History

Alcalde, Angel. “El paramilitarismo en Weimar,” in Casquete, Jesús and Tajadura, Javier (eds.,). La Constitución de Weimar. Historia, política y derecho. Centro de Estudios Políticos y Constitucionales, 2020.

This chapter provides an analytical overview of paramilitary politics in Germany between the armistice of 1918 and the coming of the Third Reich in 1933. It shows how the use of paramilitary force accompanied the foundation of the Weimar democracy and how paramilitarism was instrumental in its destruction. The chapter differentiates four different phases and models in the history of paramilitarism: mercenary-reactionary paramilitarism, combat paramilitarism, party paramilitarism, and civil-war paramilitarism. By doing so, the chapter shows the adaptability of this historical phenomenon and the danger it poses to the stability of democratic regimes. More information...

Fedor, Julie and Sniegon, Tomas. “The Butovskii Shooting Range: History of an Unfinished Museum,” in Norris, Stephen M. (ed.,). Museums of Communism: New Memory Sites in Central and Eastern Europe. Indiana University Press, 2020.

How did communities come to terms with the collapse of communism? In order to guide the wider narrative, many former communist countries constructed museums dedicated to chronicling their experiences. Museums of Communism explores the complicated intersection of history, commemoration, and victimisation made evident in these museums constructed after 1991. While contributors from a diverse range of fields explore various museums and include nearly 90 photographs, a common denominator emerges: rather than focusing on artefacts and historical documents, these museums often privilege memories and stories. In doing so, the museums shift attention from experiences of guilt or collaboration to narratives of shared victimisation under communist rule. More information...

Leahy, Carla Pascoe and Bueskens, Petra (eds.,). Australian Mothering: Historical and Sociological Perspectives. Palgrave Macmillan, 2020.

Leahy, Carla Pascoe and Bueskens, Petra. “Contextualising Australian mothering and motherhood,” in Leahy, Carla Pascoe and Bueskens, Petra (eds.,). Australian Mothering: Historical and Sociological Perspectives. Palgrave Macmillan, 2020.

Leahy, Carla Pascoe and Bueskens, Petra. “Defining maternal studies in Australia: The birth of a field,” in Leahy, Carla Pascoe and Bueskens, Petra (eds.,). Australian Mothering: Historical and Sociological Perspectives. Palgrave Macmillan, 2020.

Leahy, Carla Pascoe. “Mothers-in-waiting: maternographies of pregnancy in Australia since 1945,” in Leahy, Carla Pascoe and Bueskens, Petra (eds.,). Australian Mothering: Historical and Sociological Perspectives. Palgrave Macmillan, 2020.

This collection defines the field of maternal studies in Australia for the first time. Leading motherhood researchers explore how mothering has evolved across Australian history as well as the joys and challenges of being a mother today… Utilising a matricentric feminist framework, Australian Mothering foregrounds the experiences, emotions and perspectives of mothers to better understand how Australian motherhood has developed historically and contemporaneously. Drawing upon their combined sociological and historical expertise, Bueskens and Pascoe Leahy have carefully curated a collection that presents compelling research on past and present perspectives on maternity in Australia. More information...

McGregor, Katharine, Dragojlovic, Ana and Loney, Hannah (eds.,). Gender, Violence and Power in Indonesia Across Time and Space. Routledge, 2020.

McGregor, Katharine. “Living in a Conflict Zone: Gendered Violence During the Japanese Occupation of the Netherlands East Indies,” in McGregor, Katharine, Dragojlovic, Ana and Loney, Hannah (eds.,). Gender, Violence and Power in Indonesia Across Time and Space. Routledge, 2020.

McGregor, Katharine and Loney, Hannah. “Introduction: Gendered Violence and the Making of Modern Indonesia,” in McGregor, Katharine, Dragojlovic, Ana and Loney, Hannah (eds.,). Gender, Violence and Power in Indonesia Across Time and Space. Routledge, 2020.

This book uses an interdisciplinary approach to chart how various forms of violence – domestic, military, legal and political – are not separate instances of violence, but rather embedded in structural inequalities brought about by colonialism, occupation and state violence. The book explores both case studies of individuals and of groups to examine experiences of violence within the context of gender and structures of power in modern Indonesian history and Indonesia-related diasporas. It argues that gendered violence is particularly important to consider in this region because of its complex history of armed conflict and authoritarian rule, the diversity of people that have been affected by violence, as well as the complexity of the religious and cultural communities involved. The book focuses in particular on textual narratives of violence, visualisations of violence, commemorations of violence and the politics of care. More information...

Alcalde, Angel. “The Demobilization of Francoist and Republican War Veterans, 1939-44: A Great Divergence?” in Matthews, James (ed.,). Spain at War. Society, Culture and Mobilization, 1936-44. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019.

In spite of the unabated flood of books on the Spanish Civil War and its consequences, historians of Spain in the 20th century have focused relatively little on the interaction of society and culture, and their roles in wartime mobilisation. Spain at War addresses this omission through an examination of individual experiences of conflict and the mobilisation of society. This edited volume acknowledges the agency of low-ranking individuals and the impact of their choices upon the historical processes that shaped the conflict and its aftermath. More information...

Burnard, Trevor. "Plantations and the Great Divergence," in Roy, Tirthankar and Riello, Giorgio (eds.,). Global Economic History. Bloomsbury Academic, 2019

What are the problems addressed by the growing field of global economic history? What debates and methodologies does it engage with? As Global Economic History shows, there are many answers to these questions. Riello and Roy, alongside 20 leading academics from the US, UK, Europe, Australia and Japan, explain why a global perspective matters to economic history. More information...

Davidson, Jane and Damousi, Joy (eds.,). A Cultural History of the Emotions in the Modern and Post-Modern Age (1920-2000+): Volume 6. Bloomsbury Academic, 2019.

Across six volumes, A Cultural History of the Emotions explores how emotions have changed over the course of human history, but also how emotions have themselves created and changed history. Emotions underpin our everyday lives and shape our mental, physical and social well-being. This collection shows how emotions can offer a unique insight into the historical thought and function of different societies.

Damousi, Joy and Smart, Judith (eds.,). Contesting Australian History. Essays in Honour of Marilyn Lake. Monash University Publishing, 2019.

One of Australia’s leading scholars and a highly distinguished professor of history, Marilyn Lake forged a career that spanned several decades across a number of universities. Her books and other scholarly writings have significantly advanced our understandings not only of Australian social, cultural and political history but also of the interdependence of that history with those of Britain, the US and the Asia-Pacific... The chapters in this book span the breadth of Lake’s scholarly influence on the directions historical research is taking today, and are based on papers by Australian colleagues and scholars presented at a Festschrift held at the University of Melbourne over two days in December 2016.

Edmonds, Penelope and Laidlaw, Zoe. ““The British Government Is Now Awaking”: How Humanitarian Quakers Repackaged and Circulated the 1837 Select Committee Report on Aborigines,” in Furphy, Samuel and Nettelbeck, Amanda (eds.,). Aboriginal Protection and Its Intermediaries in Britain’s Antipodean Colonies. Routledge. 2019.

This collection brings together world-leading and emerging scholars to explore how the concept of "protection" was applied to Indigenous peoples of Britain’s antipodean colonies. Tracing evolutions in protection from the 1830s until the end of the nineteenth century, the contributors map the changes and continuities that marked it as an inherently ambivalent mode of colonial practice. In doing so, they consider the place of different historical actors who were involved in the implementation of protective policy, who served as its intermediaries on the ground, or who responded as its intended “beneficiaries.” More information...

Fedor, Julie. "Soviet Narratives of Subversion and Redemption during the Second Cold War and Beyond: The Case of Father Dmitrii Dudko," in Glajar, Valentina; Lewis, Alison and Petrescu, Corina L. (eds.,). Cold War Spy Stories from Eastern Europe. University of Nebraska Press, 2019

During the Cold War, stories of espionage became popular on both sides of the Iron Curtain, capturing the imagination of readers and filmgoers alike as secret police quietly engaged in surveillance under the shroud of impenetrable secrecy. And curiously, in the post-Cold War period there are no signs of this enthusiasm diminishing. The opening of secret police archives in many Eastern European countries has provided the opportunity to excavate and narrate for the first time forgotten spy stories. Cold War Spy Stories from Eastern Europe brings together a wide range of accounts compiled from the East German Stasi, the Romanian Securitate, and the Ukrainian KGB files. More information...

Galway, Matthew. "Permanent Revolution," in Franceschini, Ivan and Sorace, Christian (eds.,). Afterlives of Chinese Communism: Political Concepts from Mao to X. Verso. 2019

Afterlives of Chinese Communism comprises essays from over fifty world-renowned scholars in the China field, from various disciplines and continents. It provides an indispensable guide for understanding how the Mao era continues to shape Chinese politics today. Each chapter discusses a concept or practice from the Mao period, what it attempted to do, and what has become of it since. The authors respond to the legacy of Maoism from numerous perspectives to consider what lessons Chinese communism can offer today, and whether there is a future for the egalitarian politics that it once promised. More information...

Keys, Barbara (ed.,). The Ideals of Global Sport: From Peace to Human Rights. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019

"Sport has the power to change the world," South African president Nelson Mandela told the Sporting Club in Monte Carlo in 2000. Today, we are inundated with similar claims - from politicians, diplomats, intellectuals, journalists, athletes, and fans - about the many ways that international sports competitions make the world a better place. The Ideals of Global Sport investigates these grandiose claims, peeling away the hype to reveal the reality: that shockingly little evidence underpins these endlessly repeated assertions. The essays, written by scholars from many regions and disciplines and drawn from an exceptionally diverse array of sources, show that these bold claims were sometimes cleverly leveraged by activist groups to pressure sports bodies into supporting moral causes. But the essays methodically debunk sports organisations’ inflated proclamations about the record of their contributions to peace, mutual understanding, antiracism, and democracy. More information...

Kovesi, Catherine. "Defending the Right to Dress: Two Sumptuary Law Protests in Sixteenth-Century Milan," in Riello, Giorgio and Rublack, Ulinka (eds.,). The Right to Dress: Sumptuary Laws in a Global Perspective, c. 1200-1800. Cambridge University Press, 2019

This is the first global history of dress regulation and its place in broader debates around how human life and societies should be visualised and materialised. Leading scholars on Asian, Latin American, Ottoman and European history shed new light on how and why items of dress became key aspirational goods across society, how they were lobbied for and marketed, and whether or not sumptuary laws were implemented by cities, states and empires to restrict or channel trade and consumption. Their findings reveal the significance of sumptuary laws in medieval and early modern societies as a site of contestation between individuals and states and how dress as an expression of identity developed as a modern ‘right’. More information...

McGregor, Katharine. “The World Was Silent? Global Communities of Resistance to the 1965 Repression in the Cold War Era,” in Russell, Aidan (ed.,). Truth, Silence and Violence in Emerging States: Histories of the Unspoken. Routledge, 2019.

This book gives a comprehensive view of the ongoing evolutions and multiple faces of silence as a common strand in the struggles of state-building. It begins with chapters that examine the construction of “regimes of silence” as an act of power, and it continues through explorations of the ambiguous limits of speech within communities marked by this violence. It highlights national and transnational attempts to combat state silences, before concluding with a series of considerations of how these regimes of silence continue to be extrapolated in the gaps of records and written history. This volume explores histories of the composed silences of political violence across the emerging states of the late twentieth century, not solely as a present concern of aftermath or retrospection but as a diachronic social and political dimension of violence itself. More information...

Antonello, Alessandro. The Greening of Antarctica: Assembling an International Environment. Oxford University Press, 2018

In The Greening of Antarctica Alessandro Antonello investigates the development of an international regime of environmental protection and management between the signing of the Antarctic Treaty in 1959 and the signing of the Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources in 1980. In those two decades, the Antarctic Treaty parties and an international community of scientists reimagined what many considered a cold, sterile, and abiotic wilderness as a fragile and extensive regional ecosystem. Antonello investigates this change by analysing the negotiations and developments surrounding four environmental agreements: the Agreed Measures for the Conservation of Antarctic Fauna and Flora in 1964; the Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Seals in 1972; a voluntary restraint resolution on Antarctic mining in 1977; and the Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources in 1980. More information...

Burnard, Trevor. “Toiling in the Fields: Valuing Female Slaves in Jamaica, 1674-1788,” in Berry, Daina Ramey and Harris, Leslie M. (eds.,). Sexuality and Slavery: Reclaiming Intimate Histories in the Americas. University of Georgia Press, 2018

In this groundbreaking collection, editors Daina Ramey Berry and Leslie M. Harris place sexuality at the centre of slavery studies in the Americas (the United States, the Caribbean, and South America). While scholars have marginalised or simply overlooked the importance of sexual practices in most mainstream studies of slavery, Berry and Harris argue here that sexual intimacy constituted a core terrain of struggle between slaveholders and the enslaved. These essays explore consensual sexual intimacy and expression within slave communities, as well as sexual relationships across lines of race, status, and power. Contributors explore sexuality as a tool of control, exploitation, and repression and as an expression of autonomy, resistance, and defiance. More information...

Damousi, Joy and O’Brien, Patricia (eds.,). League of Nations. Histories, Legacies and Impact. Melbourne University Publishing. 2018

League of Nations offers new perspectives on the history, legacies and impact of the League of Nations. The essays in this collection demonstrate how vastly diverse topics from film, education, Christian youth movements, colonial rule in the Pacific islands, national economic analyses, disarmament, humanitarianism and refugees as well as international relations, national sovereignty and domestic League of Nations associations - all led to Geneva. More information...

Edele, Mark. The Soviet Union: A short history. Wiley-Blackwell, 2018

In ten concise and compelling chapters, The Soviet Union covers the entire Soviet Union experience from the years 1904 to 1991 by putting the focus on three major themes: warfare, welfare, and empire. Throughout the book, Mark Edele - a noted expert on the topic - clearly demonstrates that the Soviet Union was more than simply “Russia.” Instead, it was a multi-ethnic empire. The author explains that there were many incarnations of Soviet society throughout its turbulent history, each one a representative of Soviet socialism. The text covers a wide range of topics: The end Romanov empire; The outbreak of World War I; The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917; The breakdown of the old empire and its re-constitution in the Civil War; The New Economic Policy; The rise of Stalin; The Soviet’s role in World War II; Post war normalisation; and Gorbachev’s attempt to end the Cold War. More information...

Nagasaki, R. (translator) and Goodman, David (author).『ラジオが夢見た市民社会—アメリカン・デモクラシーの栄光と挫折』 A Civil Society Radio Dreamed: The glory and failure of American democracy. Iwanami Shoten, 2018

In the 1930s, how did American radio broadcasting, which was a symbol of civil liberties, produce an information system suitable for a total war system? The book depicts the political nature of radio and media, and the cultural transformation of American society.

Goodman, David. “Gold and the public in the nineteenth-century gold rushes,” in Mountford, Benjamin and Tuffnell, Stephen (eds.,). A Global History of Gold Rushes. California World History Library series. University of California Press, 2018

Nothing set the world in motion like gold. Between the discovery of California placer gold in 1848 and the rush to Alaska fifty years later, the search for the precious yellow metal accelerated worldwide circulations of people, goods, capital, and technologies. A Global History of Gold Rushes brings together historians of the United States, Africa, Australasia, and the Pacific World to tell the rich story of these nineteenth century gold rushes from a global perspective. Gold was central to the growth of capitalism: it whetted the appetites of empire builders, mobilised the integration of global markets and economies, profoundly affected the environment, and transformed large-scale migration patterns. Together these essays tell the story of fifty years that changed the world. More information...

Goodman, David. “Propaganda and sound,” in Bull, Michael (ed.,). The Routledge Companion to Sound Studies. Routledge, 2018

The Routledge Companion to Sound Studies is an extensive volume presenting a comparative and historically informed understanding of the workings of sound in culture, while also mapping potential future directions for research in the field. Experts from a variety of disciplines within sound studies cover such diverse topics as politics, gender, media, race, literature and sport. Individual sections that consider the importance of sound in an increasingly mediated world; the role that sound media play in the construction of experience; and the ways in which sound has been theorised to produce a distinctive sensory contribution to knowledge. More information...

Kovesi, Catherine (ed.,). Luxury and the Ethics of Greed in Early Modern Italy. Vol. 14. Brepols Publishers, 2018

A new, scholarly, and lively appraisal of the twin paradigms of Luxury and Greed as they were debated, disseminated, enacted, and feigned in early modern Italy. This book unravels the complex interaction of the paradigms of luxury and greed which lie at the origins of modern consumption practices. In the Western world, the phenomenon of luxury and the ethical dilemmas it raised appeared, for the first time since antiquity, in early modern Italy. Here, luxury emerged as a core idea in the conceptualisation of consumption. Simultaneously, greed - which manifested in new and unrestrained consumption practices - came under close ethical scrutiny. As the buying power of new classes gained pace, these paradigms evolved as they continued both to influence, and be influenced by, other emerging global cultures through the early modern period. More information...

McGregor, Kate. “Historical justice and the case of the 1965 killings,” in Hefner, Robert W. (ed.,). Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Indonesia. Routledge, 2018

The Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Indonesia offers an overview of the modern making and contemporary dynamics of culture, society, and politics in this powerful Asian nation. It provides a comprehensive survey of key issues in Indonesian politics, economics, religion, and society... Bringing together original contributions by leading scholars of Indonesia in law, political science, history, anthropology, sociology, religious studies, and gender studies this Handbook provides an up-to-date, interdisciplinary, and academically rigorous exploration of Indonesia. It will be of interest to students, academics, policymakers, and others in search of reliable information on Indonesian politics, economics, religion, and society in an accessible format. More information...

McGregor, Kate; Melvin, Jess and Pohlman, Annie (eds.). The Indonesian Genocide of 1965: Causes, Dynamics and Legacies. Palgrave Macmillan, 2018

This collection of essays by Indonesian and foreign contributors offers new and highly original analyses of the mass violence in Indonesia which began in 1965 and its aftermath. Fifty years on from one the largest genocides of the twentieth century, they probe the causes, dynamics and legacies of this violence through the use of a wide range of sources and different scholarly lenses. More information...

McGregor, Kate. “The Making of a Transnational Activist: The Indonesian Human Rights Campaigner Carmel Budiardjo,”; Scalmer, Sean. “Empire and Activism: Gandhi, Imperialism, and the Global Career of Satyagraha,”; and Berger, Stefan and Scalmer, Sean. “The Transnational Activist: An Introduction,”; all in Berger, Stefan and Scalmer, Sean. (eds.,). The Transnational Activist: Transformations and Comparisons from the Anglo World since the Nineteenth Century. Palgrave Macmillan, 2018

This book provides the first historical and comparative study of the ‘transnational activist’. A range of important recent scholarship has considered the rise of global social movements, the presence of transnational networks, and the transfer or diffusion of political techniques. Much of this writing has registered the pivotal role of ‘transnational’ or ‘global’ activists. However, if the significance of the ‘transnational activist’ is now routinely acknowledged, then the history of this actor is still something of a mystery. Most commentators have associated the figure with contemporary history. Hence much of the debate around ‘transnational activism’ is ahistorical, and claims for novelty are not often based on developed historical comparison. As this volume argues, it is possible to identify the ‘transnational activist’ in earlier decades and even centuries. More information...

McIlvenna, Una. “Emotions in Public: Crowds, Mobs and Communities,” in Broomhalls, S. and Lynch, A. (eds.,). The Routledge History of Emotions in Europe 1100-1700. Routledge, 2018

The Routledge History of Emotions in Europe: 1100-1700 presents the state of the field of pre-modern emotions during this period, placing particular emphasis on theoretical and methodological aspects of current research. This book serves as a reference to existing research practices in emotions history and advances studies in the field across a range of scholarly approaches. It brings together the work of recognised experts and new voices, and represents a wide range of international and interdisciplinary perspectives from different schools of research practice, including art history, literature and culture, philosophy, linguistics, archaeology and music. More information...

Scalmer, Sean. “Nonviolent activism and the media: Gandhi and beyond,” in Meikle, Graham (ed.,). The Routledge Companion to Media and Activism. Routledge, 2018

The Routledge Companion to Media and Activism is a wide-ranging collection of 42 original and authoritative essays by leading contributors from a variety of academic disciplines. Introducing and exploring central debates about the diverse relationships between both media and protest, and communication and social change, the book offers readers a reliable and informed guide to understanding how media and activism influence one another. The expert contributors examine the tactics and strategies of protest movements, and how activists organise themselves and each other; they investigate the dilemmas of media coverage and the creation of alternative media spaces and platforms; and they emphasise the importance of creativity and art in social change. More information...

Scalmer, Sean. “TLO 6: Examine historical evidence, scholarship and changing representations of the past,” in Clark, Jennifer and Nye, Adele (eds.,). Teaching the Discipline of History in an Age of Standards. Springer, 2018

This book discusses the discipline standards of History in Australian universities in order to help historians understand the Threshold Learning Outcomes and to assist in their practical application. It is divided into two sections: The first offers a scholarly exploration of contemporary issues in history teaching, while the second section discusses each of the Threshold Learning Outcomes and provides real-world examples of quality pedagogical practice. More information...

Silverstein, Jordy. “‘There Are Current Lessons from the Holocaust’: Making Meaning from Jewish Histories of the Holocaust,” in Clark, Anna and Peck, Carla (eds.,). Contemplating Historical Consciousness: Notes from the Field. Berghahn, 2018

The last several decades have witnessed an explosion of new empirical research into representations of the past and the conditions of their production, prompting claims that we have entered a new era in which the past has become more “present” than ever before. Contemplating Historical Consciousness brings together leading historians, ethnographers, and other scholars who give illuminating reflections on the aims, methods, and conceptualisation of their own research as well as the successes and failures they have encountered. This rich collective account provides valuable perspectives for current scholars while charting new avenues for future research. More information...

Spinks, Jenny. “Monstrous Births and Diabolical Seed,” in Hopwood, Nick; Flemming, Rebecca and Kassell, Lauren (eds.,). Reproduction: Antiquity to the Present Day. Cambridge university Press, 2018

From contraception to cloning and pregnancy to populations, reproduction presents urgent challenges today. This field-defining history synthesises a vast amount of scholarship to take the long view. Spanning from antiquity to the present day, the book focuses on the Mediterranean, western Europe, North America and their empires. It combines history of science, technology and medicine with social, cultural and demographic accounts. Ranging from the most intimate experiences to planetary policy, it tells new stories and revises received ideas. An international team of scholars asks how modern ‘reproduction’ - an abstract process of perpetuating living organisms – replaced the old ‘generation’ – the active making of humans and beasts, plants and even minerals. Striking illustrations invite readers to explore artefacts, from an ancient Egyptian fertility figurine to the announcement of the first test-tube baby. Authoritative and accessible, Reproduction offers students and non-specialists an essential starting point and sets fresh agendas for research. More information...

Tomsic, Mary. “Sharing a Personal Past: #iwasarefugee #iamarefugee on Instagram,” in Lydon, Jane (ed.,). Visualising Human Rights. University of Western Australia Publishing, 2018

When the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in Paris on 10 December 1948, photography was considered a ‘universal language’ that would communicate across barriers of race and culture. 70 years later it is timely to examine the cultural impact of the framework of human rights through visual culture. More information...

Burnard, Trevor. "Slavery and the Enlightenment in Jamaica and the British Empire, 1760-1772: The Afterlife of Tacky’s Rebellion and the Origins of British Abolitionism," in Tricoire, D. (ed.,). Enlightened Colonialism: Civilization Narratives and Imperial Politics in the Age of Reason. Palgrave Macmillan 2017

This book expands the debate on whether Enlightenment provided the cultural and intellectual origins of modern colonialism by exploring political and social practices. It brings together studies about the overseas empires of Britain, France, Spain, and Portugal as well as the continental empires of Russia and Austria and explores the interaction and assimilationism between European, indigenous, creole, and mix-raced elites. This book further qualifies the postcolonial thesis and shows its limits. To reach these goals, it links text analysis and political history on a global comparative scale. Focusing on imperial agents, their narratives of progress, and their political aims and strategies, it asks whether Enlightenment gave birth to a new colonialism between 1760 and 1820. More information...

Lang, Birgit; Damousi, Joy and Lewis, Alison. A history of the case study: sexology, psychoanalysis, literature. Manchester University Press, 2017

This collection tells the story of the case study genre at a time when it became the genre par excellence for discussing human sexuality across the humanities and life sciences.It is a transcontinental journey from the imperial world of fin-de-siècle Central Europe to the interwar metropolises of Weimar Germany and to the United States of America in the post-war years. More information...

Edele, Mark. Stalin’s Defectors: How Red Army Soldiers Became Hitler’s Collaborators, 1941-1945. OUP, 2017

Stalin’s Defectors is the first systematic study of the phenomenon of frontline surrender to the Germans in the Soviet Union’s ‘Great Patriotic War’ against the Nazis in 1941-1945. No other Allied army in the Second World War had such a large share of defectors among its prisoners of war. Based on a broad range of sources, this volume investigates the extent, the context, the scenarios, the reasons, the aftermath, and the historiography of frontline defection. More information...

Ellinghaus, Katherine. Blood Will Tell Native Americans and Assimilation Policy. University of Nebraska Press, 2017

Blood Will Tell reveals the underlying centrality of “blood” that shaped official ideas about who was eligible to be defined as Indian by the General Allotment Act in the United States. Katherine Ellinghaus traces the idea of blood quantum and how the concept came to dominate Native identity and national status between 1887 and 1934 and how related exclusionary policies functioned to dispossess Native people of their land. The U.S. government’s unspoken assumption at the time was that Natives of mixed descent were undeserving of tribal status and benefits, notwithstanding that Native Americans of mixed descent played crucial roles in the national implementation of allotment policy. More information...

Scalmer, Sean. On the Stump: Campaign Oratory and Democracy in the United States, Britain, and Australia. Temple University Press, 2017

In his engaging book On the Stump, Sean Scalmer provides the first comprehensive, transnational history of the “stump speech.” He traces the development and transformation of campaign oratory, as well as how national elections and public life and culture have been shaped by debate over the past century. Scalmer presents an eloquent study of how "stumping" careers were made, sustained, remembered, and exploited, to capture the complex rhythms of political change over the years. On the Stump examines the distinctive dramatic and performative styles of celebrity orators including Davy Crockett, Henry Clay, and William Gladstone. Ultimately, Scalmer recovers the history of the stump speech and its historical significance in order to better understand how political change is forged.

Griffen-Foley, Bridget and Scalmer, Sean (eds.,). Public Opinion, Campaign Politics and Media Audiences New Australian Perspectives. Melbourne University Publishing, 2017

This timely book investigates the fascinating landscape of media-driven politics through the prisms of ‘public opinion’, political campaigning, and audiences. From Indigenous voting rights and climate change to talkback radio and right-wing populism, Public Opinion, Campaign Politics and Media Audiences showcases new research in political science, history and media studies. Contributors scrutinise the relationship between polls, party policy and voting behaviour, and evaluate the roles of oratory and the media in electioneering and political communication across Australia, Britain and the United States. More information...

Tomsic, Mary. Beyond the Silver Screen, A History of Women, Filmmaking and Film Culture in Australia 1920-1990. Melbourne University Press, 2017

Beyond the Silver Screen tells the history of women’s engagement with filmmaking and film culture in twentieth-century Australia. In doing so, it explores an array of often hidden ways women in Australia have creatively worked with film. Beyond the Silver Screen examines film in a broad sense, considering feature filmmaking alongside government documentaries and political films. It also focuses on women’s work regulating films and supporting film culture through organising film societies and workshops to encourage female filmmakers. As such, it tells a new narrative of Australian film history. More information...

Zika, Charles; Hesson, Angela and Martin, Matthew (eds.,). Love: Art of Emotion 1400-1800. National Gallery of Victoria, 2017

Love, in the early modern era, was not so much a single emotion as an intricate constellation of feelings, experienced and expressed by the individual as well as broader society. From romantic desire to religious devotion, from patriotism to narcissism to nostalgia, Love: Art of Emotion 1400-1800 explores notions of public display and private sentiment, ostentation and intimacy.

Burnard, Trevor and Garrigus, John. The Plantation Machine: Atlantic Capitalism in French Saint-Domingue and British Jamaica. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016

The core of The Plantation Machine addresses the Seven Years’ War and its aftermath. The events of that period, notably a slave poisoning scare in Saint-Domingue and a near-simultaneous slave revolt in Jamaica, cemented white dominance in both colonies. Burnard and Garrigus argue that local political concerns, not emerging racial ideologies, explain the rise of distinctive forms of racism in these two societies. The American Revolution provided another imperial crisis for the beneficiaries of the plantation machine, but by the 1780s whites in each place were prospering as never before - and blacks were suffering in new and disturbing ways. The result was that Jamaica and Saint-Domingue became vitally important parts of the late eighteenth-century American empires of Britain and France. More information...

Damousi, Joy and Hamilton, Paula (eds.,). A cultural history of sound, memory, and the senses. Routledge, 2016

The past 20 years have witnessed a turn towards the sensuous, particularly the aural, as a viable space for critical exploration in History and other Humanities disciplines. This has been informed by a heightened awareness of the role that the senses play in shaping modern identity and understanding of place; and increasingly, how the senses are central to the memory of past experiences and their representation. The result has been a broadening of our historical imagination, which has previously taken the visual for granted and ignored the other senses… This volume builds on scholarship produced over the last twenty years and explores these dimensions by coupling the history of sound and the senses in distinctive ways: through a study of the sound of violence; the sound of voice mediated by technologies and the expression of memory through the senses. More information...

Damousi, Joy; Scalmer, Sean; Goot, Murray and Archer, Robyn (eds.,). The Conscription Conflict and the Great War. Monash University Publishing, 2016

While the Great War raged, Australians were twice asked to vote on the question of military conscription for overseas service. The recourse to popular referendum on such an issue at such a time was without precedent anywhere in the world... But while the memory of the conscription campaigns once loomed large, it has increasingly been overshadowed by a preoccupation with the sacrifice and heroism of Australian soldiers. This volume redresses the balance. Across nine chapters, distinguished scholars consider the origins, unfolding, and consequences of the conscription campaigns, comparing local events with experiences in Britain, the United States, and other countries. A corrective to the ‘militarisation’ of Australian history, it is also a major new exploration of a unique and defining episode in Australia’s past.

McIlvenna, Una. Scandal and Reputation at the Court of Catherine de Medici. Routledge, 2016

Scandal and Reputation at the Court of Catherine de Medici explores Catherine de Medici’s ‘flying squadron’, the legendary ladies-in-waiting of the sixteenth-century French queen mother who were alleged to have been ordered to seduce politically influential men for their mistress’s own Machiavellian purposes. Branded a ‘cabal of cuckoldry’ by a contemporary critic, these women were involved in scandals that have encouraged a perception, which continues in much academic literature, of the late Valois court as debauched and corrupt. More information...

McPhee, Peter. The French Revolution (2nd edition, revised). Melbourne University Publishing, 2016

There are three key questions the book investigates. First, why was there a revolution in 1789? Second, why did the revolution continue after 1789, culminating in civil war, foreign invasion and terror? Third, what was the significance of the revolution? Was the French Revolution a major turning-point in French, even world history, or instead just a protracted period of violent upheaval and warfare which wrecked millions of lives? More information...

Scalmer, Sean and Altman, Dennis (eds.,). How to Vote Progressive in Australia Labor Or Green?. Monash University Publishing, 2016

Red or Green? Traditionally, Australian progressives have supported the Australian Labor Party; increasingly, the Greens appeal. What are the key differences between the parties? Is greater collaboration desirable? Is it likely? This volume brings together a range of party leaders, veterans, and academic experts to tackle these important questions. Deliberately pluralistic, it encompasses strongly divergent views. Dedicated to progressive change, it aims both to capture and to advance a vital public debate.

Spinks, Jenny and Zika, Charles (eds.,). Disaster, Death and the Emotions in the Shadow of the Apocalypse, 1400-1700. Palgrave Macmillan, 2016

In late medieval and early modern Europe, textual and visual records of disaster and mass death allow us to encounter the intense emotions generated through the religious, providential and apocalyptic frameworks that provided these events with meaning. This collection brings together historians, art historians, and literary specialists in a cross-disciplinary collection shaped by new developments in the history of emotions. It offers a rich range of analytical frameworks and case studies, from the emotional language of divine providence to individual and communal experiences of disaster. More information...