Disputing National Histories: Some Recent Australian Debates

National history seems to be a form of history marked by a particularly strong relation between past and present. In the last few decades, the most serious historiographical conflicts, and the ones which have attracted public as well as scholarly attention, have tended to be those where national honour was felt to be at stake. Very often they have concerned either the foundation of the nation, or the national role in war, and sometimes both; think of the example of Japan, Israel, the United States, and Australia, to name just a few. These debates have attracted particular heat because history was seen to have implications not only for specialist historians but also for the morality and future of the nation

White, British, and European: historicising identity in settler societies

Tese de doutoramento em Arqueologia, apresentada ao Departamento de História, Estudos Europeus, Arqueologia e artes da Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de CoimbraA presente dissertação incide sobre o núcleo de intervenções arqueológicas que de forma, mais ou menos, continuada se têm vindo a realizar desde a década de 1930 no Museu Nacional de Machado de Castro, local outrora ocupado pelo fórum da cidade romana de Aeminium e, posteriormente, pelo paço episcopal de Coimbra. Do conjunto destas campanhas arqueológicas, sobretudo das realizadas nos últimos anos (2006-2008), resultou um manancial informativo singular assente num extenso repertório de registo estratigráfico (a carecer de revisão) e no volume do espólio recolhido (principalmente cerâmico) que se encontrava na generalidade por estudar. O trabalho que se apresenta surgiu assim em resposta a estas lacunas de investigação, sentidas sobretudo ao nível da cultura material e da ausência de um estudo de síntese da história do monumento. Um trabalho que, combinando o universo dos dados arqueológicos reunidos ao longo das diversas intervenções aqui realizadas colige, fundamentando, o estado actual do conhecimento acerca da transformação orgânica deste conjunto patrimonial, desde a instalação do fórum romano de Aeminium até ao paço episcopal de finais do século XVI. Pela sua extensão (quantitativa e cronológica) e virtualidade, a cerâmica foi considerada neste estudo como o primordial documento arqueológico, impulsionando a recuperação de aspectos relativos à ocupação deste espaço e colmatando, simultaneamente, assinaláveis hiatos no quadro histórico da cidade de Coimbra. Os contextos de proveniência do espólio apresentam-se maioritariamente selados e seguramente datados, testemunhando a ocupação contínua deste espaço na longa diacronia que vai do século I ao século XVII. Da fusão e consentânea revisão de todas estas distintas plataformas de análise, que se convencionou designar como ensaio de arqueologia urbana, puderam-se esclarecer problemas pontuais que o edifício ainda colocava e sustentar as propostas de reconstituição arquitectónicas já anteriormente enunciadas. Mais uma vez se conclui que este documento histórico, vivo e vivido ininterruptamente durante os últimos dois milénios e onde o passado se encontra presente através dos seus volumes sobrepostos, apesar de feito, desfeito e refeito ao longo deste arco cronológico nunca deixou de se acomodar à sua raiz primordial – o criptopórtico de Aeminium.This dissertation focuses on the group of archaeological interventions that were carried out, more or less continuously, since the 30’s at the National Museum Machado de Castro. This site was once occupied by the forum of the Roman city of Aeminium and subsequently by the Episcopal Palace of Coimbra. The archaeological interventions, especially those carried out in recent years (2006-2008), provided a unique source of information based on extensive stratigraphic records (in need of revision) and on the collection of a high volume of archaeological remains (particularly pottery) which remained greatly unstudied. The work here presented emerged in answer to those research gaps, mostly concerning the material culture and the absence of a synthesis about the monument’s overall history. Therefore, the study combines the universe of archaeological data (gathered over several interventions at the site) compiling and justifying the current state of knowledge about the organic transformation of this heritage complex since the installation of the Roman forum of Aeminium to the Episcopal Palace at the end of the 16th century. In this study pottery was considered the main archaeological evidence due to its extent (in quantity and chronology) and potential. It boosted the recovery of information concerning this site’s occupation and, simultaneously, it bridged important gaps in the historical framework known for the city of Coimbra. The finding contexts of the archaeological remains are mostly sealed and safely dated, testifying the continuous occupation of this space in the long diachrony that goes from the 1st to the 17th centuries. The fusion and coherent review of all these analytical platforms (in what is conventionally called an urban archaeology essay) allowed to solve specific questions still posed by the building and to support the reconstitution proposals previously stated. Once again it is concluded that this historical monument (alive and lived continuously during the last two millennia and where the past is present through its overlapping volumes) despite being made, unmade and remade throughout this time span, never stopped being adjusted to its primary root – the cryptoporticus of Aeminium.FCT - SFRH/BD/68343/2010/J006026902

Time, eternity, truth, and death: history as allegory

The act of remembrance through history, the desire to impose 'form on formless time', lies deep in our culture? Not in all cultures, as Levi Strauss remarked: historical thinking is not necessary thinking, is not essential to our humanity.' But in Western societies it is inescapable, we cannot think without or beyond distinctions between future, present, and past, and such thinking is deep in the classical and Judeo-Christian heritage

Stuart Hall: Reflections, Memories, Appreciations

Stuart Hall was many things: public intellectual, academic leader, writer, editor, teacher, political activist, family man and friend. We write here of the two aspects we knew personally, writer and friend. Like so many of us engaged in the early formation of cultural and media studies, we both read and were seriously influenced by his work. John discussed Stuart Hall’s work extensively in his PhD thesis on Australian literature of the 1890s in international contexts, and Stuart was one of his examiners. Ann read Stuart’s work in the late 1970s, having just arrived to teach in the BA (Communication) degree at what was then the NSW Institute of Technology, ten years later to become University of Technology, Sydney (UTS)

Stuart Hall and Cultural Studies, circa 1983

Stuart Hall sought to internationalise theoretical debates and to create Cultural Studies as interdisciplinary. We chart his theoretical journey through a detailed examination of a series of lectures delivered in 1983 and now published for the first time. In these lectures, he discusses theorists such as E.P. Thompson, Raymond Williams, Louis Althusser, Levi Strauss and Antonio Gramsci, and explores the relationship between ideas and social structure, the specificities of class and race, and the legacies of slavery. We note his turn towards metaphors of divergence and dispersal and highlight how autobiographical and deeply personal Hall is in these lectures, especially in his ego histoire moment of traumatic memory recovery

Passionate Histories

This book examines the emotional engagements of both Indigenous and Non-Indigenous people with Indigenous history. The contributors are a mix of Indigenous and Non-Indigenous scholars, who in different ways examine how the past lives on in the present, as myth, memory, and history. Each chapter throws fresh light on an aspect of history-making by or about Indigenous people, such as the extent of massacres on the frontier, the myth of Aboriginal male idleness, the controversy over Flynn of the Inland, the meaning of the Referendum of 1967, and the policy and practice of Indigenous child removal

Passionate Histories

This book examines the emotional engagements of both Indigenous and Non-Indigenous people with Indigenous history. The contributors are a mix of Indigenous and Non-Indigenous scholars, who in different ways examine how the past lives on in the present, as myth, memory, and history. Each chapter throws fresh light on an aspect of history-making by or about Indigenous people, such as the extent of massacres on the frontier, the myth of Aboriginal male idleness, the controversy over Flynn of the Inland, the meaning of the Referendum of 1967, and the policy and practice of Indigenous child removal