New Books in Australian and New Zealand Studies

Nicholas, today's guest, explains Australia has no war hero more impressive than Tongerlongeter. Leader of the Oyster Bay nation of south-east Tasmania in the 1820s and ’30s, he and his allies led the most effective frontier resistance ever mounted on Australian soil. They killed or wounded some 354 – or 4 per cent – of the invaders of their country. Tongerlongeter’s brilliant campaign inspired terror throughout the colony, forcing Governor George Arthur to launch a massive military operation in 1830 – the infamous Black Line. Tongerlongeter escaped but the cumulative losses had taken their toll. On New Year’s Eve 1831, having lost his arm, his country, and all but 25 of his people, the chief agreed to an armistice. In exile on Flinders Island, this revered warrior united most of the remnant tribes and became the settlement’s ‘King’ – a beacon of hope in a hopeless situation.

Nicholas Clements completed his PhD at the University of Tasmania in 2013. His research explores traditional Tasmanian Aboriginal culture, and the conflict between Aborigines and settlers on the Tasmanian frontier between 1803-1842. He has written two books on this subject: The Black War: Fear, Sex and Resistance in Tasmania (UQP, 2014) and, with Henry Reynolds, Tongerlongeter: First Nations Leader and Tasmanian War Hero (NewSouth, 2021).

Bede Haines is a solicitor, specialising in litigation and a partner at Holding Redlich, an Australian commercial law firm. He lives in Sydney, Australia. Known to read books, ride bikes and eat cereal (often). [email protected]

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/australian-and-new-zealand-studies

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this episode, Camilla T.N. Sørensen joins Andreas Bøje Forsby from NIAS for a conversation about the Indo-Pacific region as seen from a Danish and broader European perspective. Camilla was recently tasked by the Danish government to provide an assessment of current development trends in the Indo-Pacific ahead of a forthcoming new Danish foreign and security policy. Apart from discussing the scope, character, and drivers of Denmark/Europe’s growing interest in the Indo-Pacific, she offers an insightful account of China’s increasingly prominent role in the region.

Camilla TN Sørensen is an associate professor at the Danish Royal Defense Academy in Copenhagen, at the Institute for Strategy and War Studies. Apart from being one of the leading China specialists in Denmark, Camilla covers a wide array of research areas, including Danish foreign and security policy, great power relations, and the Arctic and Indo-Pacific regions.

The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) based at the University of Copenhagen, along with our academic partners: the Centre for East Asian Studies at the University of Turku, Asianettverket at the University of Oslo, and the Stockholm Centre for Global Asia at Stockholm University.

We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia.

Transcripts of the Nordic Asia Podcasts: http://www.nias.ku.dk/nordic-asia-podcast

About NIAS: www.nias.ku.dk

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/australian-and-new-zealand-studies

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In today’s global commerce and communication, linguistic diversity is in steady decline across the world as speakers of smaller languages adopt dominant forms. While this phenomenon, known as ‘language shift’, is usually regarded as a loss, this book adopts a different angle and addresses the following questions:

To answer these questions, Difference and Repetition in Language Shift to a Creole: The Expression of Emotions (Routledge, 2019) studies the expression of emotions in two languages on each side of a shift: Kriol, an English-based creole spoken in northern Australia, and Dalabon (Gunwinyguan, non-Pama-Nyungan), an Australian Aboriginal language that is being replaced by Kriol.

This volume is the first to explore the influence of the formal properties of language on the expression of emotions, as well as the first to describe the linguistic encoding of emotions in a creole language. The cross-disciplinary approach will appeal to linguists, psychologists, anthropologists, and other social scientists.

Maïa Ponsonnet 

is an anthropological linguist currently based at The University of Western Australia in Perth. She holds a PhD in linguistics from the Australian National University (Canberra, 2014), with additional background in philosophy (PhD Université Paris-8, 2005). She has extensive experience working with speakers of Indigenous languages in communities of inland Arnhem Land, in the Top End of Australia. In line with her combined linguistic, philosophical, and anthropological interests, Maïa Ponsonnet’s research concerns the role of language in humans’ lives, and in particular how language may channel or modify people’s experience and management of emotions.

Pi

e

r

s

Kelly

 is a linguistic anthropologist at the University of New England, Australia

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/australian-and-new-zealand-studies

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In Tautai: Sāmoa, World History, and the Life of Ta’isi O.F. Nelson (University of Hawai’i Press, 2017), O’Brien chronicles the life of a man described as the “archenemy” of New Zealand and the British Empire. He was Sāmoa’s richest man who used his wealth and unique international access to further the Sāmoan cause and was financially ruined in the process. In the aftermath of the First World War, Ta’isi embraced nonviolent resistance as a means to combat a colonial surge in the Pacific that gripped his country for nearly two decades. Ta’isi ran a global campaign of letter writing, petitions, and a newspaper to get his people’s plight heard. For his efforts he was imprisoned and exiled not once but twice from his homeland of Sāmoa. Today, Taʻisi is remembered as one of the founding fathers of independent Sāmoa.

Patricia O’Brien is an Associate Professor of History at Australian National University in Canberra, Australia.

Holger Droessler is an Assistant Professor of History at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. His research focuses on the intersection of empire and labor in the Pacific. wpi.edu/people/faculty/hdroessler @HolgerDroessler

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/australian-and-new-zealand-studies

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Today I talked to Mark McKenna about his new book Return to Uluru: A Killing, Hidden history, a Story that Toes to the Heart of the Nation (Black Inc, 2021)

When McKenna set out to write a history of the centre of Australia, he had no idea what he would discover. One event in 1934 - the shooting at Uluru of Aboriginal man Yokunnuna by white policeman Bill McKinnon, and subsequent Commonwealth inquiry - stood out as a mirror of racial politics in the Northern Territory at the time. But then, through speaking with the families of both killer and victim, McKenna unearthed new evidence that transformed the historical record and the meaning of the event for today. As he explains, 'Every thread of the story connected to the present in surprising ways.' In a sequence of powerful revelations, McKenna explores what truth-telling and reconciliation look like in practice. Return to Uluru brings a cold case to life. It speaks directly to the Black Lives Matter movement, but is completely Australian. Recalling Chloe Hooper's The Tall Man, it is superbly written, moving, and full of astonishing, unexpected twists. Ultimately it is a story of recognition and return, which goes to the very heart of the country. At the centre of it all is Uluru, the sacred site where paths fatefully converged. 'I feel sure that it will become an Australian classic, not the first of its kind, but certainly the most powerful narrative I have read of frontier injustice and its resonance in our lives today.'-Marcia Langton

Professor Mark McKenna, Department of History, University of Sydney, specialising in Australian political and cultural history and Aboriginal history.

Bede Haines is a solicitor, specialising in litigation and a partner at Holding Redlich, an Australian commercial law firm. He lives in Sydney, Australia. Known to read books, ride bikes and eat cereal (often). [email protected]

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/australian-and-new-zealand-studies

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Cian T. McMahon is an associate professor of history at University of Nevada-Las Vegas. His research focuses on the history and identity of the Irish Diaspora. In this interview, he discusses his new book The Coffin Ship: Life and Death at Sea during the Great Irish Famine (NYU Press, 2021), a social history of migration during the Great Irish Famine (1845-55).

Drawing primarily on migrants’ diaries and letters, The Irish Coffin Ship reconstructs the experience of leaving Ireland by sea during the cataclysm of the Famine of the late 1840s and early 1850s, when approximately 2.5 million people left Ireland.

With chapters examining “Preparation”, “Embarkation”, “Life”, “Death”, and “Arrival”, McMahon not only provides an intimate account of migrant experiences but also places this migration into its British imperial and Atlantic contexts, tracing maritime routes from Ireland to Liverpool and from there to Quebec, the United States and Australia. McMahon’s book also investigates popular memories of the Famine, not least the assumption that the “coffin ships” that passed back and forth between Ireland and Eastern Canada were sites of mass death.

The Irish Coffin Ship is published by NYU Press as part of their new Glucksmann Irish Diaspora Series.

Aidan Beatty is a historian at the Honors College of the University of Pittsburgh

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/australian-and-new-zealand-studies

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Helen Sword, writing champion, brings us into the word gym. Or maybe kitchen. Either way, The Writer's Diet: A Guide to Fit Prose (U Chicago Press, 2016) is a short, sharp introduction to great writing based around 5 principles:

--use active verbs whenever possible;

--favour concrete language over vague abstractions;

--avoid long strings of prepositional phrases;

--employ adjectives and adverbs only when they contribute something new to the meaning of a sentence; 

--reduce your dependence on four pernicious “waste words”: it, this, that, and there.

There are examples of the good - William Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson, Martin Luther King Jr., John McPhee, A. S. Byatt, Richard Dawkins, Alison Gopnik, and well, the bad. But you can fix the bad - really Dr Sword's point. 

Dr Helen Sword received her doctorate in comparative literature from Princeton University and has lived since 2001 in New Zealand, where she is a Professor of Humanities at the University of Auckland and runs a private writing consultancy, WriteSpace Limited.

Bede Haines is a solicitor, specialising in litigation and a partner at Holding Redlich, an Australian commercial law firm. He lives in Sydney, Australia. Known to read books, ride bikes and eat cereal (often). [email protected]

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/australian-and-new-zealand-studies

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In Voyagers: The Settlement of the Pacific (Apollo, 2020), the distinguished anthropologist Nicholas Thomas tells the story of the peopling of the Pacific. In clear, accessible language Thomas shows us that most Pacific Islanders are in fact 'inter-islanders', or people defined by their movement across the ocean and between islands, rather than 'trapped' in islands in a far sea. Thomas also described the European discovery of the Pacific, and emphasizes the role Pacific Islanders played in teaching European explorers about the Pacific. 'European' knowledge of the Pacific, Thomas claims, was very much 'intercultural' and relied on indigenous Pacific knowledge of the region.

In this episode of the podcast, Nick sits down with Alex Golub to discuss his book and the history of the Pacific. They talk about the influence of Epeli Hau‘ofa's writings on Nick's concept of 'inter-islanders' and discuss the complexities of intercultural contact in the nineteenth century Pacific which are exemplified by 'Tupaia's Chart' -- the map made for Captain Cook by Tupaia, the Tahitian navigator who led Cook to Aotearoa/New Zealand. Overall, Voyagers is an excellent introduction to Pacific history which can be read by anyone with an interest in the Pacific.

Associate professor of anthropology, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/australian-and-new-zealand-studies

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

I only ever asked you for one thing,' my father said, a quiver in his voice. 'Just this one thing.' It was as though I had smashed the Ten Commandments.

'Oh father,' I cried, grovelling at his ankles while my mother and siblings looked on. 'The one thing you asked of me - is everything.'

Bani Adam has known all his life what was expected of him. To marry the right kind of girl. To make the House of Adam proud.

But Bani wanted more than this - he wanted to make his own choices. Being the first in his Australian Muslim family to go to university, he could see a different way.

Years later, Bani will write his story to his son, Kahlil. Telling him of the choices that were made on Bani's behalf and those that he made for himself. Of the hurt he caused and the heartache he carries. Of the mistakes he made and the lessons he learned.

In this moving and timely novel, Michael Mohammed Ahmad balances the complexities of modern love with the demands of family, tradition and faith. The Other Half of You is the powerful, insightful and unforgettable new novel from the Miles Franklin shortlisted author of The Lebs.

Bede Haines is a solicitor, specialising in litigation and a partner at Holding Redlich, an Australian commercial law firm. He lives in Sydney, Australia. Known to read books, ride bikes and eat cereal (often). [email protected]

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/australian-and-new-zealand-studies

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Today on New Books in Gender Studies Jana Byars talks with Lindy McDougall, of Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia about her new book, The Perfect Vagina: Cosmetic Surgery in the Twenty-First Century, out this year, 2021, with Indiana University Press.

In The Perfect Vagina, Lindy McDougall provides an ethnographic account of women who choose FGCS in Australia and the physicians who perform these procedures, both in Australia and globally, while also examining the environment in which surgeons and women come together. Physicians have a vested interest in establishing this surgery as valid medical intervention, despite majority medical opinion explicitly acknowledging that a wide range of genital variation is normal. McDougall offers a nuanced picture of why and how these procedures are performed and draws parallels between FGCS and anthropological discussions of female genital circumcision (cutting). Using the neologism biomagical, she argues that cosmetic surgery functions as both ritual and sacrifice due to its promise of transformation while simultaneously submitting the body to the risks and pain of surgery, thus exposing biomedicine as an increasingly cultural and commercial pursuit.

The Perfect Vagina highlights the complexities involved with FGCS, its role in Western beauty culture, and the creation and control of body image in countries where self-care is valorized and medicine is increasingly harnessed for enhancement as well as health.

Jana Byars is the Academic Director of Netherlands: International Perspectives on Sexuality and Gender.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/australian-and-new-zealand-studies

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.