'2020 has been a year of radical uncertainty. Many of us began the year choked by smoke from the bushfires that devastated wildlife and communities across much of Australia. Such fires had long been anticipated by climate scientists, though they seemed to take our politicians by surprise. If the bushfires were a predictable but horrifying disaster, few could have predicted the Covid-19 pandemic that has overwhelmed the world in the wake of the fire crisis. While epidemiologists have long warned of the threat of another global pandemic, it was nonetheless experienced by most of us as an unprecedented emergency. From panic buying to lockdown and home schooling, everyone felt its impact, and the history profession was no exception. Archives and libraries closed. Teaching moved online. Many casual staff found their employment had dried up overnight. Seminars, conferences and informal markers of collegiality all fell away as we heeded calls to flatten the curve. As if that wasn’t enough to contend with, academics around the country are now reeling in response to government proposals for sweeping changes to the university sector, which, among other things, would see student fees for history degrees increase by 113 per cent. The upheavals seem endless, and the ground is constantly shifting beneath our feet.' (Michelle Arrow , Leigh Boucher & Kate Fullagar, From the Editors : Introduction)
'The makers of the six-part Maralinga-themed series on ABC TV, Operation Buffalo, were careful to note at the start of each episode that the story was ‘historical fiction’, adding rather unhelpfully, ‘but some of the really bad history actually happened’. This disclaimer looks apologetic, intended to head off criticism. ‘Historical fiction’ certainly means that the story will be fictional, but it must also be historical. However, in this series there is effectively no meaningful history. An example of historical fiction is Judy Nunn’s novel Maralinga, which is historically accurate in its background, with a fictionalised story in the foreground. The story portrayed in Operation Buffalo has virtually nothing in common with the real events at Maralinga. The makers have taken two real names – Maralinga and Operation Buffalo – and riffed on them. They are of course entitled to do so, as a creative project. However, a question may legitimately be asked: why would they choose a tragic part of Australian history still within living memory and play games with it?' (Introduction)
'In the early twenty-first century, the word ‘suffragist’ is stuffy and obscure. There is more currency in ‘suffragettes’, especially the British women who resorted to civil disobedience in their mission of votes for women, years after their colonial sisters had succeeded peacefully. Clare Wright bridges and complexifies the difference between suffragists and suffragettes through the story of five Australian feminists who went on to be active in the United Kingdom: Dora Meeson Coates, Vida Goldstein, Nellie Martel, Muriel Matters and Dora Montefiore.' (Introduction)
