Cultural Studies

Biography, Cultural Studies, Digital Scholarship, Life Writing
Biographical Dictionaries in the Digital Era
25.09.14 | Permalink | Comments Off on Biographical Dictionaries in the Digital Era

By any measure biography is popular today. With films, dedicated television channels, books, magazines, and multiple forms of social media disseminating biographical information online at an unprecedented rate and feeding an ever escalating interest in the lives of real people, intense public engagement with biography may be considered a defining feature of the early-twenty-first-century cultural landscape. Not coincidentally, interest in biography has soared from the mid-1990s alongside the phenomenon of mass public access to the World Wide Web, and especially since the emergence of Web 2.0 and social media in the past decade.
Cultural Studies, History, Life Writing
Reclaiming the Past: Nadia’s Story
27.08.14 | Permalink | Comments Off on Reclaiming the Past: Nadia’s Story

My Ukrainian grandparents Nadia and Petro Olijnyk arrived in Australia as postwar refugees in 1949. Petro died in 2005 and Nadia in 2009, each in their mid-90s. My grandfather loved telling stories and holding an audience. Nadia would sit with him, listening, but Petro would never allow her to take over. However, when he wasn’t with her she would sometimes tell her own stories and I was struck by how different they were from his. This paper focuses not on Nadia’s storytelling but her story writing, something she began to do in her late 80s for the first time in her life.
Cultural Studies, Humanities, Life Writing
International Life Writing: Memory and Identity in Global Context
11.03.13 | Permalink | Comments Off on International Life Writing: Memory and Identity in Global Context

Representing the best of international life writing scholarship, this collection reveals extraordinary stories of remarkable lives. These wide-ranging accounts span the Americas, Britain, Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia and the Pacific over a period of more than two centuries. Showing fascinating connections between people, places and historical eras, they unfold against the backdrop of events and social movements of global significance that have influenced the world in which we live today. Many of the authors document and celebrate lives that have been lost, hidden or neglected. They are reconstituted from the archives, restored through testimony and reimagined through art. The effects of colonialism, war and conflict on individual lives can be seen throughout the book alongside themes of transnational connection, displacement and exile, migration of individuals, families and peoples, and recovery and recuperation through memory and writing, creativity and performance.
Biography, Cultural Studies, Digital Scholarship, Historical Studies
New Digital Resource for Australian National Identity
11.12.12 | Permalink | Comments Off on New Digital Resource for Australian National Identity

The online version of Volume 18 of the Australian Dictionary of Biography, which tells the life stories of hundreds of significant and celebrated Australians, will be launched tonight at The Australian National University. Featuring articles on 670 individuals with surnames from L to Z who died between 1981 and 1990, the Australian Dictionary of Biography (ADB) presents a colourful mosaic of twentieth-century Australia. Included in the ADB are explorers, farmers, criminals, ballet dancers, speedway riders, and authors and politicians such as Patrick White, Christina Stead, William McMahon and Billy Sneddon. Vice-Chancellor Professor Ian Young, who will officially launch the latest version of the online Dictionary, said that the stories and lives featured in the ADB illuminate major themes in our recent history. “A vast range of people are consulting the Australian Dictionary of Biography online – researchers, students at primary, secondary and tertiary level, genealogists, and people watching documentaries and historical dramas on TV,” he said. “Since going online in 2006, the ADB now attracts 70 million views a year.”
Communication and Media Studies, Cultural Studies, e-Research
Connecting and Enabling the Humanities and Social Sciences
06.02.12 | Permalink | Comments Off on Connecting and Enabling the Humanities and Social Sciences

In today’s era of ubiquitous computing and global online connectivity, e-research is enriching research across a growing range of academic disciplines. Its reach is extending beyond the science and technology fields where it originated, and is now “penetrating the social sciences and humanities, [though] sometimes with differences in accent and label” (Jankowski, 2009). This chapter discusses some of the ways in which humanities researchers are embracing new digital resources, formats and modes of collaborating in ways that further the traditional goals of humanities research, “to better understand ourselves, our history, and our cultural heritage” (Cole, 2007). Topics covered in this chapter include the growing opportunities for collaborative and interdisciplinary approaches, building the information commons for public benefit, and the growing need for strategic investment in research infrastructure to support the humanities.
Cultural Studies, Historical Studies, Life Writing
Voices from the West End
06.02.12 | Permalink | Comments Off on Voices from the West End

On a triangle of land that points out to sea at the mouth of the Swan River is Fremantle’s heritage district, the West End, renowned for its colonial architecture that includes the largest collection of heritage-listed buildings in Western Australia and its oldest public building, the Round House gaol (1831). Although Fremantle has often been threatened by the demands of redevelopment, today it is recognised as one of the world’s best preserved examples of a nineteenth-century port city and colonial townscape. ‘Freo’, as it is known locally, also has an exceptionally diverse multicultural community, lending a special character that is the legacy of its role as a historical gateway to Australia, the first point of contact for generations of migrants and visitors arriving by sea from Europe. This mix of cultures and traditions has shaped the life of the cosmopolitan city, which now has a population of close to 30,000.
Communication and Media Studies, Cultural Studies, e-Research, Historical Studies
Toward a Global Digital History
25.11.11 | Permalink | Comments Off on Toward a Global Digital History

Digital history spans disciplines and can take many forms. Computer technology started to revolutionize the study of history more than three decades ago, and yet genres and formats for recording and presenting history using digital media are not well established and we are only now starting to see large-scale benefits. New modes of publication, new methods for doing research, and new channels of communication are making historical research richer, more relevant, and globally accessible. Many applications of computer-based research and publication are natural extensions of the established techniques for researching and writing history. Others are consciously experimental. This chapter discusses the latest advances in the digital history field and explores how new media technologies are reconfiguring the study of the past.
Cultural Studies, Historical Studies, Humanities
Historical Encyclopedia of Western Australia
07.11.11 | Permalink | Comments Off on Historical Encyclopedia of Western Australia

Almost a decade in the making, the Historical Encyclopedia of Western Australia, edited by Jenny Gregory and Jan Gothard, is now the most up to date and authoritative composite portrait of the state’s history. This work is a remarkable achievement. It is the result of a sustained collaborative effort that is a credit to the skill and energy of the editorial team and to the more than three hundred contributors, along with hundreds of expert readers. In 1912 J. S. Battye, the well-known State Librarian of Western Australia, produced the Cyclopedia of Western Australia: An Historical and Commercial Review, Descriptive and Biographical Facts, Figures and Illustrations, which remained a central reference resource for WA history throughout the twentieth century. The highly regarded volumes of the sesquicentenary series appeared in 1979, followed in 1981 by the influential A New History of Western Australia, edited by Tom Stannage.
Communication and Media Studies, Cultural Studies, e-Research, Humanities
eResearch Infrastructure for the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences
29.04.11 | Permalink | Comments Off on eResearch Infrastructure for the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences

Australian researchers are recognised internationally for delivering solutions to the most complex and challenging questions facing cultures and communities. Their contributions are vital to the nation’s social wellbeing. Encompassing the study of society, identity, economy, business, governance, history, culture and creativity, this broad field links universities, government agencies, collecting institutions and creative industries with policy development and with communities. However, complex issues of national and global significance cannot be solved in isolation. They demand collaborative approaches which in turn require the infrastructure to support them. Across all sectors, research practices are being fundamentally influenced by leading-edge ICT, and social and cultural data of immense significance is being generated in many different forms. With considerable investment worldwide in eResearch infrastructure, innovation in the humanities, arts and social sciences is increasingly dependent on enabling technology to support research excellence.
Cultural Studies, Historical Studies, Life Writing
Lives Recovered and Reclaimed
25.04.11 | Permalink | Comments Off on Lives Recovered and Reclaimed

A life can be recovered in many ways: through retrieving, reclaiming, remembering, re-imagining, revising, restoring, recognising, re-telling or re-placing. In this special issue of Life Writing the impulse to pay respect to lost, hidden or unacknowledged lives flows through the papers, all of which are drawn from the major international conference on ‘Recovering Lives’ convened by Cassandra Pybus, Caroline Turner and Paul Arthur in 2008, and hosted by the Humanities Research Centre at the Australian National University. With sessions held at the National Museum of Australia, accompanying exhibitions, artists’ talks and film screenings, the conference aimed to break down traditional barriers between disciplines, media and ways of seeing. Historians, writers, filmmakers, anthropologists, curators, journalists, artists and activists interpreted the theme in ways that put the spotlight on people and practices that the global vision, for all its benefits, has left behind, overlooked, marginalised, or even enslaved.

about

Paul Arthur is Vice-Chancellor’s Professorial Research Fellow and Chair in Digital Humanities and Social Sciences, at Edith Cowan University, Western Australia. He speaks and publishes widely on major challenges and changes facing 21st-century society, from the global impacts of technology on communication, culture and identity to migration and human rights. Paul Arthur has been director of the Edith Cowan Centre for Global Issues from 2016–2021 and leader of ECU’s university-wide Society and Culture research theme in 2021–2022. He was Australia’s first Professor in Digital Humanities (Western Sydney University, 2013–2016). A Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, he has held visiting positions in Europe, Asia-Pacific and North America, and given keynote and plenary talks in twenty countries. His forthcoming book is Open Scholarship in the Humanities (with Lydia Hearn, Bloomsbury 2023). Click here for full Profile

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Cultural Studies

Biography, Cultural Studies, Digital Scholarship, Life Writing

Biographical Dictionaries in the Digital Era