discursive biases in the existing literature. Political history, for example, and especially political biography, has generally ‘privileged the political activities of men and masculine political institutions’, telling the stories of so-called Great Men while excluding those who do not traditionally belong to this cohort.1 Any attempt to summarise the current state of biographies written on Australian political women and to assess the extent to which these can be improved must therefore address several overlapping lines of inquiry, the four most fundamental of which have been chosen for discussion in this article. First, I will provide an overview of the institutional and discursive masculine biases of political biographies in general. Second, I will outline the state of biographies written on women politicians, noting the lack of such texts and an increasing turn towards autobiography. Third, I compare two recent biographies on women politicians—Anna Broinowski’s Please Explain (2017) and Margaret Simons’s Penny Wong (2019)—to demonstrate how a tendency towards excessive personalisation can become problematic. Lastly, by exploring feminist approaches to political biography, I provide a working definition of feminist political biography and propose a list of ‘dos and don’ts’ for those political biographers who seek to develop a more inclusive model.
{"title":"Where are the Great Women? A feminist analysis of Australian political biographies","authors":"Blair Williams","doi":"10.22459/ajbh.05.2021.02","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22459/ajbh.05.2021.02","url":null,"abstract":"As women have become more visible in the Australian political sphere, the volume of writing about their lives, careers and experiences has also increased. This has brought to light certain challenges and shortcomings, as well as enduring discursive biases in the existing literature. Political history, for example, and especially political biography, has generally ‘privileged the political activities of men and masculine political institutions’, telling the stories of so-called Great Men while excluding those who do not traditionally belong to this cohort.1 Any attempt to summarise the current state of biographies written on Australian political women and to assess the extent to which these can be improved must therefore address several overlapping lines of inquiry, the four most fundamental of which have been chosen for discussion in this article. First, I will provide an overview of the institutional and discursive masculine biases of political biographies in general. Second, I will outline the state of biographies written on women politicians, noting the lack of such texts and an increasing turn towards autobiography. Third, I compare two recent biographies on women politicians—Anna Broinowski’s Please Explain (2017) and Margaret Simons’s Penny Wong (2019)—to demonstrate how a tendency towards excessive personalisation can become problematic. Lastly, by exploring feminist approaches to political biography, I provide a working definition of feminist political biography and propose a list of ‘dos and don’ts’ for those political biographers who seek to develop a more inclusive model.","PeriodicalId":143131,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of Biography and History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123122384","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Book Review: Sylvia Martin, Ink in Her Veins: The Troubled Life of Aileen Palmer","authors":"Frank Bongiorno","doi":"10.22459/ajbh.2019","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22459/ajbh.2019","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":143131,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of Biography and History","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126932419","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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