Zoom
Summary:How has the writing of Australian history changed in the thirty years since the Mabo decision?
Presenter(s):
- Henry Reynolds
- Nick Brodie
- Anna Johnston
How has the writing of Australian history changed in the thirty years since the Mabo decision? How has the place of history—as a discipline and as a field of public discourse—been transformed in the decades since the recognition of native title? And how does history inform and interact with literature in Australia? Join historians Henry Reynolds and Nick Brodie in conversation with literary scholar Anna Johnston as they address the legacy of Mabo on the field of history in Australia.
Henry Reynolds is one of Australia's most influential historians. Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Tasmania, his work on colonial settler and Aboriginal relations, law, and frontier violence have shaped academic inquiry and public consciousness of the past in this country, since the publication of his first monograph The Other Side of the Frontier in 1981. The author and editor of nineteen works, Henry’s personal friendship with Eddie Koiki Mabo, and his scholarship on the legal basis of colonization in Australia were pivotal in laying the intellectual groundwork for the case for native title. Henry’s most recent work is Truth Telling: History, Sovereignty and the Uluru Statement (2021).
Nick Brodie is a historian and author of eight works. He has a doctorate in late medieval vagrancy, worked as a field archaeologist, taught at university for a decade, and now writes a growing suite of acclaimed popular histories. Nick loves mysteries, lateral thinking, and books that are erudite and accessible. His works cover the broad sweep of Australian history and include 1787: The Lost Chapters of Australia's Beginnings, Kin: A Real People's History of Our Nation, Kosciuszko, and The Vandemonian War.
Anna Johnston is Associate Professor in Literature and co-lead of the Australian Studies Research Node at The University of Queensland, with wide-ranging interests in colonial writing and its aftermath. Her most recent book is Eliza Hamilton Dunlop: Writing from the Colonial Frontier (coedited with Elizabeth Webby, 2021) and her book The Antipodean Laboratory: Making Colonial Knowledge, 1770-1870, will be published by Cambridge University Press in 2023.
