Archive Fever

Bonjour Australie! This week, Clare and Yves put on their berets and grab a baguette to talk Australian history through a French lens with Dr Alexis Bergantz, historian at RMIT University and author of the award-winning French Connection: Australia’s Cosmopolitan Ambition (NewSouth, 2021). How does being an outsider give one fresh eyes on a nation’s past? Why should we disrupt the monolingualism of Australia’s settler history? What do non-English archives bring to the table? And can foreign-language sources help us challenge nationalist mythologies?

This week on Archive Fever, Clare and Yves dive down into the archival underbelly of 1930s queer, criminal Sydney, with author, performance and activist, Fiona Kelly Macgregor, whose recent novel Iris is a stunner. Why does holding the bullets from a woman’s gun – trial evidence – compel you to spend twenty years writing a book? How do you get a voice from the dead to rise up out of the grave, speaking in the urban colloquial vernacular of a bygone era? At what is all this nostalgia for a pre-digital age where it was possible to driftnet fish in the stacks? Fiona takes us on a tour through tattoos, night clubs and streets that might just be familiar to you … sort of.

Who said archives had to be on planet earth? This week on Archive Fever, Clare and Yves are joined by Kamilaroi woman Krystal de Napoli, an astrophysicist, advocate for Indigenous astronomy and co-author of the award-winning book Astronomy: Sky Country (2022). How does the sky function as an archive for Indigenous knowledges? Why does light pollution threaten this celestial library? And why must any recognition of Indigenous sovereignty extend to the sky? Once you learn about Indigenous sky rights, you’ll never think about Country the same way again.

This week is a first for Archive Fever: a lawyer in the hot seat! Clare and Yves are joined by Professor Kate Auty, barrister, magistrate, law reformer and, with the 2023 release of her book O’Leary of the Underworld, historian. What are the differences between legal research and historical research? What happens when an archivist turns informer? Why, when you ‘enter a justice space’, is writing an explainer simply not an option? What happens to judicial impartiality when you want to flay your historical protagonist alive? And how does it feel, down there in the gutter fight of history?

Clare and Yves are joined by Zoe Coombs Marr, comedian, actor and creator of the ABC TV history documentary Queerstralia (2023). How does foraging and research shape the process of making comedy? What are queer temporalities and why was Queerstralia made as a looping metanarrative? What does it look like inside Zoe’s brain? Plus: a cameo appearance from Zelda the cavoodle, and Zoe reveals all about her street vomit archive.

Clare and Yves are joined by Emeritus Professor Judith Brett, scholar of Australian politics and political history and author of such award-winning books as Robert Menzies: Forgotten People (2016) and The Enigmatic Mr Deakin (2017) and most recently, Doing Politics: Writing on Public Life (2022). What does it feel like to be obsessed with the past? The group discusses the psychoanalytic journey from an obscure Viense poet to Robert Menzies, reading for patterns, and writing history as an act of reparation.

Yves and Clare are joined by British historian and disability scholar Lauren Pikó, whose work explores the cultural histories of landscape. Lauren is the author of Milton Keynes in British Culture: Imagining England (2019). How does one look at archives and research through a disability lens? The group discusses the importance of presence and absence, digitising the archive, and accessibility of institutional and archival research.

Clare and Yves are joined by Dr Lauren Burns, aeronautical engineer and author of Triple Helix: My Donor-Conceived Story (2022). How do you move forward when you hit the research brick wall again and again? What if your greatest archive is your own DNA? The group discusses carbon fibre, what was hidden becoming obvious, and genetic bewilderment.

Yves and Clare are joined by Dr Mike Jones, archivist, historian, deputy director of the ANU’s research centre for deep history, and author of Artefacts, Archives, and Documentation in the Relational Museum (2021). What dangers lie in sacralizing the archive? Is it truly possible to allow everyone control over their own story? The group discusses the historian’s professional anxiety, patrolling the disciplinary boundaries of archival work, and a hidden code in paperclips.

Clare and Yves are joined by journalist and broadcaster Tamara Oudyn whose latest ABC podcast series, ‘The Good Divorce’, tells the story of the seemingly elusive good divorce. Where does the research begin for a topic that’s still so taboo? The group discusses the key ingredients that make good talent, sources as a human archive, and balancing the light and shade in the world today.