New Books in Australian and New Zealand Studies

By Marshall PoeSociety & Culture

New Books in Australian and New Zealand Studies episodes

May 01, 2015 Ellen Boucher, “Empire’s Children” (Cambridge UP, 2014)
For almost 100 years, it seemed like a good, even wholesome and optimistic idea to take young, working-class and poor British children and resettle them, quite on their own and apart from their families, in Canada, Australia, and southern Rhodesia. The impulse behind this program was philanthropic: to bring disadvantaged children living in crowded cities a better future by settling them in pristine, wide-open spaces, introducing them to nature, and letting them feel the sun on their backs. Yet the program was shot through with eugenic ideas and the racism of the age. British children were emissaries of the “kith and kin” empire, sent to “whiten” its outposts. But they could also be subject to repatriation–sometimes years after having been sent away in the first place–if their “racial fitness” was called into question.
Race, nation, and identity form one of many themes Ellen Boucher examines in her fascinating, and sometimes painful, book Empire’s Children: Child Emigration, Welfare, and the Decline of the British World, 1869-1967 (Cambridge University Press, 2014). Others include the rise and evolution of child psychology, changing ideas about the meaning of family, and the politics of empire. One kind of big picture in Empire’s Children is the shift from a unified British imperial identity to the rise of independent nationalisms throughout the empire. Another kind of big picture, though, comes from the stories told by those who grew up as child migrants and how they later came to perceive those experiences as they reflected back. When you study history you are perennially confronted with the fact that a thing that seemed wonderful not too long ago can later come to appear deplorable. Tracing the influences that produce shifts in moral conscience–whether psychological, social, economic, political, or emotional–is one of history’s chief tasks, and it is a task that Boucher accomplishes with great sensitivity and narrative elegance in Empire’s Children.
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.
54 min
March 05, 2015 Margaret D. Jacobs, “A Generation Removed: The Fostering and Adoption of Indigenous Children in the Postwar World” (University of Nebraska Press, 2014)
In 2012, a young Cherokee girl named Veronica became famous. The widespread and often coercive adoption and fostering of Indigenous children by non-Native families has long been known, discussed, and challenged in Indian Country. Now, because of an interview on Dr. Phil with the white South Carolina couple seeking to adopt Veronica, the issue went national.
Veronica’s mother had agreed to the adoption, but her father, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, wanted to raise her. And according to the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 (ICWA), Indian children should grow up in Indian families whenever possible.
The Supreme Court disagreed. In a 5-4 decision in June 2013, they remanded the case to the South Carolina Supreme Court, who promptly placed Veronica with the white couple.
This story opens Margaret D. Jacobs’ new book, A Generation Removed: The Fostering and Adoption of Indigenous Children in the Postwar World (University of Nebraska Press, 2014). But instead of trading in the shallow myths that characterized mainstream media coverage of the “Baby Veronica” case, Jacobs offers a nuanced and often troubling history that puts such incidents in context, documenting the mid-century explosion of adoption and fostering of Indigenous children by white families, not only in the United States but other settler colonial countries like Australia and Canada.
Jacobs’ book is one of trauma and violence, but also of courage and resistance, as Indigenous families struggled to reclaim the care of their children, leading to the ICWA in the United States and to national investigations, landmark apologies, and redress in Australia and Canada.
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.
1 hr 2 min
February 13, 2015 Charles Miranda, “Deception” (Allen and Urwin, 2012)
Mark Standen was a hero to drug enforcement police. Not only was he a great guy but he was an extremely effective police officer. Unfortunately, he also became a partner in the illicit drug industry. Deception is a book that tells the story of how Standen turned to the dark side and how the Australian Federal Police were able to catch him. In his new book Deception: The True Story of the International Drug Plot that Brought Down Australia’s Top Law Enforcer Mark Standen (Allen and Urwin, 2012), Charles Miranda provides us with a very detailed story of greed and its consequences. Standen uses his knowledge of policing and techniques of investigation to put together a system that should have defeated the efforts of the police. However, he was also protecting his partners and left clues that exposed his operations. This is not just a cop who goes rogue but a professional who builds a sophisticated process of communication. Unfortunately for Standen, the underground world is inefficient and, ultimately, corrupt. He discovered that when you play there you cannot trust anyone and eventually you can be a victim. I recommend this book for anyone interested in the field of organized crime. It is a sobering story for police and gives academics an insight into the details of the industry that we rarely see. But above all that it is a great read!
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.
46 min
February 06, 2014 Jarrod Gilbert, “Patched: The History of Gangs in New Zealand” (Auckland UP, 2013)
Jarrod Gilbert is very lucky that he comes from a country the size of New Zealand. With only 4 million people he could carry out a project that would be beyond the abilities of someone from a large nation and beyond the scope of a single book, namely, the history of all the gangs in a country. Patched: The History of Gangs in New Zealand (Auckland UP, 2013) is, as you will hear in the interview, partly a history of society and politics in New Zealand. Gangs arise from influences of culture and demographics. People form and join gangs for reasons of security and belonging but once in them develop strong in-group behaviours and out-group prejudices. All of this is evident in this book. Jarrod traces the history from the 1950s when the locals copied the Hells Angels through to modern gangs where again the locals are copying American culture and creating imitations of the Bloods and the Crips. It is also interesting to see the responses of government and police in dealing with stereotypes and real criminal activity. I think anyone who reads this book will see familiar practices acted out by the gangs, the authorities and the community. This is a very human story and well worth the read.

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.
42 min
December 02, 2013 Peter Westwick and Peter Neushul, “The World in the Curl: An Unconventional History of Surfing” (Crown, 2013)
The Atlantic magazine recently asked its readers to name the greatest athlete of all time. The usual suspects were present among the nominees: Jesse Owens, Pele, Wayne Gretzky, Don Bradman. Given that these were readers of The Atlantic, there were some more thoughtful answers as well: Canadian athlete and cancer-research activist Terry Fox, Czech distance runner Emil Zapotek, and Milos of Croton, the six-time wrestling champion of the ancient Olympics. If we put that question to historians Peter Westwick and Peter Neushul, their likely response would be someone who rarely gets a mention on best-athlete lists, but certainly deserves a place: Duke Kahanamoku. A five-time Olympic medalist in swimming, Duke traveled the world to give swimming exhibitions, drawing thousands at each stop. And wherever there was a beach and a break, Duke also demonstrated the sport he had mastered at Waikiki Beach, where he had grown up. The surfing cultures of Southern California and Australia have their origins in visits by Duke Kahanamoku in the early 1910s. In the words of Westwick and Neushul, the Duke was a combination of world-champion swimmer Michael Phelps and world-champion surfer Kelly Slater (both of whom appeared on The Atlantic’s greatest-athlete list).
Duke Kahanamoku is one of the main characters in Westwick and Neushul’s book The World in the Curl: An Unconventional History of Surfing (Crown, 2013). Kelly Slater and Laird Hamilton also appear, as do Gidget, Kahuna, and the Beach Boys. But as the sub-title indicates, this is a history that goes beyond the great surfers and the sport’s influence on pop culture. As historians of science and technology, Westwick and Neushul look at the developments that have fueled surfing’s popularity, such as the invention of foam-and-fiberglass boards (easier to manage than Duke’s 16-foot-long wooden boards) and the neoprene wetsuit, which has allowed surfers to enter waters around the world. Westwick and Neushul are also scholars of environmental history, and their history of surfing looks at how beaches have been transformed by developers and engineers. A customary part of a vacation at Waikiki is a surfing lesson. But the shoreline and even the waves that tourists encounter today are completely different from those of the Duke’s childhood. As Peter and Peter argue, the changes that took place on the shore are just as important to the story of this sport as what the surfers accomplished in the water.

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.
50 min
August 17, 2012 Greg de Moore, “Tom Wills: First Wild Man of Australian Sport” (Allen and Unwin, 2011)
A number of modern sports are credited to a particular 19th-century founder. The inventive work of some of these figures, like basketball’s James Naismith, American football’s Walter Camp, and judo’s Jigoro Kano, is firmly planted in history. But there are others, such as Abner Doubleday and William Webb Ellis, who are certainly historical figures but whose moments of sporting genius are wrapped in legend. And then there is Tom Wills, the man now credited as the primary inventor of Australian rules football. There are statues in Wills’ honor, commemorating his work as a drafter of rules, a player, and an umpire in the mid-19thcentury. But as Greg de Moore discovered when he set out to learn about this distinctly Australian sport, the circumstances of Tom Wills’ life have been largely unknown.
To start, Greg learned that Wills had taken his own life, in a horrific manner, by plunging a scissors into his chest. As an academic psychiatrist with a research interest in suicide, he set off to investigate what drove Wills to this act. Starting at its troubled end, Greg went on to research the whole of Wills’ life, producing the first serious biography of this important figure in the history of Australian popular culture: Tom Wills: First Wild Man of Australian Sport (Allen and Unwin, 2011)
The subtitle of Greg’s book is appropriate. Tom Wills was a 19th-century example of the prodigiously gifted, narcissistic, and ultimately self-destructive male athlete. Like Mickey Mantle or George Best, Wills could not maintain a relationship, manage his fortune, or hold a job after he left the field. Nor could he handle his drink. Although his end was shocking and unusual, the downward spiral is familiar to those who follow sports, in any country. At the same time, while this is a story common to all sporting cultures, Tom Wills’ life opens a window to the history of colonial Australia. His life intersected with episodes of violence between white settlers and Aborigines, as well as moments of reconciliation. He took great pride in his English education, yet his father was committed to the idea that Australia distinguish itself as a separate nation. As Greg explains at the start of our interview, the first spark of this project had come when he was living in New York City and wanted to learn what was distinct about his homeland. Certainly, Tom Wills is a representative figure of Australian history. But he also should be viewed as a compelling character of modern sport.
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.
57 min
October 25, 2011 Sally Ninham, “A Cohort of Pioneers: Australian Postgraduate Students and American Postgraduate Degrees, 1949-1964” (Conner Court Publishing, 2001)
Despite its focus on education, Sally Ninham‘s recent book, A Cohort of Pioneers: Australian Postgraduate Students and American PostgraduateDegrees, 1949-1964 (Connor Court Publishing, 2011), covers a lot of ground: the waning of Australian-British ties, the rise of Australian identity, post-war Australian-US relations, and much more. The book is also personal: it details her own family’s experiences as young professionals studying in the United States after the Second World War. The discovery of a cache of family letters led her to consider how and why Australians went to study in the United States, and how the experience transformed Australia’s own higher education system and politics in subsequent decades. For the Australian students, American education opened the prospect of an Australia less dependent upon the United Kingdom. For the United States, then fighting the Cold War, Australian students opened the prospect of closer ties to Australia, an important ally. The book, which is built on an impressive body of oral history interviews, personal letters, and memoirs, is both an important cultural document and a very readable intellectual history.
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.
50 min

About New Books in Australian and New Zealand Studies

From the publisher's feed

This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field.