Cirrus@Austlit

'As the book cover tells us, Elizabeth and John Macarthur were the first married couple who chose to travel to the new colony of New South Wales, arriving in 1790, both aged twenty-three. John has come down to us as the legendary soldier, entrepreneur and pastoralist who became one of the largest landholders in the colony, promoting the colonial wool industry, tussling with a string of governors (including William Bligh, overthrown in 1808), speculating in trade, and generally earning the epithet ‘perturbator’, bestowed upon him by Philip Gidley King. John’s lengthy periods away from the colony left Elizabeth in charge of their affairs, and she has also been credited with the family’s survival and success. Here Alan Atkinson explores the dynamics of their marriage and family life across two generations.' (Introduction)

 (Publication summary)

'Visual representations of colonial violence constitute an overlooked source of evidence that, although shaped by contemporary visual and cultural conventions, allow us to engage with this troubling history in significant ways. The “history wars” of the turn of the millennium have been accused of focusing on disciplinary protocols with the effect of obscuring the moral implications of colonial invasion and dispossession. By contrast, images evoke empathy, creating social relationships across the British Empire that defined identities and aligned viewers with specific communities. Images also return the modern viewer to the emotional and moral intensity of 1830s and 1840s frontier violence in south-eastern Australia. They map colonial “blind spots” by demonstrating the ways that these emotions were politicised to legitimate colonial interests, for example, by directing sympathy towards white colonists, or seeking to evoke compassion for Aboriginal people. From our present-day perspective, these visual images help us to see our “reflection”, and acknowledge the truth of our history and its legacies.' (Publication abstract)

'In 1913, at the age of 23, Elsie Masson was travelling on a steamer near Port Essington, 150 miles from Darwin, when it was approached by a small lugger. The boat was manned by one white man and two black men. '  (Introduction)

'The 1838 Myall Creek Massacre is remembered for the brutality of the crime committed by white settlers against innocent Aboriginal men, women and children, but also because eleven of the twelve assassins were arrested and brought to trial. Amid tremendous controversy, seven were hanged. Myall Creek was not the last time the colonial administration sought to apply the law equally to Aboriginal people and settlers, but it was the last time perpetrators of a massacre were convicted and hanged.

'Marking its 180th anniversary, this book explores the significance of one of the most horrifying events of Australian colonialism. Thoughtful and fearless, it challenges us to look at our history without flinching as an act of remembrance and reconciliation.' (Summary)

'During the 1830s, humanitarian concern for the plight of the British Empire’s Indigenous peoples reached its height, coinciding with colonists’ rapid encroachment upon Indigenous land in New South Wales. Increasing frontier violence culminated in the shocking Myall Creek Massacre of June 1838, prompting heated debates regarding the treatment of Australian Aboriginal people. Humanitarians and colonists deployed intensely emotive strategies seeking to direct compassion towards their very different objects via newspapers, the pulpit, prose, poetry and imagery. The landmark sermon delivered in late 1838 by Sydney Baptist minister John Saunders argued for Indigenous rights and the recognition of Aboriginal humanity, drawing a distinction between ‘pity’ and ‘justice’ that anticipated more recent debates regarding empathy. Saunders’s argument contrasts with sentimental anti- slavery strategies which rendered black people passive beneficiaries of white benevolence, demonstrating that despite scholarly critique which emphasises the limits of empathy, we must not assume empathy has static or homogeneous meanings and political effects in specific circumstances and times. While empathy may be complicit with injustice, conversely a lack of sympathy for other peoples’ suffering may license racism, misogyny and oppression.'

Source: Abstract.

'Xavier Herbert published his bestseller Capricornia in 1938, following two periods spent in the Northern Territory. His next major work, Poor Fellow My Country (1975), was not published until thirty-seven years later, but was also set in the north during the 1930s. One significant difference between the two novels is that by 1975 photo-journalism had become a significant force for influencing public opinion and reforming Aboriginal policy. Herbert’s novel, centring upon Prindy as vulnerable Aboriginal child, marks a sea change in perceptions of Aboriginal people and their place in Australian society, and a radical shift toward use of photography as a means of revealing the violation of human rights after World War II. In this article I review Herbert’s visual narrative strategies in the context of debates about this key historical shift and the growing impact of photography in human rights campaigns. I argue that Poor Fellow My Country should be seen as a textual re-enactment, set in Herbert’s and the nation’s past, yet coloured by more recent social changes that were facilitated and communicated through the camera’s lens. Like all re-enactments, it is written in the past conditional: it asks, what if things had been different? It poses a profound challenge to the state project of scientific modernity that was the Northern Territory over the first decades of the twentieth century.'  (Publication abstract)

'In my recent book, Photography, Humanitarianism, Empire, I set out to explore how images have worked historically to create empathy and mobilise social action.1 Many scholars have examined the role images have played in shaping ideas about race and difference, but I became interested in the broader array of emotional relationships and ideas they helped to define, and especially the ways in which they may have helped to argue for humanitarian ideals and, ultimately, human rights. A key question raised by this history is the way that images may prompt what eighteenth-century philosopher Adam Smith called ‘fellow feeling’, today often glossed as empathy. Today, empathy is generally considered to be a self-evident good. We try to teach our children empathy by encouraging them to imagine what it would be like to ‘walk in another’s shoes’. Empathy is seen to be an essential skill for medical students, in particular, alongside technical knowledge, so as to establish trust, the foundation of a good doctor-patient relationship. Over the last decade, a substantial body of research has argued that more empathetic doctors can be linked to ‘greater patient satisfaction, better outcomes, decreased physician burnout, and a lower risk of malpractice suits and errors’.2 Empathy is considered a cognitive skill that can be taught, rather than a personality trait, and so empathy training is increasingly being incorporated into medical courses around the world. Frequently such teaching is premised upon the belief that fictional narratives, art, or music may effectively convey another’s experience and allow the observer an enlarged understanding of their plight.' (Introduction)

'Historically, photographs of Indigenous Australians were often produced under unequal and exploitative circumstances. Today, however, such images represent a rich cultural heritage for descendants who can use this rich archive to explore Aboriginal history, to identify relatives, and to reclaim culture. In Aboriginal photographies contributors investigate the Indigenous significance of engaging with images from each of the former colonies. The result is a fresh perspective on Australia’s past, and on present-day Indigenous identities.'

'Rather than telling us what ‘the white photographer saw’, Aboriginal photographies focuses upon the interactions between photographer and Indigenous people and the living meanings the photos have today.' (Source: Publishers website)

'As a student, Jane Lydon was shocked by the photograph on the cover of Charles Rowley’s 1970 classic, The Destruction of Aboriginal Society, which showed two Aboriginal men in neck-chains. In this original and highly illustrated book she uses photography to tell a bigger story of the struggle for Aboriginal rights in Australia. While many of the images are confronting, the book tells the positive story of the way in which photography has been used as a tool for change and to argue for recognition of our shared humanity. Starting at the turn of the twentieth century and continuing to the NT Intervention in the present, the book includes more than 60 images taken from newspapers and journals, as well as the work of contemporary artists.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'An indigenous reservation in the colony of Victoria, Australia, the Coranderrk Aboriginal Station was a major site of cross-cultural contact the mid-nineteenth century and early twentieth. Coranderrk was located just outside Melbourne, and from its opening in the 1860s the colonial government commissioned many photographs of its Aboriginal residents. The photographs taken at Coranderrk Station circulated across the western world; they were mounted in exhibition displays and classified among other ethnographic “data” within museum collections. The immense Coranderrk photographic archive is the subject of this detailed, richly illustrated examination of the role of visual imagery in the colonial project. Offering close readings of the photographs in the context of Australian history and nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century photographic practice, Jane Lydon reveals how western society came to understand Aboriginal people through these images. At the same time, she demonstrates that the photos were not solely a tool of colonial exploitation. The residents of Coranderrk had a sophisticated understanding of how they were portrayed, and they became adept at manipulating their representations.'

'Lydon shows how the photographic portrayals of the Aboriginal residents of Coranderrk changed over time, reflecting various ideas of the colonial mission—from humanitarianism to control to assimilation. In the early twentieth century, the images were used on stereotypical postcards circulated among the white population, showing what appeared to be compliant, transformed Aboriginal subjects. The station closed in 1924 and disappeared from public view until it was rediscovered by scholars years later. Aboriginal Australians purchased the station in 1998, and, as Lydon describes, today they are using the Coranderrk photographic archive in new ways, to identify family members and tell stories of their own.' (Source: Amazon website)