Douglas Mawson and the Nation of Science single work   criticism  
Issue Details: First known date: 2020... 2020 Douglas Mawson and the Nation of Science
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'In the early decades of the twentieth century, a nation’s participation in global communities of science denoted high degrees of cultural modernity. For Australia, the accomplishments of Douglas Mawson signified that national assertion. Unlike the arts, where lines of descent and influence remained important, scientists before 1914 frequently saw themselves without borders; this claim offered vast encouragement to newer societies, who found their champion in Ernest Rutherford, born in New Zealand and awarded the Nobel in 1908 for work in Canada. Australia – the new Federation and the progressive states – heartily grasped the opportunity, and Mawson personified that demonstration, particularly in Antarctica: in calling him ‘an Australian Nansen,’ Edgeworth David drew a sharp distinction between Mawson and his British compeers, Scott and Shackleton. Both Mawson and Nansen were field scientists of utmost rigor, who directed their celebrity toward public activism on behalf of a new nation (Australia, 1901; Norway, 1905). That newness, moreover, produced a modernity that Gyan Prakash calls ‘an uncanny double, not a copy, of the European original’ (Another Reason 5); thus, while Mawson represented modern science in Australia, he also worked, consciously and originally, to reconfigure the global playing field of modernity altogether.' (Publication abstract)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon JASAL From Colony to Transnation vol. 20 no. 2 2020 20746686 2020 periodical issue 'This special issue of JASAL is a collection of essays based on papers delivered at the ASAL conference ‘From Colony to Transnation,’ held at the University of Sydney on 5–6 December 2019, to mark the retirement of the Chair of Australian Literature, Professor Robert Dixon. In all, thirty-nine papers were given, including keynotes by David Carter and Jeanette Hoorn, and the conference also incorporated the Herbert Blaiklock Memorial Lecture, delivered by the writer Nicolas Rothwell.' (Brigid Rooney, Peter KirkpatrickFrom Colony to Transnation: Introduction)

    2020
Last amended 12 Nov 2020 08:04:27
https://openjournals.library.sydney.edu.au/index.php/JASAL/article/view/14302 Douglas Mawson and the Nation of Sciencesmall AustLit logo JASAL
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